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Georgia: Ticket-Splitting On Our Mind (with Molly Ball)

October 15, 2022
Notes
Transcript

Georgia is a closely divided state, but we’re likely to see a lot of ticket splitters there this year – specifically a lot of people voting for arch-conservative Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. Partly because they think Kemp is doing a good job, and partly because Warnock’s opponent, Herschel Walker, is a total mess. TIME Magazine n…

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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:09

    However, one, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell, Publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we are talking about Georgia. The state most likely to determine which party controls the senate, which makes the impact of recent revelations that Hersha Walker allegedly paid for an abortion, all the more high stakes in his attempts to unseat Democratic incumbent Rafael Warmak. We’re gonna hear swing voters discuss how Walker’s controversial past is influencing their thinking about this race.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:40

    We’re also going to explore the lost art of tickets splitting. We’ve seen some of this in Arizona, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, but Georgia may be ground zero for the twenty twenty two ticket splitter. Republican governor Brian Kemp is probably on track to beat Democrat Stacey Abrams again. He’s leading by five and a half points in the latest five thirty eight average, which is practically a landslide in narrowly divided Georgia these days. There’s actually a pull out this week from the University of Georgia that has camp leading by ten points.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:14

    That seems too high to me, but point is he’s up. My guest today is Molly Ball, national political correspondent for Time magazine, She had a great piece recently for the magazine titled Brian Kemp’s Revenge. So who is Kemp getting revenge
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:29

    on? All of his haters. And isn’t that what we all would like That’s the dream. That’s the dream. Well, but specifically, former president Trump, who thought he was going to get his revenge on Brian Kemp for refusing to help him steal the election.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:46

    But that’s not how things went down as people probably remember. And Trump tried very hard to unseat Kemp in this past primary back in May Kem did the work, won extremely decisively by about fifty points. And now, as you said, he looks like he’s gonna cruise to reelection And so as I put it in the piece, he may be the only Republican candidate to have used Trump better than Trump used him.
  • Speaker 3
    0:02:10

    Howard Bauchner:
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:11

    Yeah. Right. Like, Trump was able to essentially choose his person in most races and — Mhmm. — the geographies where he handpicks Purdue. He even handpicks congressman Jody ICE to run against Brad Ravensburger as secretary of state.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:27

    He sees them other than Liz Cheney kind of public enemies one and two goes hard at them and the whole thing is just a total flop. Like Kemp wins by such a margin in his primary that he drags Brad Ravensburger over the finish line who everybody thought was dead in the water because he wouldn’t find Trump has eleven thousand votes. Like, how did he pull that off? Like, what did he do? Well, he worked very hard for it, and I would say
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:53

    that, yes, when somebody wins a primary by a fifty point margin, It looks like that was probably always gonna be the case, but I was not at all a foregone conclusion. And something I think people don’t appreciate enough about this race is that, you know, Trump issues a lot of endorsements, but he doesn’t actually people will be shocked to hear this. Doesn’t actually put in a lot of work for the candidates he endorses. He tends to believe that just that piece paper ought to be enough and they should be happy with it. Only in the case of Brian Kemp and Liz Cheney did he actually spend money to try to defeat those candidates and get his candidates elected this cycle.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:29

    So in light of that, I think it’s all the more remarkable that Kemp was able to survive. But so it was a function of, I would say, basically three things. Number one, Campus and experienced politician, and he did the political work to sew this up early. He went to all of his donors, the sort of power players in the state, locked them down, got them to commit to him early. So by the time Trump’s begging succeeded, and former senator put you out in the race, he couldn’t raise any money.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:59

    Even his own cousin wouldn’t endorse him former governor Sunny Purdue because Brian Kemp had just given him the chance leadership of the state university. So, clever political plays like that, number one, to lock down a lot of Republican support in the state. And then, number two, just, you know, his performance as governor. As I write in the piece, you know, he didn’t suddenly turn into a squish when he got on Trump’s bad side. He never responded to Trump’s attacks.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:25

