| | | | | |  | | By Zach Montellaro | Editor's Note: Weekly Score is a weekly version of POLITICO Pro's daily Campaigns policy newsletter, Morning Score. POLITICO Pro is a policy intelligence platform that combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro. | | | — Over 3 million people voted early ahead of the pair of Senate runoffs in Georgia, already smashing turnout records. But there's still plenty of votes to be cast on Tuesday. — President Donald Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the weekend, urging the election official to "find" votes to overturn his loss in the state. (Raffensperger declined.) Meanwhile, scores of congressional Republicans are supporting an effort to block the electoral college count on Wednesday. — The 117th Congress kicked off on Sunday, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi narrowly securing another term with the speaker's gavel. Here are the few who defected (or voted present). Good Monday morning, and welcome to 2021. A major thank you to Steve and Ally for filling in for me for the final two Scores of 2020. May 2021 be a better year than 2020, for all of us. Email me at zmontellaro@politico.com, or follow me on Twitter at @ZachMontellaro. Email the rest of the POLITICO Campaigns team at sshepard@politico.com, jarkin@politico.com, amutnick@politico.com and srodriguez@politico.com. Follow them on Twitter: @POLITICO_Steve, @JamesArkin, @allymutnick and @sabrod123. Days until the Georgia Senate runoffs: 1 Days until the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections: 302 Days until the 2022 midterm elections: 673 | | | | GET THE BIG PRE-INAUGURATION SCOOPS IN TRANSITION PLAYBOOK: Inauguration Day is quickly approaching. Is the Biden administration ready? Transition Playbook brings you inside the transition and newly forming administration, tracking the latest from Biden world and the transition of power. Written for political insiders, this scoop-filled newsletter breaks big news and analyzes the appointments, people and emerging power centers of the new administration. Track the transition and the first 100 days of the incoming Biden administration. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | | ON MY MIND — We're a day away from the Senate runoffs between Republican David Perdue (who is out of office, at least temporarily, with the start of the 117th Congress) and Democrat Jon Ossoff, and appointed Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock — and the election has already smashed turnout records for runoffs in the Peach State. According to data from Georgia Votes (a handy website run by Ryan Anderson that pulls information from the secretary of state's office) over 3 million Georgians have already voted, blowing well past the 2.1 million who voted in the 2008 runoff. (And that includes Election Day voting!) There is, of course, plenty of time left on the clock in the races that will decide control of the Senate, with Republicans in particular expecting to rely on strong Election Day turnout. But, as it has been for much of the race, the final days have been consumed by Republican in-fighting — in particular, the president lashing out at Georgia Republicans who won't support his outlandish fraud claims and attempts to throw out President-elect Joe Biden's victory and install himself for another term in the White House. The latest was an extraordinary call Trump placed to Raffensperger on Saturday, when he pressured the Peach State's top elections official to "find" votes that'd swing the state toward him. (Raffensperger, of course, declined; there's much more on the call below.) Trump alluded that Raffensperger not doing so would matter in the Senate runoffs. "You have a big election coming up," Trump said on the call. "Because of what you've done to the president, a lot of people aren't going out to vote. And a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president." Trump's emotional state is top of mind to Republicans, with the president scheduled to host a rally this evening to boost Loeffler and Perdue. Will he spend most of the rally attacking Republicans in the state, like Raffensperger and GOP Gov. Brian Kemp (Trump called himself a "schmuck" during the call for previously supporting Kemp), as he has done almost exclusively since his loss in the state became apparent? Could he do the unthinkable and even discourage voters from turning out on Tuesday? (He did call the Senate elections "both illegal and invalid" on New Year's Day.) — And Trump's time in the White House will end much as it started: With Ossoff at the center of a closely-watched Georgia election. POLITICO Campaigns' James Arkin , from Macon: "Ossoff's book-end runs for office during President Donald Trump's term illustrate a major shift in the Democratic Party in a few short years, from the Jan. 5 Senate runoffs to Ossoff's House campaign launch exactly four years prior. His House campaign foreshadowed Democrats' suburban revival and the heavyweight force of small-dollar donors in 2018 and 2020." Plus, POLITICO's Marc Caputo and Maya King have a deeply-reported story on Warnock's response to the litany of attack ads that have come his way. "Like most campaign ads, the ads from Loeffler and her allies contain varying degrees of truth," they wrote. "But as a Black man running against a white woman in the Deep South, fighting back is complicated. Warnock's response, or relative lack thereof, isn't a mere reflection of his temperament. It's a deliberate calculation by his campaign, which believes that a Black candidate, particularly a Black man, can't afford to be seen as angry, aggressive or defensive when running against a white candidate — particularly a white woman." — Perdue started quarantine last Thursday after being exposed to the coronavirus after having close contact with an unidentified member of his staff who had it. He and his wife tested negative, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Tia Mitchell and Greg Bluestein. | | | UNDER PRESSURE — More on that call from Trump to Raffensperger from The Washington Post's Amy Gardner , who first reported on it: During the conversation, "Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking 'a big risk.' … The rambling and at times incoherent conversation offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office." The call could open the president up to further legal jeopardy, a cadre of POLITICO reporters wrote, including yours truly. POLITICO also independently obtained the call; the Post posted the complete audio of said call. — The call came as a dozen Republican senators indicated they'd support objections to some state's electoral counts. On Saturday, eleven senators — led by Texas' Ted Cruz — said they'd vote against the count, calling for an audit, POLITICO's Burgess Everett wrote. The situation is one of a snake eating its own tail. The senators said in a statement that the election "featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities," citing public polling. But my colleague Mel Zanona succinctly summed up how we got here in the first place: "Trump manufactured election fraud claims, which led his supporters to believe those false claims, which led these Republican senators to cite 