The Daily - The Georgia Runoffs, Part 1: ‘We Are Black Diamonds.’

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

A strong Black turnout will be integral to Democratic success in the U.S. Senate races in Georgia this week.In the first of a two-part examination of election strategies in the Georgia runoffs, we sit down with Stacey Abrams, a Georgia Democrat who has become synonymous with the party’s attempts to win statewide, to talk about her efforts to mobilize Black voters.And we join LaTosha Brown, a leader of Black Voters Matter, as she heads out to speak to voters.Guest: Audra D.S. Burch, a national correspondent for The New York Times. For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here.Background reading: Control of the Senate could hinge on Black voters in Georgia — and on an ambitious effort by the likes of Black Voters Matter to get them to the polls in the largest numbers ever for the runoff elections on Tuesday.Democrats are making their final push to rally supporters, targeting Black voters in regions far from Atlanta but equally important to Georgia’s emerging Democratic coalition.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

As President Trump tries, once again, to overturn the results of the election in Georgia, we begin a two-part look at the Democratic and Republican Party strategies for the Georgia Senate runoffs on Tuesday. Today, the Democrats. It's Monday, January 4th. Well, where is the drama of the night? You are looking at it right there. All those states in yellow, those battleground states, are too early to call.

And any combination of them could turn this into a very interesting night. On election night in November, the focus was on the close races and traditional swing states, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. But three days after polls closed. Breaking news right now at five, major progress in the ballot counting overnight. Joe Biden now leading in Georgia by more than 1,000 votes. The unthinkable happened. Joe Biden pulled ahead in Georgia by a thin margin. And if Joe Biden is able to win this state, he will have accomplished something

that we rarely see here, which even President Obama was unable to win here. And then, more than two weeks after Election Day, CNN has just projected President-elect Biden the winner in Georgia. It was called. It is only the third time in more than five decades that a Democrat or Independent has won the state,

which has been solidly Republican since 1972. The streets are in absolute gridlock right now. Daily producer Robert Jemison was in Atlanta. A lot of honking, as you've heard, all across the city for the past two hours since the race was called in favor of Biden-Harris. two hours since the race was called in favor of Biden-Harris. How are you guys feeling right now? Woo!

Like, we're very happy. Yes, yes. Did you ever think you would see this kind of thing happen in your lifetime? I hoped. I think I hoped like everybody else. But yeah, you hope. But to see it, it's nobody but God. And I'm just thankful.

I'm thankful to be here to witness it. The fact that we are purple right now and not red anymore and blue is about to take over is just amazing. And even that first night, one name kept coming up as responsible for this. Stacey Abrams deserves an award of... It's just amazing. Stacey Abrams. So I'm happy to see that Stacey Abrams made a way

that she led that. She fought for Georgia. And I'm so proud. I'm so happy. So happy for Georgia. We couldn't have done this without her. And I think specifically for Georgia, and I'm so proud. I'm so happy, so happy for Georgia. We couldn't have done this without her. And I think specifically in Georgia, a lot of talk about voting, a lot of talk from Stacey Abrams and a lot of work she put forward

in the last two years made a difference. But already that night, Democrats were looking ahead to whether they could do it again. Listen, we still have a long way to go. Because while Georgia had narrowly voted to elect Biden for president, in the two Senate races, no candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote, triggering a runoff election in January. A runoff that would determine which party would control the U.S. Senate. It's great that we won tonight, but we got to get out and vote in big numbers, just like we did this time, and vote in January.

From The New York Times, this is The Field. I'm Audra Birch in Georgia. Tomorrow, Georgia holds its two Senate runoff elections. Democrat Raphael Warnock against incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler. And Democrat John Ossoff against incumbent Republican David Perdue. And polls show a dead heat in both races. Historically, runoffs have favored Republicans. And to win, Democrats may have to turn out even more voters in the runoff than they did in the presidential election,

a race many believe was already skewed towards Democrats by a desire to vote Donald Trump out of office. And in Georgia, they'll have to rely on a strong turnout by Black voters who make up about a third of the electorate. If the Democrats do it, how much of that will be because of the work of Stacey Abrams? And how did the Democratic Party become so competitive in the state of Georgia? Hi, Leader Abrams. This is Robert at The New York Times. How are you? Can you hear us? Hello?