    He would say, you know, I she would have won the election in twenty twenty, but he didn’t. But other than that, you know, declined to engage with any of Trump’s attacks and continued to pick fights with Biden, with ACA rooms with Liberals and public health experts. So if you’re a Republican who likes to see your Republican elected officials trigger the lids, he could make a case that he’s still your guy. And then thirdly, particularly as it gets further and further in the rearview mirror, The twenty twenty election is just not as much of an obsession to rank and file voters as it is to Trump. And again, I think that that becomes more and more true as more time elapses.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:06

    This monomaniacal obsession that Trump has with the election that he lost and then tried to over turn, yeah, a lot of Republican voters agree with him and think the election was stolen, mistakenly, of course. But increasingly, you know, voters are looking to the future for who is going to govern them and set policy for them. And they concluded that they wanted a little bit more than just being obsessed with twenty twenty.
  • Speaker 1
    0:05:31

    Yeah. I think that’s totally right. All three of those points. That was the thing about Purdue. Right?
  • Speaker 1
    0:05:35

    He basically only ran on that. Right? His only pitch was I think the election was stolen. And I just wasn’t enough to get people pumped about him. And, like, I mean, I just heard it was all over the focus groups.
  • Speaker 1
    0:05:47

    From, like, six months ago, loved how he handled COVID. You know, he took the voting integrity seriously. Like, he had just done so much to neutralize it. And now, these people that we were talking to in this focus group, you know, there are swing voters. They voted for Trump in sixteen.
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:01

    They voted for Biden in twenty. Now they see the fact that Kemp stood up to Trump as a big benefit. Let’s listen. Took
  • Speaker 4
    0:06:11

    up a lot of guts at that moment because it’s easy now looking in the back. But at the time, that drum was beaten hard. To be all the conservative governor and stand up against that. It is pretty phenomenal. To me,
  • Speaker 5
    0:06:26

    again, have camped a lot more credibility before that. I thought he was just a hard line Republican and kind of Trump’s puppet one of Trump’s puppets, I should say, But to me, it made him seem like more of his own that he doesn’t have to always go with the Republican party even though he knew he was gonna get some backlash. And that he’s a free thinker.
  • Speaker 3
    0:06:45

    I
  • Speaker 4
    0:06:46

    really like him. It’s hard to fault him given the constant hurdles we’ve had to jump through his state of Georgia being in the spotlight for the Trump election fraud debacle. He did stand his ground, and I think he’s done a great job. Because there wasn’t even things that Trump wanted Kemp
  • Speaker 6
    0:07:02

    to do that he didn’t do. So Kemp is not just a Republican toy. Like, he really does what’s right for his state. Campaign. He’s trying to help small businesses, trying to regulate the gangs here in Atlanta.
  • Speaker 6
    0:07:18

    Also, he’s working on reducing the cost of medication, the health care. So based on that, they really like it. So
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:26

    I wanna say something about this group because this group this group was interesting in that it had three black women in it, think the oldest person was forty two and the youngest was like twenty four. And something that happens in the focus curves as you’re looking for people who are kinda undecided at this point now that you’re sort of three weeks out from an election. You do get people who aren’t quite as plugged in. And so I would say this was a group of people who are on the younger side, who were not following things super duper closely And their reaction to Kemp was like, yeah, dude’s doing a good job. He’s fine.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:03

    And so the fact that Kemp succeeded in spite of Trump’s wrath, Why do you think? He’s not taken more seriously as a national GOP figure? Like, everyone’s talking about DeSantis. DeSantis was also that’s his big claim to fame as he was very good on COVID according to the voters in the state. Why don’t people think of Kemp as like like somebody who could run-in twenty twenty four and
  • Speaker 3
    0:08:23

    win? It’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:25

    a good question. I would say, you know, he hasn’t really done a lot of work building a national profile. And when I’ve tried to engage him, on some of these questions either about whether he has further ambitions, which most of the people around him tell me that one of the only times they’ve ever heard him curse is is when somebody asks if he has any interest in running for president. But he didn’t tell me no. He just said, I gotta get reelected and that’s all in focus.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:50

    On. That was also his answer to any questions about, you know, whether Trump would or should or run or would have his support in twenty twenty four, whether someone like DeSantis or Glen Youngkin who was just out there campaigning with him should be the twenty four candidate. So that’s part of it is he has been so focused. And like he said, he has successfully conveyed to voters this impression that he is very focused on governing the state of Georgia, which Sounds simple, but it turns out that’s really important to voters. And so the fact that he hasn’t been out there a whole ton, you know, speaking at at CPAC and trying to tell the rest of the country what a great job he’s done in Georgia.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:25

