Inside Georgia Dems’ final push to keep Warnock in the Senate

A week out from Election Day in Georgia’s Senate runoff, staff for incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock are sounding confident in their ground game.

“Despite Republican attempts to stack the deck, the Warnock for Georgia campaign’s robust field operation is continuing to turn out Georgia voters in record numbers to re-elect Reverend Warnock,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Warnock campaign, told The ReidOut Blog in a statement on Tuesday.

Follow our Georgia Senate runoff live blog at msnbc.com/GArunoff beginning Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET for the latest updates and expert analysis in real time.

The statement came just days after lawyers with the Warnock campaign successfully sued to prevent Republicans from restricting voting on the Saturday following Thanksgiving.

“We know this race is going to be close, and are using every tactic we can to reach the voters we need to win,” Chitika said. 

The Warnock campaign said it brought on hundreds more paid staffers than it had in the general election to help rally Georgians to vote in the runoff and push Warnock across the finish line. The roughly 900 staffers currently on Team Warnock, the campaign stated, far exceeds the number of staffers working for Republican Herschel Walker, which Warnock’s camp estimated to be around 500 people.

If accurate, those numbers are a testament to the power of a well-funded political operation, and an example of the investment Democrats can and should make to win southern regions that have previously been considered out of bounds for the party. 

Last week, Warnock took the fight to his challenger’s hometown of Wrightsville, Georgia, and offered a compelling pitch to voters. He even received an endorsement from one of Walker’s former high school football coaches, Curtis Dixon, during the campaign stop.

Every vote counts in this runoff, which follows a general election in which Warnock received just 40,000 or so more votes than Walker. (And an election in which a libertarian candidate gobbled up about 2% of the vote).  

Progressive activists are working overtime to ensure Walker doesn’t get within a stone’s throw of a Senate seat next week. Black Voters Matter Fund co-founder LaTosha Brown, for example, has been active on the ground in Georgia, with the group’s college-focused Black Youth Renaissance Tour and Wakanda Votes Forever event.

Team Warnock has also enlisted some not-so-secret weapons with hopes of bringing the race home. Former first lady Michelle Obama recently recorded a couple robocalls for Warnock, and her husband, former President Barack Obama, will be stumping for the senator in Atlanta on Thursday. 

It’s truly all hands on deck for progressives in Georgia.