A few weeks ago, Robert and I sat down with Stacey Abrams. Can you all hear me? Virtually. There we are. Yeah, we can hear Abrams. Can you all hear me? Virtually. There we are. Yeah, we can hear you now. Can you hear us? Abrams has had a meteoric rise these past few years. She's the face of the rejuvenated Democratic Party in Georgia.

There we go. Hi. Hello. Hi, how are you? But for her, the story starts a couple of decades ago when Georgia Democrats were facing something of an identity crisis. Can you help us understand the landscape of Georgia for Democrats at that point? Sure. So Democrats who had been in power for 130 years lost the governor's office in 2002. Yep, that's right. Before 2002, Democrats held the governor's office for 130 years,

beginning with the election of James Milton Smith in 1871. But that version of the Democratic Party that had been so dominant in Georgia, it wasn't the same as it is now. Georgia had been a Democratic state, but being a Democrat had a very different meaning depending on who you were. And so this was a party that was comprised of rural conservatives, urban business people, black civil rights leaders, northern progressives who got lost on the way to Florida. You just had this very broad consortium and everyone called themselves a Democrat, but not everyone shared the same value system. And when the Republican governor was elected, a number of Democrats who had been elected as Democrats to the state Senate switched parties. And it was a sufficient number of people switching parties that Republicans then held the state Senate. In 2004, the Republicans won the state House again. We had a number of people who won as Democrats, and then they switched parties upon reelection.

And so Republicans. As the Republican Party gained momentum, it grew into a kind of well-funded, well-organized machine, absorbing the elected officials and the voters that came with them who were jumping from the sinking Democratic ship. What happened because of Republican success in 2002, 2004, 2006 was that there was a clear cleaving of belief systems. The poorly maintained arranged marriage of all of those different facets of the Democratic Party had fallen apart. And the Republicans not only, you know, they got everything they wanted in the divorce, they got the house, they got the car, they got custody of

everything. And it was at that point that Abrams decided to begin her own career in politics, winning a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives in 2006. So I came in when Democrats were quickly losing power. And, you know, it's not the best way to enter a legislative body. And then four years later, in 2010, when Democrats lost every statewide election, we lost the Senate to a supermajority for Republicans and the House was perilously close. I raised my hand and said, I would like to be the leader. Clearly, I did not read the fine print. House member Abrams became House Minority Leader Abrams and was tasked with rebuilding the party.

What had been happening for so many Democrats was there was an attempt to just recreate the last successful election. Or there was an attempt to borrow from the Republican Party pieces of their platform, hoping it would convince people to come back to our side. And part of my mission was to actually help us think about who we are. help us think about who we are. And actually based on work from my books that I borrowed from my parents, my mom and dad at the age of 40 became United Methodist ministers, which is what brought us to Georgia. Abrams grew up in Mississippi, but moved to Georgia in high school when her parents decided to pursue theology degrees at Emory University. Their old textbooks about church building became a starting point for Abrams thinking about party strategy. And I actually studied those theological texts to think about,

okay, how do you grow a church? How do you grow a party? How do you grow a cogent, philosophical, political ethic in a state that's in the midst of transition? The first piece for me was thinking about what do we stand for? I put together a 21-page deck based on conversations I'd had with members, based on research I was doing, based on reading demographic reports. She assembled a 21-page PowerPoint presentation with her findings, focusing on three main beliefs that she thought the party should unify behind. People want educational opportunity, economic security, and shared responsibility. And so once you know that's what you believe, then the question is who needs these things? And it was a natural idea to look at how many people living in the state were not participating in elections, but would be likely to be attracted to this coda as we offered it. And it is explicitly

clear in the South, race is the strongest predictor of political leanings, more than any other, more than gender, more than age, more than religious beliefs, race. Central to this is the shift in population, the demographic changes. Walk us through that. What was happening in Georgia? Between 2000 and 2010, Georgia was very solidly a Republican state. But at the exact same time, there was this massive influx of African Americans as part of a reverse migration. There was a dramatic increase of, I think, 96% in the Latino population in the state. And there was a fast rising Asian-American Pacific Islander population.

