While many have eyes on Senate and gubernatorial races in Arizona and Pennsylvania, Georgia has yielded two of the tighter races on election night. As of 9:30 p.m. EST, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) held a slight lead against Republican challenger Herschel Walker, and Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) held a slight lead against Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams. Former State Sen. Eric Johnson (R-GA) gave Straight Arrow News his impression on the early results.
“I think it’s too early to write Herschel off, but it’s looking great for Gov. Kemp,” Johnson said. “I think there’s still Republican counties to come in. And of course, they count the early votes and the absentee ballots sooner than they do the live day voting, which tends to benefit the Democratic machine early on.”
Johnson described Walker as having a “great name… and a lot of fans,” while acknowledging “there was baggage that came along with him.” When asked if Kemp’s lead is a sign that Walker may also pull ahead, Johnson noted Kemp is taking a higher percentage of the vote than Walker is in his own county.
“The Libertarians are voting three times more in the Warnock/Walker race than they are in a governor’s race,” Johnson said. “So it looks like there’s some bleed off of folks that don’t want to vote for either one and are voting Libertarian.”
Tuesday’s election came two years after Georgia delivered wins to Warnock, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and President Joe Biden. Straight Arrow News asked Johnson about the apparent Democratic shift in an historically red state and what Republicans were doing to counter it.
“We’ve got the real Hollywood of the East now, bringing the motion pictures over here. People are moving down here from up north, where they think they’re moving to a more conservative state, but they bring some of their politics with them,” Johnson said. “But the Republicans have have done well to cut into minority votes here, both in African-American and the Hispanics. Republicans had a Hispanic and two African-Americans on their statewide ticket this year. So that’s helping overcome demographic changes.”