    I think that’s been intentional and I think it’s been good for him politically, particularly since part of the case he’s trying to prosecute against Stacey Abrams now is that she’s sort of too much of a national candidate. He accuses her of, you know, wanting to run for president immediately and and just wanting to sort of boost her brand. So, you know, the fact that he sort of conspicuously hasn’t done a lot of that, I think, helps him make that case.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:48

    Well, let’s talk about Stacey Abrams. As you say, back in twenty eighteen, she was one of the breakout stars of that cycle, but then she lost. And, you know, she didn’t exactly admit that she lost. It wasn’t the same thing as what Trump did, obviously. She didn’t tell anybody to storm the capital over it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:04

    But she did say that the election was rigged. So the people in our focus groups, they were okay with Abrams. But she seemed to have sort of two main problems. As you say, she’s too big of a national star and then just the benefits of incumbency for camp, they just like him. Let’s listen to what they had to say about Stacey Abrams.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:22

    I
  • Speaker 6
    0:10:23

    like Stacy Abrams because she’s, you know, she’s African American. She’s the woman. But I feel like Canvas has been making great decisions. So I’m like, speaking with him. You know, Stacey Abrams is a female of of African American female such as myself.
  • Speaker 6
    0:10:37

    So I always felt I some type of obligation to her. But, really, I don’t have a problem with camp. She does seem like she’s more commercial. But I do like that. It seems like she is for the people, but at the same time, it seems like it’s so commercialized
  • Speaker 4
    0:10:54

    that I’m not sure she would be as effective as Kemp is already. I have seen more for Abrams as far as advertisements. Yeah. I like her too. But I think it’s hard to find fought with with what he’s done.
  • Speaker 4
    0:11:09

    He’s done a good job. I haven’t seen much on advertisement, but I see the proof in the pudding.
  • Speaker 3
    0:11:14

    I gotta tell
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:15

    you, I was surprised. There are three black women in this group, and none of them were gonna vote for Stacey Abrams, like it was a clean sweep across this group for Kemp. Were you surprised to see that? A
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:28

    little bit, but you know, I thought it was also interesting that they all had a pretty positive impression of her. Mhmm. Black White and everybody else in the group, because it’s been a very negative campaign if you’ve been paying attention, which, you know, undecided voters maybe not so much. You know, both of these candidates have been going after each other very hard and the airwaves been absolutely saturated with ads, many of them very negative. And yet, they basically had a positive impression of both candidates and just felt like no reason to switch courses mainstream.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:59

    If you know, Kemp hasn’t done anything to piss people off. But there’s also this sort of fascinating irony. Right? This is now the second Georgia gubernatorial election in a row that has, if not centered on, at least had a very important theme about elections, the election process itself. Whether it was, you know, Stacey Abrams criticizing Kemp’s work as secretary of state, the voter purges that he employed, the actions he took prior to the twenty eighteen election that were very controversial.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:32

    And then as you said, her FUSL to concede based on her view that the election was tainted by those actions. And then, you know, fast forward four years later, once again, we are having an election one of whose significant themes is election integrity and who really won an election that was called for a certain candidate. So so they just seem to be continuing to have this debate in sort of an endless loop about how to run elections. But, you know, for for these voters, number one, they don’t see anything that Kemp’s done to alienate them or make them feel like a change is necessary. His pitch is very much.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:08

    The status quo is good. The status quo is working. Things are going well in Georgia. The economy is good. We don’t need to change.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:15

    And she is obviously trying to see the income and she’s the change candidate. And that has just been a hard case to make when people are pretty happy with him. And they see him as independent because of how he stood up to Trump.
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:28

    It’s a really interesting point about the fact that the elections are, like, central again. But I guess,
  • Speaker 3
    0:13:34

    is it
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:35

    fair to say that, like, the moral high ground in some ways, has been reversed? Because, like, the first time, right, the accusations were all at Kemp because for, like, not running things, cleanly purging, voter rolls, and Stacey Abrams was really to use that to be on offense. But now you’re in a situation where, like, when she didn’t concede the last election, she was doing it to raise a point about voter suppression and those issues, but to have then a couple years later, the poll, like, charge of anti democratic activity at the Republicans is over refusal to concede an election. And again, not the same in terms of at all degree, but, like, Kent was one of the people who stood up and did sign and certify the election in that moment. Well,
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:16