And all of those populations were ripe for outreach. African-Americans were the most likely to be Democratic leaning voters. And when Abrams looked at the numbers, she realized that Democrats were losing statewide elections by around 200,000 votes. But. We had 800,000 unregistered people of color, 600,000 of whom were African-American. We had this extraordinary opportunity to reach people who had never been engaged. They were new and we were new and we had to build instead of manifesting. The strategy Abrams was trying to sell was not intuitive to many longstanding party members.

I'm arguing, stop trying to get back the thing that worked for 130 years. There is an absolute logic to rejecting what I said. There is an absolute logic to rejecting what I said. They still believed it was possible to put back together this coalition of white rule voters who, along with Black urban voters, still allowed the party to sporadically win elections. Also not intuitive was the work Abrams believed it would take to win over these currently disengaged voters, which was a very grassroots, one voter at a time approach, as if they were building a community church. How did you get others on board with this strategy? I got on a plane and I started traveling around the country to meet donors who had given to democratic causes who would take a meeting with me. And I would walk into these meetings, I would show them

this PowerPoint presentation. Some of them would let me get all the way through it. A handful of folks said, yes, we will support you. We will invest. Many, many more said, you're so cute, very, you know, sort of patting me on my head. But the goal there was we had to be a full-time party to meet the Republican, you know, juggernaut. I raised money from labor unions, from individuals, from organizations. And then I used those dollars to just constantly be in the presence of communities to engage them. So she took that money she was able to raise and she embedded organizers into communities, sometimes months before elections. One thing I learned from my mom who had to combine three churches and was growing her church in Mississippi was that she said, you meet people

where they are, not where you want them to be. If you want a community to trust you, not where you want them to be. If you want a community to trust you, they need to believe that you understand their pain. In 2013, I deployed the staff that I'd built to go across the state and hold listening sessions. And we intentionally held them in rural parts of Georgia where there were very few people of color and possibly no Democrats, but we found a few. There were very few people of color and possibly no Democrats, but we found a few. But we went to every region and we talked about, again, education, economics and shared responsibility. I did a Korean radio show for one session where I got on the radio every Friday and let it get translated into Korean. It was one of the slowest shows in human history because I don't speak Korean. It was one of the slowest shows in human history because I don't speak Korean.

This strategy went on for years. Slowly but surely, by the end of 2014, Abrams' non-profit group, the New Georgia Project, along with other allied groups, had registered more than 100,000 voters. Fast forward 16, we picked up a few seats. we did better. And then, of course, 2018, where we were able to demonstrate, I think, on every metric, the utility of our project. We are writing the next chapter of Georgia's future where no one is unseen, no one is unheard, and no one is uninspired. No one is unheard and no one is uninspired. Stacey Abrams, get to know her. She's the woman who won the big Democratic gubernatorial primary last night in Georgia. Stacey Abrams will try to become the first female black governor in U.S. history this fall. She won the Georgia Democratic... It was in 2018 when Abrams ran for governor.

2018, when Abrams ran for governor. I'd been building this idea for a party strategy for a decade. And it was in the guise of a gubernatorial election that I could test out every facet of the plan. She says the idea was, I think this strategy might be ready for a real road test. Why not run myself to find out? We lose elections as Democrats by about 200,000 votes. My mission is to have a clear, resounding message that is bold and ambitious and that is detailed and that we take to every single voter. I wanted to be the governor. I wanted to deliver on these ideas. But my only credible way of running was to test my theory. What we are doing differently is that we spent the bulk of our investment,

not on television, but on the ground, building an army that we believe we can scale and we can take the entire state with by November. And that November, when she faced off against her Republican opponent. We not only increased our performance among every single one of those communities of color, among young people, we increased white participation for Democrats for the first time in nearly 30 years. It was a bit startling. I'm like, oh, hey, it does work. Everyone, you know, if these values are real and if they are credible,

you will attract people to you and they will support the work you need to do. But because of the aggressive use of voter suppression and other challenges, I did not become governor and therefore I publicly didn't get a job I really, really wanted and worked really hard to get. She lost by less than 55,000 votes. This is where things get a little complicated. Stay with me. In Georgia, the closely watched race for governor has been plagued by allegations of voter suppression and racism.

