Four days until vote
Friday marks four days until Americans vote in federal and state races on Nov. 8. All year, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has brought you the key moments in those races, and it will continue to cover the campaign's main events, examine the issues and analyze candidates' finance reports until the last ballot is counted. You can follow the developments on the AJC's politics page at http://www.myajc.com/s/news/georgia-politics/ and in the Political Insider blog at http://www.myajc.com/s/news/political-insider/. You can also track our coverage on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GAPoliticsNews or Facebook at https://facebook.com/gapoliticsnewsnow.
Georgia Democrats hit the road Friday for a final, last-ditch effort to turn out voters as polls show the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump remains close in the state.
Gathered for breakfast before splitting up Friday morning, the party’s leaders laid out their battle plan.
Executive Director Rebecca DeHart said the party has 13 offices open across the state with 60 paid staffers. More than 2,600 volunteers have worked shifts to make 420,000 phone calls and knock on more than 95,000 doors. The party has also mailed 472,000 absentee ballot request forms directly to “lower-propensity” voters in a new effort to make casting a ballot as simple as possible.
Now, House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta, said, their mission is different.
“The focus now is going to shift from those who early-voted to those who indicated they want to vote but haven’t yet planned to vote on Tuesday,” she said. “We’ll be encouraging people to make plans. The more certain they are about voting the better we’re going to feel about Tuesday.”
Democrats believe the state is still winnable at the top of the ticket. If it is, it will largely be without the help of the Clinton campaign, which has made clear it is focusing elsewhere in the campaign's final days.
But Georgia Democrats are pressing on without her. Instead, the party has tapped U.S. Reps. John Lewis and Hank Johnson, former U.S. Rep. John Barrow, the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Atlanta's Ebeneezer Baptist Church, Senate Minority Leader Steve Henson, D-Tucker, Abrams and former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin to hit the road for events across the state.
Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, too, is barnstorming across South Georgia. In Albany, Carter praised Clinton as a fellow mother.
“A thing I like about Hillary is she’s a mother and a grandmother,” Carter said, according to a video of the event. “She has one daughter and two grandbabies, and she’ll be concerned about children. She’ll see to it that they have a good education and good health care.”
Lewis told reporters before leaving for events in McDonough and Macon that their message was simple.
“We’re saying we don’t want to go back, we want to go forward as a state, as a people,” Lewis told reporters. “There are forces on the other side that want to take us back.”
Democrats, too, will encourage voters to reject Gov. Nathan Deal's Opportunity School District, which is Amendment 1 on Tuesday's ballot. This, after Deal's recent remarks that "colored people" should support his plan sparked outrage and a call for an apology.
“It’s an insidious play to snatch away public schools in colored people’s neighborhoods,” Johnson said about Deal’s Opportunity School District at a separate news conference. “I use that term – colored — because that’s what the governor uses. How can we even consider giving someone who thinks like that control over our public schools?”
In a speech this week in Savannah, Deal was recorded using the outdated phrase to refer to African-Americans.
“The irony of some of the groups who are opposing doing something to help these minority children is beyond my logic,” Deal said in the speech, which was first reported by WAGA in Atlanta. “If you want to advance the state of colored people, start with their children.”
The governor quickly sent word that he meant to refer to the NAACP — the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — but misspoke. He went on to tell WAGA, however, that he stands behind the sentiment: African-Americans should support the amendment.
Warnock called Deal’s comments a distraction.
“I am opposed to OSD,” Warnock said Friday. “I think it’s a power grab and we need to stay focused on the issue at hand. And that is to ensure Georgia’s children, all of our children, have access to quality education.”
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