The NPR Politics Podcast - Is Raphael Warnock A Good Model For Swing-State Democrats?

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

The senator has a moderate tone, progressive policies and deep roots in his community. His campaign focused on speaking to voters of all stripes while his opponent, Herschel Walker, doubled-down on base messaging. Can Democrats use that playbook elsewhere?This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political correspondent Susan Davis, and GPB reporter Stephen Fowler.This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Katherine Swartz.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Rachel, 2-year-old Finnegan, and 7-week-old Fiona on Long Island, New York. We're decorating our first Christmas tree together. Say hi. Hi. This podcast was recorded at... 1.11 p.m. on Wednesday, the 7th of December. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll be hoping to put up the decorations faster than Finny can take them down.

Okay, here's the show. than Finney can take them down. Okay, here's the show. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Oh, those little happy chirps. This is why I haven't gotten a Christmas tree yet, because I am convinced my kids are going to want to take all of the ornaments off of it. I haven't had a Christmas tree in, well, my entire adult life. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And Stephen Fowler of Georgia Public Broadcasting is here. Hey, Stephen. Hey there. And we have you back here because we

have results out of Georgia. Democrat Raphael Warnock has won a full term in the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican candidate Herschel Walker in a runoff election. It is my honor to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy. The people have spoken. In this race, tell us what ultimately happened in the final days. What was it like? What do you think it came down to? Well, ultimately, it came down to Raphael Warnock earning a little bit more votes in both Republican and Democratic counties than he did in the November election. He didn't win Republican counties per se, but he lost it by a little bit less than before.

And in Democratic counties, he ran up the score a little bit more. And a lot of that comes down to the way Warnock campaigned. It came down to these two strategies. Warnock said that this was about, quote, character and competence and who you wanted to represent you in Georgia for the next six years. And he and other Democrats said Herschel Walker just simply didn't have either one of those two things. And Herschel Walker stayed true to the way he's run the entire campaign so far, which is really focused on energizing the Republican base, focusing on more far-right cultural issues like transgender athletes in high school sports and things like the border wall and immigration and pronouns in the military was a common line that Walker talked about. And ultimately, the base only strategy was not successful in a state where voters are a little bit more moderate and things are a little bit more swingy. And we've already had a couple elections now of anecdata of voters maybe not necessarily liking that base only approach.

So it's like Walker was running in a red state and Warnock was running in a purple state. Absolutely. I mean, some of the campaign events that you saw, you saw Herschel Walker going to deep red Republican bastions, familiar campaign stops where, you know, there's reliably hundreds of Republicans there. But the interesting thing is you saw Raphael Warnock also go to some of those areas where you typically might not see a Democratic candidate go. Some of these North Atlanta exurbs that are still very much red and still very much vote heavily Republican, but over the years have

been voting less and less Republican. And in this race, the key dynamic from the general election is there were about one in 10 people that voted for Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and did not vote for Republican Herschel Walker. And so Warnock campaigned in addition to targeting younger voters and black voters. Warnock campaigned in these Kemp-Warn I think Republicans saw Georgia as a really winnable state. And Herschel Walker was a uniquely flawed candidate. And if they had put up someone more in the mold of Kemp, this could have been a Republican takeover. It just wasn't their year for a lot of reasons. But I think at the top of that list really was just the caliber of this candidate. Can you talk about turnout? Because this was the second election in two months. Did people actually show up to vote in this runoff? And who did that help? There was a ton of people voting during early voting. Georgia set a record for single day in-person early voting turnout the Monday of statewide in-person early voting. Georgia set a record for single-day in-person early voting turnout the Monday of statewide in-person early voting, and then shattered it again later in the week by a long shot. So there was a lot of early votes, and a big question was, okay, what is that going

to look like on Election Day? And when all was said and done and the polls closed, there was a record number of people showing up on election day, too. And so for a runoff election, which typically you don't see a lot of interest in, you got pretty close to the general election number of votes, which people on both sides of the aisle and elections officials alike were frankly a little surprised to see. But, you know, if there's one thing Georgians know how to do, it's vote. Stephen, can you help square something on this, though? eyes to see. But, you know, if there's one thing Georgians know how to do, it's vote. Stephen, can you help square something on this, though? I mean, we've had you on the podcast a lot, not just to talk about these races, but to talk about the new voter law that was put in place in Georgia. And these are the first elections that took place under the new laws. There was a lot of criticism from the left that these were equated to voter suppression, that it would make it harder for people of color

to vote, that they were seen as extreme. Yet the tale of Georgia is Democrats doing quite well and seeing record turnout. So is the criticism of those all, was it overwrought? Yes and no. When talking about voting, one of the things I like to get people to think about is not necessarily the numbers of people voting, but thinking the things I like to get people to think about is not necessarily the numbers of people voting, but thinking about it as a customer service story. And from a customer service standpoint, Georgia's election laws added a lot of steps and burdens to local officials that then gets translated into more issues for people to basically have to do more work and exert more effort to cast the same ballot as they did before. So that's the way I think we should be thinking about this record turnout and not just saying, look, top line numbers are big. Voter suppression is solved. Yay.

Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, what does this result mean for governing. And we're back. And so Senator Warnock's victory gives Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority. That sounds like a preciously small majority, but it is ever so slightly larger than the 50-50 Senate with a tie break from the vice president that they had before. But as I understand it, it will make a big difference. It does. I mean, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a sigh of relief this morning, obviously, without Georgia being the contest that decides the Senate. If a win there was just seen as a bonus, and it does matter. Look, the filibuster is still very much an issue. They still do not have the votes to change that. And it does matter. Look, the filibuster is still very much an issue.

They still do not have the votes to change that. But it does things like it makes moving certain things to the Senate a whole lot easier. Under a 50-50 Senate, they had what was called a power sharing agreement. It meant both parties had the same amount of seats on committees. Republicans could slow down and block things like nominations and pieces of legislation and subpoenas from coming out of the committee process. And now with a clear majority, Democrats will have the advantage on all of those committees. So they'll have a little bit more ease to, and Schumer said this this morning, use that subpoena power, have oversight hearings. And one of the particular focuses of most recent administrations, getting more judges on the bench and getting nominees through the Judiciary Committee faster and onto the floor faster. So is it going to be a radical difference on Capitol Hill?

No, but it does make Chuck Schumer's job a whole lot easier. And around the edges, it does make it a a full term in the Senate from Georgia. Throughout been pretty slow to diversify in the modern era. You know, the House has considerably more black lawmakers, considerably more Latino lawmakers, is more reflective, not perfectly reflective, but more reflective of what the country looks like. But the Senate isn but black people, Latino people are still not ever, and I don't think they've ever really been representative in the modern Senate in the same way that they are in the country. So it is history making. And the fact that Raphael Warnock ran against another black man, Herschel Walker, I mean, that was also history making in its own right to have two black men, but particularly running for a southern Senate seat, considering all the racial politics and history of the South. But I don't think that anybody should be patting the Senate on the back for its diversity just yet. I mean, I think there's still a lot of strides to go to have the Congress look more representative of a whole as what the country looks like.

But I think Warnock is also, he is now at a bit of a celebrity status of a senator, not because he's had to win these races so many times, because he has proven to be a really durable candidate. And he is the kind of person that people look at and think, oh, does he want to run for president? Could he be on a ticket? I mean, he's young. He has a very long political future ahead of him. And winning these races has made him a bit of a star in Democratic politics. Well, and Stephen, he sort of acknowledged the through line of history and his own history as he gave his acceptance speech last night. I am Georgia. I am an example and an iteration of its history,

of its pain and its promise of the brutality and the possibility. Yeah, it's important to note that one of the reasons that we even have this runoff situation here is because of a long history in Georgia and other southern states of actively making it where black voters and black politicians don't really have a fair shot at being elected. And even though, obviously, today it's a much different time than the 60s, and there are a lot different rules in place, and there's a lot more political participation in Georgia. The origins of this runoff and the reason we're having this conversation right now is not lost on people like Senator Warnock. And it's worth noting that, you know, again, we talk about the customer

service aspect of voting and election laws. And instead of plenty of other states that don't do runoffs for these general elections, they just say, you got the most votes, you're the winner. We have yet another election, yet another costly election. And it's less people that ultimately get a say in who represents them. So we are now closing the book on the midterms. I mean, I'm sure we'll keep talking about it, but time to start talking about 2024. Moving right on. But before we close that book, we should just note that this is the first midterm since the 1930s that the president's party has actually defended every single incumbent Senate seat, which is wild. 2022 was a wild and weird election. And I think it's going to be one for the history books. People are going to study what happened in this midterm and why, because it broke with so many precedents. And yes, Republicans did ultimately pick up the House, but not by the sort of red wave the party itself was anticipating. And what the voters were saying and what this election meant is something that I think we're going to be debating for a very long time. All right, Stephen, let's talk about 2024.

Because Georgia is likely to be something like the center of the universe in these midterms with Governor Kemp, the Republican governor, winning decisively, but also Raphael Warnock winning pretty decisively himself in the same cycle. I mean, I guess it just tells you how complicated your state is. There is a lot of soul searching going on for both Democrats and Republicans here. But he did it by shunning the de facto leader of the Republican Party and kind of stiff-arming Donald Trump and Trump's brand of conservatism and Trump's election denialism. And so Republicans won big. And on the other hand, Raphael Warnock has now survived five elections in two years and is a pretty compelling national candidate and figure and a roadmap for winning in competitive states. But Georgia Democrats have been stymied at the state level for yet another election, and they had people turn out for Joe Biden and John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. But it's not

quite there to connect the dots at the state level. So even though this is a big victory for them, it's going to be back to the drawing board to figure out how they can get more of their diverse coalition to show up and start flipping things at the more local level. But the bottom line is that Georgia is going to be very much at the forefront of conversations about American politics the next two years and in the midst of this push and pull of figuring out where we go as a country. All right, well, we are going to leave it there for today. Stephen Fowler of Georgia Public Broadcasting, good to have you back. Always a pleasure. I'm Tamara Keith, I cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis, I cover politics.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.