Abrams was beaten by then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who ran as a candidate while simultaneously in charge of the voting process. From 2010 to 2018, Kemp oversaw the purging of about 1.4 million recently inactive voters from the rolls. It's an action Republican state officials defended as maintaining clean rolls and guarding against voter fraud. In 2017, Georgia state legislature passed an exact match law. This required the names of voters on registration records to perfectly match their names on approved forms of identification. Kemp's office placed 53,000 voter registrations on hold. The majority were for Black voters, though they could still vote with additional identification.

Several civil rights groups sued the state, and it was amid this legal battle that Kemp ran for governor and won. After the vote, Abrams refused to concede. I think that Stacey Abrams' election is being stolen from her. If she'd had a fair election, she already would have won. If Stacey Abrams doesn't win in Georgia, they stole it. It's clear. It's clear. Democrats claim Republicans cheated, and Republicans... She got a historic number of votes. I mean, where are the votes that were suppressed? ...claimed there was no evidence of voter suppression. Questioning the integrity of the race, I think, is extremely damaging to the country. She failed. She's got to explain to her donors and keep Democrats agitated. There's another race coming up in two years.

Ten days after the election. This is not a speech of concession. Because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true, or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that. But my assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy. Abrams finally, formally ended her candidacy. Now, all of this may feel familiar, and many people and media groups in the past two months have compared her behavior to that of President Trump's in the wake of his own election laws. Here's what she had to say about that.

When I refused to concede in 2018, what I said very clearly first was that I acknowledged the legal sufficiency of the election, but I challenged the legitimacy of a system that would silence voters. By contrast, Donald Trump and his agitants have falsely pushed a narrative of mythical voter fraud that has been rejected by Democrats, Republicans, by conservatives and liberals, by the Supreme Court. There is no equivalence between us. Those of us fighting voter suppression are right, and those who are working to undermine our democracy by denying agency to American voters

are wrong. Agree or disagree, what is undeniable is that Stacey Abrams' strategy contributed to getting her much closer than any other Democratic candidate for governor since the party lost state control in 2002. And of course, we saw the results in November. You are widely credited with pioneering this kind of organizing effort that enabled Biden-Harris to have a successful ticket. What do you say to that sort of praise? I mean, you've seen the

headlines. I appreciate the accolades, but I always try to make certain that people understand the other women and men, the other people of color and white folks who have all been instrumental in building this power and building this opportunity. It is disingenuous for anyone to ascribe all of the success to one person, but I understand that I stand as an avatar for what they've seen. And I think what people are citing without necessarily understanding the backstory is that there were groups that have been toiling in the vineyards for decades. She's talking about a story around voter mobilization in the South that goes back much further than 2002, involving people who have been working alongside her this whole time,

and also those whose work started well before she was born. So where are we and where are we, like what's the plan for this event that we've just rolled up to? So we are 24 hours out from the deadline for voter registration. Organizers will tell you that this is an important day and I think what they're looking to do is get the turnout numbers to be just as high as they were in the general election, which is an uphill battle. In early December, Robert and I went to Warner Robins, Georgia, about two hours south of Atlanta, to meet with a group called Black Voters Matter. So they have a small van and then there's another big, it's a big commercial bus and it's emblazoned with the words we've got the power. They've spent the last four months crisscrossing the state with their charter bus, what they call the blackest bus in America, focusing on organizing black voters in communities

that have been traditionally ignored by political campaigns, just as Stacey Abrams has. The group is officially nonpartisan, but their on-the-ground campaigns largely benefit Democrats, and they give money to progressive causes through a separate political action committee. How you doing? I thought that was you. How are you?

I love this top. How you doing? We run into a woman wearing a Santa hat with a Black Voters Matter button pinned on the side. She's one of the leaders of the group, LaTosha Brown. So we are here in Warner Robins, as we've been doing throughout the election cycle. We do caravans, and so we're getting ready to ride through some neighborhoods and just create a little noise, let people know that Black Voters Matter, we're here, we will be here, and there's an important election coming up.