    I do think someone in this focus group mentioned the voter purges. It was one of the things that they knew about Kemp from before, at least it was mentioned in passing. But yeah, I mean, at the very least, it makes it a little bit harder for Abrams to prosecute this case against Kemp that he’s a racist voter suppressor, which is very much part of the case that she wants to make, but it’s harder when he can say that he’s been independent. Look, Abrams and and plenty of other Democrats nationally and in Georgia see the quote unquote election integrity law that Kemp and the Republican legislature passed last year, which was the source of so much controversy. But it’s become a much harder case to make now that he can point to having safeguarded the twenty twenty election when the going really did get tough and he stood up.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:04

    And the other part of it is, you know, with political candidates, it helps to have a consistent image, right, where everything you do sort of feeds into an idea that people have about you, and Kemp is someone who has stood his ground repeatedly, whether you’re talking about on the election standing up to Trump, whether you’re talking about COVID, you know, that’s really the core of his reelection message is Remember how much crap I took for keeping the state open back in twenty twenty. In retrospect, that looks like a good decision to a lot of people. People are grateful that he kept the schools open. People are grateful that he allowed businesses to open earlier than any other state. And that’s another thing he can point to and say, I took a huge amount of criticism for this, but in retrospect, aren’t you glad I stood my ground?
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:51

    And I think it’s similar with the election law where there was this massive controversy and the Baseball All Star game was moved and all of these corporations said they were gonna boycott the state. And once again, Brian Kemp dug in, did not give an inch, and did not go back on the thing he decided to do. So whether you see that as, you know, stubbornness or you know, sort of admirably standing his ground. He has this consistent image of being someone who’s able to take decisive action and then stick with
  • Speaker 3
    0:16:19

    it. Yeah. And
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:19

    you have to sort of be, like, pretty deep, I think, inside of the voting issues to, like, have a strong point of view on that bill. And I think for the average voter, it did more to help him look like he took, you know, election integrity seriously and kinda shore him up with that group. Than it did hurt him with kind of independent voters. I do have a last question about Stacey Abrams though. She was this breakout star.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:45

    But, like, what does she do now? Like, if she loses a second time, she’s clearly got some real political talent. She’s very good, you know, when she’s on TV, and she’s great to listen to. The Democrats want her to be a national figure, but how do you roll into, like, national figurehood after losing twice. Howard
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:06

    Bauchner: Yeah, it’s tough.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:07

    You know, and I think a lot of red state Democrats have this problem. Right? Whether you’re Pete Buttigieg or Beto O’Rourke or one of the castro brothers. Right? You’re a star democrat in a red state.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:19

    Which means it’s very, very, very, very, very difficult to get elected statewide. So what do you do in that situation when they’re sort of isn’t any upward mobility for you politically. And that’s the situation she finds herself in. I don’t think there’s any question that she’s gonna stay on the national stage and continue to be a Democratic star. She’s a very compelling speaker, very compelling candidate.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:43

    She clearly has the power to communicate with voters in a way that a lot of other candidates just do not have. But, you know, she’s she certainly isn’t talking about now. Right? Because she wants to win the governorship. But I have no idea what she’ll do.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:57

    Will she give speeches in my books? Will she try to serve in the administration and, you know, continue up the political ladder that way. I really don’t know, but I think there’s very little chance that she goes away. And, you know, in the interim between HER2 gubernatorial election, which she’s been doing in addition to just being a star or whatever. It is that she has, you know, done a lot of work on voting rights and on these democracy issues that have become so hot and so important right now.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:22

    So I would expect that she would also continue with that work.
  • Speaker 3
    0:18:27

    She gets
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:28

    more credit than anybody for the turnout apparatus. She helped build that that led Georgia to pick up those two senate seats. But I don’t know. Maybe she goes and runs the DNC or something like that. Like, there’s gonna be a lot of energy around her as a strategist, like, as a person who is helping the Democratic Party with its turnout.
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:47