'unprecedented allegations of voter fraud' and 'deep distrust of our democratic processes' as justification for their Wednesday plan." (Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley was the first out of the gate saying he'd challenge electoral slates last week.) The move, and a similar one expected from well over 100 members of the House, is setting off an internal GOP war over the party's commitment to small d democracy. Burgess and Marianne LeVeine: "The tensions are so high that individual GOP senators are now directly battling, with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) accusing some Republicans of undermining the right to participate in direct elections," and a split bubbling in the lower chamber: "House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney circulated a memo to her colleagues arguing that challenging the election results would be unconstitutional and could set an 'exceptionally dangerous precedent.'" The move to overthrow Biden's electoral victory will ultimately fail . Enough Republican senators have already rejected their colleagues' disregard for the voters and have said they'll certify results, along with the Democratic caucus, and Democrats still (narrowly) control the House. But several, including Cruz and Hawley, have already started to fundraise off their plans. POLITICO's Kyle Cheney and Mel have more on the rules of the road for Wednesday. LEGAL EAGLES — Trump and his allies were absolutely demolished in post-election litigation, but some voting rights advocates are worried that his defeats could nevertheless lay the groundwork for future problems. POLITICO's Josh Gerstein: "Judges used a broad array of legal grounds to nail the coffin firmly shut. Although the facts may be different in future cases, the procedural tools and theories used to scuttle the Trump cases are sure to be deployed against Democrats and civil rights groups in the coming months and years." | | | | A NEW YEAR MEANS A NEW HUDDLE IS HERE: Huddle, our daily congressional must-read, has a new author! Olivia Beavers took the reins this week, and she has the latest news and whispers from the Speakers' Lobby. Don't miss out, subscribe to our Huddle newsletter, the essential guide to all things Capitol Hill. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | | 117TH CONGRESS — The 117th Congress officially arrived on Sunday, bringing six new senators and dozens of new freshmen to the House. But the first day was unlike any other one in the government's history, POLITICO's Sarah Ferris, Heather Caygle and Olivia Beavers wrote, where the "ongoing coronavirus pandemic loomed large over every aspect" of the day. Pelosi narrowly secured another term as speaker, in what took an interesting choreographed floor vote that included a "plexiglass enclosure in a corner of the visitor's gallery to allow three lawmakers — two Democrats and a Republican who are in quarantine after exposure to the virus — 'to fulfill their Constitutional duties,' according to the Capitol physician." (Of note: freshman Iowa GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks was seated "provisionally" as Democrat Rita Hart challenges her six-vote loss in IA-02 with the House.) The vote for Pelosi had less drama than years' past, considering … everything else is going on. But which Democrats ultimately voted for her (or abstained) is interesting. A breakdown from POLITICO Campaigns' Ally Mutnick: Only five Democrats defected: Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who voted for Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.); Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.), who voted for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.); and Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who all voted "present," lowering Pelosi's threshold. But Pelosi secured the support of several others who refused to back her in 2019, including Reps. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.). Three Democrats who didn't back Pelosi in 2019 are out of Congress: former Reps. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.), Ben McAdams (D-Utah) and Max Rose (D-N.Y.). New York Democrat Anthony Brindisi is in electoral purgatory and didn't vote (more on that below) and Rep. Jeff Van Drew (who originally just voted "no" in 2019) is now a Republican. COUNTING HEADS — As you may be aware, it is now 2021. We do not have apportionment data from the Census Bureau, meaning they officially missed the Dec. 31 year-end statutory deadline. (As they said they would for a bit!) But we still don't know when the actual release is coming — before or after Biden's inauguration. "The schedule for reporting this data is not static. Projected dates are fluid," an unsigned statement from the Bureau sent on Dec. 30 read. "We continue to process the data collected and plan to deliver a complete and accurate state population count for apportionment in early 2021, as close to the statutory deadline as possible." NEVERENDING ELECTION — A winner has still not been determined in NY-22, between Brindisi and former GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney. Will all the undisputed ballots tallied, Tenney is up by 29 votes, the Syracuse Post-Standard's Patrick Lohmann reported. But with thousands of disputed votes still out, it ain't close to being over: "Lawyers for Brindisi ... are trying to get ballots that have been rejected to be included in the count by arguing that technicalities and alleged errors by government employees should not be enough to toss votes. Tenney's attorneys are arguing that the judge should adhere strictly to what they say is established law." The story has a good breakdown of the various categories of disputed ballots. THE GOVERNATORS — Kemp and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams aren't on the ballot on Tuesday. But their political futures are tightly wound to the runoffs, POLITICO's Andrew Desiderio writes from Savannah: "It's the worst-kept secret in Georgia that Abrams is gearing up for a rematch against Kemp in 2022," he wrote. "The Senate runoffs are shaping up as the first salvo in a Kemp-Abrams rematch — a test of whether Abrams' years-long mobilization efforts can solidify Georgia's status as a purple or even blue state, or if Biden's victory over President Donald Trump was an aberration in a state that still leans toward the GOP." GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD — Rose, the now-former congressman, announced he won't run for New York City mayor this year, after publicly toying with the idea, POLITICO New York's Erin Durkin reported. CONSULTANTS' CORNER — Dave Martinez is joining the Republican consulting firm Targeted Victory as a director in their public affairs group. He was most recently deputy research director at the NRCC. CODA — QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I don't drink, but I'm happy to have ice cream with anybody anytime." — Pelosi, responding to a call from Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) for members to "sit down and have a drink" instead of fighting. (Young is the Dean of the House and was swearing in Pelosi.) | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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