Am I being silent? Okay, All right. Latasha dashes to the bus. I'll jump in with you because I've got to record. And Robert and I, we jump into our own car to follow. Latasha says they're going to make some noise. The caravan slowly makes its way past low-slung office buildings and strip malls and turns into a residential area.

A man and a woman and six kids, they weren't outside, but they've come out, and now one of the volunteers is going to hand them a... Well, I want to follow him. How you doing, Mom? the volunteers is gonna go hand them a... Well, I wanna follow him. How you doing, Mal? I'm doing well, five, six, seven. Let's vote! I just wanna remind you about the important election coming up.

Okay. Okay? Did you vote last time? No? Are you registered? Huh? Now I am. Now you are? Great, great, great. So we have an opportunity to get these two Senate seats. You know, early voting starts next Monday on the 14th.

Right, I so appreciate it. The volunteer hands out flyers with information about the four candidates and a QR code, one of those square barcodes, to help voters get registered. We need one for Mama, Bubba. Can I get one more of those for their Mama? Absolutely. Thank you. I'll give you one of bubble. Can I get one more of those for their mama? Absolutely. Thank you. A few houses over,

we find Latasha trying to help a woman get on the Georgia voting website using that QR code. Put your camera on. It's not working. Hold on. Your phone might pick it up. Oh, no, this is an LG. Hold on, let me find somebody that knows a QR reader, because I don't know how to do it on.

If it ain't iPhone, I'm a mess. You know how to do it on an Android? Is it, um, it's kind of like an app. For roughly 10 minutes, she patiently stands with this woman. Until finally... Okay, there we go. It goes through. Watching this interaction, it is clear just how different Latasha's strategy is compared to traditional door knocking or phone banking. Thank you.

It's personal and memorable. So that's, I mean, I think it makes a difference that when we take time to really engage people, not just hand somebody something in their hands and act like they don't, you know, that you're just trying to get something from them, but really take the time. Hey, baby, how you doing? Merry Christmas. Are you happy about Christmas? Me too. You like Christmas? Me too. All right. See you later. Thank you. She wants everyone to remember that moment when Latasha Brown came to their neighborhood and told them how important voting was. when Latasha Brown came to their neighborhood and told them how important voting was. Just as she remembers her own introduction to the voting process when she was a kid growing up in Mobile, Alabama. You know, my first memory of voting was with my grandmother in Mobile, Nellie Gamble.

I was her baby. I mean, she raised me. I am a grandmama's baby. How old were you around this time? This is probably in the mid-70s. I'm probably around six or seven years old, I think. My earliest memory is that she would put on her dress as if we were going to church. At our home, my grandmother had this big wardrobe chest, and she called it a shiffle robe.

And so anytime you went to the shiffle robe to get something, you know, you knew it was special, because that's where she kept her, like, special things. And so I remember she would tell me, go get my good pocketbook. And so she would, I can see her just as plain right now. I could see her. And there was something about the way she would put it in the crease of her arm.

You know, she wouldn't put it on her shoulder. She would always put it on the crease of her arm as if she was, you know, in some ways it was like a part of the uniform. My grandfather would take us up to the polling site. We would go in to vote. And what was exciting is that we would go to this little booth that had curtains, that you would pull the curtains,

and it would just be Grandma and I. And we would vote. She would ask me if I wanted to help her. And after she would finish, she would kind of pause, look at me, and smile. And then she would open the curtains. But the way that she walked out of the booth, she would kind of pause, look at me and smile. And then she would open the curtains. But the way that she walked out of the booth, she would have me by her hand, her pocketbook on the crease of her arm, and she would walk out. And it seemed like she would just walk with her head a

little bit higher. I knew we had just done something special. I didn't know exactly what it was, but I knew whatever me and grandma had done that day was something that was actually really special. It made her feel a sense of pride for herself. And so as I'm older now, I really understand the significance because this is in the mid 70s. My grandmother was born in 1910. So, you know, this is a woman that the vast majority, probably close to 60 years of her life, she was denied the right to vote. The notion of voter suppression, of course, has a long history throughout the South. After decades of tactics like poll taxes, long lines, and literacy tests, the passage

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supposed to strengthen the enforcement of voting rights. But in Dallas County, Alabama, for example, African Americans made up half the population but accounted for just 2% of registered voters. So this is where civil rights leaders would focus their energy. It's also where LaTosha would find herself. A few hours north of Mobile... I would spend a lot of time in Selma.