    So, yeah, no way she just fades, but it will be interesting to see what she does next. Or maybe, you know, maybe she’ll shop us all and win, but that is not what it sounded like from this group. So let’s turn to the Senate race. So you may have heard there’s, like, some stuff going on in the Georgia Senate race. Hirschbro Walker, he’s been in hot water, more or less throughout the whole campaign.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:09

    I’ve got, like, a partial list here of his issues. Let’s see. He lied about being a law enforcement officer. He lied about graduating from college. He lied to his campaign and to the public about how many children he has because there were four secret ones who have emerged, trickled out throughout the campaign.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:27

    Let’s see, he used to play Russian roulette He’s repeatedly held a gun to his wife’s head. And, hey, that’s just that’s just a partial list. Where’s he got more? We’ll get into some of the more recent Let’s not forget it. Why are
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:39

    there still apes? That’s my all time favorite. Why are there still apes? Wait. What’s that one?
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:43

    Oh, at one point on the campaign trail this year, he sort of mused, you know, evolution can’t be true because if we came from apes wire, they’re still apes.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:52

    Right. Yeah. And he was like, China’s sending us the bad air and we’re sending them the good air. Like, if you listen to the guy, forget all the individual scandals. This is just not a guy who’s up for being a US senator.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:04

    And yet, this is still a close race. Let’s listen to one of the ads that he’s wanting to kinda try to counter all of the the scandals that have plagued his campaign.
  • Speaker 3
    0:20:14

    Revan when I was
  • Speaker 7
    0:20:16

    running a nasty dishonest campaign, perfect for Washington. Revan doesn’t even tell my full story, my true story. As everyone knows, I had a real battle with mental health. He even wrote a book about it. And by the grace of God, I’ve overcome it.
  • Speaker 7
    0:20:34

    Why not? It’s preaching. He doesn’t tell to treat it. He doesn’t even believe in redemption. I’m Hersha Walker, save my grace, and I prove this message.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:47

    So The most recent story is that he allegedly paid for an abortion, for the mother of one of his other children. She produced a receipt, like an actual, like, bank statements and a get well card that he sent her, which I I didn’t know that’s what you do in that instance. So so the way he’s trying to respond is with this, like, redemption. Like, yes, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Yes, I’ve had all these mental health problems.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:13

    Surely know that about me. That’s baked in. But like, I’ve
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:16

    been redeemed. But but, you know, his explanations for this have been all over the map and not making any sense. Right? First, he said, this is a lie. Then he said it never happened.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:28

    I don’t even know this person. But if it had happened, that would be nothing to be ashamed of. So he’s simultaneously denying it and he’s defending it. And so that made this woman angry enough to come forward again and say, he says he doesn’t even know me. Well, I I’m the mother of one of his children.
  • Speaker 2
    0:21:44

    And I think she claims that he tried to get her to have a second abortion and she refused. And, you know, texts have been produced it’s clear that he knows who this person is. So the redemption narrative, obviously, is something that you put out there for people to grab on to who want to believe. So if you want to believe in Hersha Walker, you want to support him, you want to be able to vote for him and then sleep at night, you can latch onto this explanation and say, well, see, he says, He’s been redeemed and we’ve all been through tough stuff. It’s a little bit problematic that he says that he started getting treated for his what it used to be called multiple personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder, which could cause him to have as many as twelve different, what they’re called, altars, alternate not exactly personalities, but something like that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:35

    And at one point, he woke his then wife up in the middle of the night holding a razor to her neck. But he wrote a book about his struggle with this disorder and and having successfully been treated for it, that book came out in two thousand and eight. The alleged abortion that he paid for was in two thousand nine. Two of the previously unacknowledged children that his campaign found out the hard way that he had fathered and not told them about. Two of those children were also born after the book was published, two thousand and nine and two thousand twelve.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:07

    So whatever it was that he had already sort of achieved redemption for at the point that he wrote the book, I guess the process wasn’t finished.
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:17

