WASHINGTON — President Biden said Friday that he was “going to Georgia” to help Sen. Raphael Warnock’s runoff election campaign — when he’s actually heading in the other direction.
“I’m going to Georgia today to help Sen. Warnock,” Biden told reporters at the White House before clarifying, “not to Georgia, we’re going to help Senator Warnock, I’m doing a major fundraiser up in Boston today for our next continued Senate candidate and senator.”
The president was scheduled to travel to Massachusetts to take part in a phone bank for Warnock with members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union before speaking at a reception for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
Biden hasn’t appeared with Warnock ahead of his Tuesday showdown against Republican Herschel Walker, continuing the presidential trend of keeping a conspicuously low profile in key battlegrounds of the midterm elections — allowing his fellow Democrats to maintain distance from Biden’s relative unpopularity in swing states.
By contrast, former President Barack Obama stumped for Warnock in Atlanta Thursday night, with the last day of early voting set for Friday.
Warnock, a pastor at Martin Luther King Jr.’s former Atlanta church, narrowly led Walker, the retired football star, in the first round of voting on Nov. 8. State law requires a runoff because neither candidate scored above 50% in the first round.
Former President Donald Trump pushed Walker to run, but the 60-year-old has since faced accusations of pressuring at least two women to have abortions. During the campaign, news outlets revealed that Walker had three previously unacknowledged children.
The 53-year-old Warnock, meanwhile, faced domestic abuse allegations from his ex-wife and scrutiny of evictions sought by his church. Although he serves in the Senate, Warnock continued to earn a $120,000 church salary and a $7,417 monthly housing allowance in 2021.
Democrats already are set to retain control of the Senate next year, but a victory by Warnock would allow Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) more flexibility with 51 caucus members.
Schumer currently must win every vote of the 50-member Democratic caucus to allow for Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties. An evenly divided Senate also would continue to give Republicans half of the seats on committees under a power-sharing deal.
Georgia until recently leaned Republican, but Biden carried the state by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to win the state in a presidential election since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Biden’s decision to distance himself from key 2022 races was validated by much stronger than expected Democratic showings. Instead of a “red wave” predicted by polling, Republicans gained a bare majority in the House and could not retake the Senate.
In January 2021, Republican in-fighting over the results of the presidential election in Georgia — with Trump attacking state GOP officials — was widely blamed for the narrow wins by Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff in Senate runoff elections.
The victories by Warnock and Ossoff gave Democrats a majority in the Senate thanks to Harris’ tie-breaking vote and allowed Biden to force through massive spending bills using special budget reconciliation rules.
Critics say those spending packages — including last year’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill and this year’s $437 billion environmental and healthcare bill, both passed without any Republican support — helped cause the worst sustained inflation since the early 1980s.
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