We would go back up. In Selma, where she had family. And my aunt lived there. I would spend a lot of time in Selma. We would go back up. In Selma, where she had family. And my aunt lived there. The school system wasn't so good in Mobile at the time. So at the age of 11, I permanently moved to Selma with her. Can you talk about that history and the significance of that city? Well, the first thing I did right was the day I started to fight. Keep your eyes on the prize and hold on, hold on.

You know, Selma is ground zero for me in so many ways. It is kind of the center point of my family's journey in this country. of my family's journey in this country. And, you know, it was something, they never really talked about it. Her family had lived it up close. You know, my grandfather's interest in his wallet, he actually carried a receipt for a poll tax. I never knew what it was.

Including the events of Sunday, March 7, 1965. Our intention to leave in this place and our goal is Montgomery. When 600 voting rights advocates set out from a church in Selma to march to the state capital of Montgomery. We want some voice in our government!

My eldest aunt, who was actually one of the women that was, she was beat on the bridge in Selma, Alabama on Bloody Sunday. You've got two minutes to turn around and go back to your church. Is that clear to you? That Sunday, that bloody Sunday, became a catalyst for the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. And so I knew that there was something that was both prideful and both painful about the process. So, you know, as I got older and became an organizer, you know, I think now I understand, you know, why my family didn't talk about it. But for Latasha, it's the foundation upon which it's all built.

And I also want the world to know about the role of women in the Selma movement. You know, when we look at the pictures of what happened on Bloody Sunday, when we see how viciously John Lewis and Hosea Williams and Albert Turner were attacked. You know, we have those images in our mind, right? and Albert Turner were attacked. You know, we have those images in our mind, right? As you're looking at that footage, you're seeing people run back towards the bridge and you see this woman in this beige trench coat that falls in fear of being trampled upon.

That was Miss Amelia Boynton. She was actually the reason why the voting rights movement started in Selma. It was 10 years earlier where Miss Amelia Boynton actually started organizing. She and her husband had a business and they had organized and she invited Dr. King to come to Selma, right? And so it's interesting because I always think about the only, we're seeing this image of this woman being trampled upon and not really recognize that she was the true hero, you know, in that day.

And I think it's important to note that because there's a lot of conversation around lifting up the voices of Black women. And I'm so glad that people have discovered us, right? But we've been here all the while. We've been here. Why do you think that is, that Black women have been part of these large movements? And why do you think the recognition feels different now? So I think a couple of things. I think, one, I think that Black women uniquely sit at this intersection of sexism and racism, which I call, I think it's the two-headed dragon of oppression that has been rooted in America from the beginning. It's the twin evils. And so I think Black women sit uniquely at that intersection of being oppressed

because of our gender and also being oppressed because of our race. You know, I also believe that oppression can either crush you, you know, or it can transform you. And what I think that black women have been able to do in this country, you know, it's like a diamond. All a diamond is, is a piece of coal under extreme pressure. Over time, it becomes a diamond, right? It gets clarity. It actually, the surface becomes hardened, that it literally, it transforms. And so what I think that has happened in this country is the pain and the trauma and those things that have been used to destroy us. We've used

that pressure to transform ourselves. I think that we are black diamonds. We're back in Warner Robins with Black Voters Matter. I don't know what it means to me. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Take care of me, see me. Their caravan is finishing up the day by serving food to the community and hosting a watch party for a Senate debate that'll start soon. You know, part of culture is a powerful tool. I always tell people in the South, culture will eat strategy for breakfast, which is why we take the time, like the music.

This is what's natural in our community. We love music. We love food, particularly in the South. We use the power of our culture to really be able to make the connection. And so that people are feeling the sense of joy and affirmed that Black culture is affirming. Of course, they also want everyone to vote. But for LaTosha, it's all one and the same. That just like that experience with my grandmother, that when I went into the poll to vote with her, I knew that I was doing something special. I felt a part of something special, an experience with her. And I didn't know what voting was, but there was something special about it.