    Yeah, you’re totally right on the timeline on this. The other piece of the story is that his son, Christian, who’s a conservative TikTok star, publicly spoke out against his dad. And so everybody knows he’s lying, who wants to know, like who cares about the truth, But for the rest of them who are just looking for an excuse to, like, vote the way they want to vote, that’s what that ad is for. It’s to give them permission. So one of the things though that surprised me about this group is that only about half of them had even heard the abortion thing, like, they hadn’t heard about this scandal.
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:51

    Did that surprise you?
  • Speaker 3
    0:23:53

    Yeah. It did
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:54

    surprise me. That’s the kind of thing that tends to travel. Maybe it’s just timing, you know, maybe they hadn’t had time to hear about it, these types of voters especially. By definition, they’re in this group because they haven’t made up their minds yet. So potentially people are getting, you know, selected out of
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:10

    the group because they have heard and it did change their mind. So even though a lot of them had not heard about the specific news, they did know generally about all the Walker stuff, like, that there was just a bunch of crazy things. Let’s listen to what some of these voters had to say about Walker.
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:26

    That would go. It’s
  • Speaker 5
    0:24:28

    worn out just because of all the controversy and the lying that Hersha Walker. I mean, the lying about stuff that they could prove he says that he graduated college, very easy to prove. He said he was a lawyer, very easy to prove. And he’s so anti abortion and then it just came out that he paid a woman to have an abortion.
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:47

    He’s just to
  • Speaker 5
    0:24:48

    me. He’s a hit record and only and he’s even in the races because he played football. He’s a great football player at University of Georgia. I I did develop for Hersha Walker in the primary just because that’s the only name that I
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:59

    knew. Warnerock walks
  • Speaker 4
    0:25:00

    hand in hand with Biden on the politics and economy. I don’t want more of the same, but Walker is a mess. I would like to think he’s more rehabilitated than the past. There’s a lot crazy. Things been said, but I fill out Walker would vote for a more stable autonomy for George.
  • Speaker 4
    0:25:19

    Just I lean more towards him. But warnock is at face value you know, more well put together for sure. I don’t
  • Speaker 6
    0:25:28

    trust either one of them, but definitely don’t trust Walker. Because this has been way too much slides that’s, like, easily identifiable with him. I just don’t feel good about, like, that he’s deflecting, like, at least all your stuff, or at least take some ownership. It doesn’t seem reasonable that he doesn’t know who she is. That’s the only thing about the signature.
  • Speaker 6
    0:25:46

    It just doesn’t sound like he’s making comments that have in the truth to it. They seem very similar to me. It’s just a
  • Speaker 8
    0:25:56

    matter of who’s gonna dig up to dark fast
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:59

    at once. And
  • Speaker 8
    0:25:59

    right now, we’re seeing more dirt, Hershel Walker, over to
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:03

    Adrienne. So
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:04

    while we have a bunch of poles that have camp up over Abrams by wide margins, we’ve started to see some polls starting to trickle out that were done at least partially after this news came out that shows WarNock up over Walker by a few points. Like,
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:23

    what do
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:23

    you think? You were just down there. Do you get the sense that this news is enough to actually cause people not to vote for Walker? Yes
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:33

    and no. I would say I think Walker was already losing this race before this dropped. He was behind it in the polling average. There were some polls showing him perhaps up, you know, within the margin of error, but he certainly was not running away with it. He certainly was not seeing the kind of separation that Kemp is starting to see.
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:52

    And, you know, when I was out there, which was before these latest abortion revelations, people were already talking about the prevalence in the electorate of tickets splitters about there being Kemp warnock voters who were going to look at these races differently, particularly independents. Like people in this group, right, who look at Kemp and see a good governor who who should keep his job and then look at Walker and CMS and someone who has no business being United States senator. So he’s still gonna get a good portion of the vote. And there’s a long history of that too. Right voters know that what they’re electing someone to do is not to behave impeccably, but but to vote in the Senate, and and they believe that his votes would be cast closer to to what they refer, they’re probably right about that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:27:38

    But I guess what I’m trying to say is, you know, this is not a candidate who was blowing away the electorate before any of this happened. Let’s not forget, Hershel Walker is in this race because of Donald Trump. And a lot of Republicans in Georgia and certainly nationally would have liked to see a candidate with a little bit less baggage, a little bit more of a traditional resume. And now that may be boring to people, right, some stiff who used to be a congressman or whatever, and Walker has the the star power of being basically a god to anybody over a certain age in the state of Georgia. But that’s not enough for most people.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:15