It was something the way she held my hand, the way she held her head up. You know, and I think we have to create that same sense of pride and a good experience. And when you talk to community members at the event... Tell us why you're here tonight. To support black voters. You can hear that messaging. And what's important about black voters? We need to vote more. Us black people need to vote more.

We need to get this out because all of us black people need to vote more. Cuz a lot of black people don't vote. The younger ones, a lot of people don't vote. So like he said, black vote matters. Okay, well, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Can we ask you a couple questions? Sure. Sure. How important are organizations that are grassroot and

they're focused on black voter turnout? They are vital because you get all these especially like in Atlanta, you've got rich parts of Atlanta that can pump lots of money in and sometimes they forget about us more rural counties. And so then you get these people that come with their fancy bus and they let these people know, hey, it's not hard to vote. They are tackling voter suppression by educating and making voting accessible. And they are so vital and I'm thankful for everything that they do.

Are y'all feeling out there Warren Robbins? When I say black voters, you say matter. Black voters. Black voters. Now that was the warm up. Now y'all going to see if I can mean it this time. Y'all know we know how to yell in the country. I'm a country girl from Alabama, so we're going to do this one more game.

When I say black voters, you say matter. Black voters. Black voters. When I say love, you say power. Love. Power. Love. Power. When I say power, you say love. Power. Power. Power. When I say black voters, you say matter. Early voting began in Georgia on December 14th, and the tallies show that more than 3 million ballots have been cast. That's already a record.

More people have voted in this runoff election than any runoff in the history of Georgia, but overall turnout is still projected to be lower than it was in November. And so far, Black voters represent about 31 percent of the total. That's slightly higher than the general election, which might seem to signal an advantage for Democrats. But if the voting patterns of the general election hold, a large number of white voters are expected to vote in person tomorrow, which may benefit Republicans. Voters are expected to vote in person tomorrow, which may benefit Republicans. If Reverend Warnock and John Ossoff lose on January 5th, what does that mean?

Would that be a failure? No, absolutely not. I don't know if I think that's a failure. I don't call that because I don't call wins. You know, for me, an election is not the total determination of a win. Right. You know, I think that it what it what it will mean is, well, a whole lot of work to do. We've got much more work to do. I can't even. Yes. Oh, I just can't take I can't go down that road right now.

But regardless of who is the winner, we're committed to the longer strategy, which is transforming the South and the state of Georgia. What a November win for Biden, but a Republican win in this runoff in January. Would that indicate to you that Donald Trump is a big, a bigger factor in all of this than we think? It depends on the numbers. I certainly like I can just say off the top that certainly I think Trump was a factor. Absolutely was a factor. I mean, in many ways, I think he's still a factor. Right. It's just a matter of is he going to be a factor in favor of the Republican Party or does he hurt the Republican Party? All I can speak to is what we're doing. We are doing the work.

All I can speak to is what we're doing. We are doing the work. The polls say that it's a close race. We're going to do everything we can to show up and show out. And I think the numbers will tell the story. On tomorrow's show, a look at the Republican strategy for the Senate runoffs and President Trump's effect on the race. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

In a phone call on Saturday, President Trump urged Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to find him enough votes to overturn his defeat in the state. The people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you've recalculated. The call, which was recorded, was reported by The Washington Post, which published audio of it on Sunday afternoon. During the call, Raffensperger repeatedly refused Trump's demands and rebutted his false claims of election fraud. Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. Despite the lack of evidence of fraud, 11 Republican senators and senators-elect

say they will vote to reject Joe Biden's victory on Wednesday when Congress meets to certify the outcome of the presidential race. That session will be overseen by Vice President Mike Pence, who over the weekend expressed support for the effort to invalidate Biden's win. At this point, nearly a quarter of Senate Republicans and more than half of House Republicans will join that effort, which is expected to fail. Today's episode was produced by Robert Jemison and Austin Mitchell, with help from Elise Spiegel. It was edited by Lisa Tobin and engineered by Chris Wood.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.