    And it does look like Trump’s calculation that this was someone whose celebrity would just be so powerful with the voters in the state of Georgia that they wouldn’t think about anything else. That’s certainly not the same big case.
  • Speaker 3
    0:28:28

    You brought
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:28

    up to tickets splitting and I just wanna marinate on that for one second. It’s just like a thing that is much talked about that many campaigns, if you’re in a state, you’ve got an unpopular governor or something like people are always hoping for tickets splitting. This doesn’t happen that much. I would say, you know, like, four percent of people in those key races in twenty twenty were decisive and, like, they voted for Biden, and then they voted down ticket for Republicans. Those are the people I was targeting with our Republican voters against Trump stuff, but it’s like a pretty small group of people.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:00

    But this year, if I had to say twenty twenty two was the year of something, I would say it’s the year of the tickets splitter. Like, we’ll see whether or not this bears out, but I can see a lot of divine Ryan voters in Ohio. Mhmm. I can actually see a bunch of lake Kelly voters in Arizona, which is actually weird to me, but we’ve seen them in the focus groups. You can see how it happens.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:21

    People find Kerry Lake to be charismatic. She’s in their living room for a long time as a newscaster, but they don’t like Blake Masters. They think he’s a weird robot, and they’re fine with Mark Kelly. They like him fine. Oh, the the Shapiro Oz voters.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:35

    Mhmm. We’ve seen a lot of those. I did the pod last week on Pennsylvania with Holly Otterbine. And, you know, about half the group was going on, and they were all going Shapiro. And so this ticket splitting seems very real, although I think if Kemp’s lead is quite large, you need like a lot of people to split their ticket in Georgia.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:54

    But you think that’s possible.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:56

    Yeah. It’s definitely well, first of all, anything’s possible. Sure. Yeah. But great point.
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:00

    Great point. No. I I I do think it’s possible. I think For all the reasons we’ve been talking about, this group that we watched was not a bunch of political junkies, not people who were super tuned in. I think part of the reason that ticket splitting has declined is just because people look at to highly ideological and sort of consolidated national parties.
  • Speaker 2
    0:30:25

    And the partisanship is such a part of people’s identities nowadays. But then in these kinds of contests, particularly, I think when you’re talking about governing a state versus governing the country, people do see a distinction there in a lot of cases. But, you know, if a group of people who’ve managed to still be undecided in mid October, one of the highest profile elections in the country, These are not people who are super tuned in, and yet in their minds, there is a distinction between the governor’s race and the candidate there and the senate race and the candidates there. So I wouldn’t be surprised at all. And the other thing I would add about that is Georgia is a state that’s really influx political.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:05

    Mhmm. Right? And I think it’s a little bit similar to I live in Virginia. There there’s a state that was supposed to be going solid blue until last November when Republicans ran away with it. And so in a state like this, you’re dealing with an electorate that’s seen a lot of things go upside down recently.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:23

    Right? They’ve seen the state change hands. They’ve seen the sort of political complexion of the state and the perception of the state change. They’re seeing these massive highly mobilized campaigns, which you don’t get when you’re a red state. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:36

    So the level of voter engagement has also changed. It’s a growing state. So the population itself has been changing, has been influx. Obviously, stay safe, Britain’s still a lot to register and sign up new voters and change the shape of the electorate that way. It’s not a state that is sort of baked into old habits and sees no reason to change.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:53

    Yeah, totally. And,
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:54

    like, I wanna talk about warmoc here. Because this group, they clearly like Kemp, but they all also voted, like, in the Republican primary. Like, they still mostly think of themselves, I guess, as Republicans, and they all voted for Donald Trump the first time. So warm back is like climbing a little bit uphill to win over voters like this. But he’s got this peanut theme to add that he put out recently that’s like aimed squarely at these types of voters and solicit.
  • Speaker 9
    0:32:19

    Every year, seven hundred and seventy two billion of these are grown in Georgia. Best
  • Speaker 10
    0:32:25

    nuts. That’s
  • Speaker 9
    0:32:26

    over half of America’s been a very nuts. So when foreign countries tried to block us from selling our
  • Speaker 10
    0:32:32

    fraud, we needed someone to buy back That’s why I partnered with a Republican senator from Alabama to eliminate the regulations and stand up for farmers. I’m Raphael Warmack and I
  • Speaker 11
    0:32:43

    approve this message because I’ll do anything if it deems healthy Georgia. Now that’s really new.
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:50

    I don’t even
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:51

    know if I quite understand that, but he is running in a red state and he is saying, I’m here for farmers and I like Alabama. Like, who do you think are the sort of camp warnock type voters? Like, are they these college educated suburban voters? That ad seems directed at, like, farmers and almost more sort of rural Georgians. Like, who do you think are the Camp Barnock
  • Speaker 3
    0:33:13

    voters? I
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:14

    think that ad is directed at the kind of swing voters that you’re envisioning. It’s college educated, suburban voters. Many of them white, but the suburbs are are diversifying in Atlanta. That has very diverse suburbs. But, you know, I think that ad is less about the actual sort of banjo plucking peanut truckers voting for warmock and more about getting white people frankly to see him as a candidate that it’s okay to support.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:40

    You know, politics in the deep south is so heavily racialized, you know, in a lot of deep south states like Alabama,
  • Speaker 3
    0:33:50

    more
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:50

    or less every black voters’ Democrat, and every white voters are a public again, and it’s a very sharp split. So I think, you know, Warren did this really successfully in his first campaign two years ago. Hard to believe it’s only been two years. But but, you know, he had the ad with the puppies where he’s, you know, wearing a vest and convincing people that he’s literally a candidate who likes puppies and therefore you shouldn’t believe all the nasty stuff people are saying about him. And I thought it was interesting in this focus group how difficult it was to break through voters universal cynicism.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:24

    Right? They look at the whole political process as corrupt and dirty. Warren has got a little bit of baggage. Walkers got a lot, but they look at that and say, well, both of these guys are liars. I don’t know who to believe.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:34

    And this was something that Trump really was able to turn to his advantage. Right? There’s always a what about or there’s always a cloud scandal over everyone. So how can you say that anyone is particularly better or worse? But, you know, for all of the scandals, that Walker has endured, it still took a lot to breakthrough to these people.
  • Speaker 2
    0:34:52

    Howard Bauchner: Yeah, and
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:53

    I’ll just note, to your point about the the Alabama senator he’s talking about is Tommy Tuberville, who was just on stage last weekend,
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:03

    when
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:03

    you say that Democrats want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. So I guess he will work with anybody because I think that was clear what Tubberville was trying to say there. So let’s hear what the just the groups because to your point in terms of how they were thinking about worn out. Let’s listen.
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:21

    One thing that I
  • Speaker 5
    0:35:22

    do like that he does is he’s not a strict Democrat. He does go across the party lines a lot if he believes in the cause. And I think that’s a very positive quality of a politician. Etiquette wise, he’s very approachable, but I don’t know as far as rope meeting the road that he
  • Speaker 4
    0:35:40

    goes across all too much. I’m just feeling like he’s followed suit with the Democrat agenda through them through home buying and other things. But he has done a good job going out to Georgia businesses and I’ve seen some press releases about him visiting and taking the time out to look into specific needs in certain industries and stuff. And in that case, I would say he’s done a
  • Speaker 1
    0:36:04

    great job. I feel
  • Speaker 8
    0:36:05

    like, Rafael, he just he’s done well. And I feel like he holds himself pretty well and he’s good with debates. You know, but I also feel like that there’s always, like, some sort of trap. Right? That everyone’s kinda getting caught in between.
  • Speaker 8
    0:36:20

    So I don’t know. I I am more always like like leaning towards worn out, but I also did, you know, vote
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:30

    for Trump. You know, the
  • Speaker 1
    0:36:32

    trick for people like warmock and also like Mark Kelly in Arizona, right, is they’re trying to distance themselves from national like, it’s not just getting white people to vote for you. It’s also getting Republicans to vote for you when they’re really mad at democrats right now. But, like, people in the group had the sense that he bucked the national party. And I think it’s it’s obviously because of ads, like, the peanut ad, where he’s, like, specifically touting his ability to work with Republicans, but they just also kinda see him as an independent guy. Did you get that sense?
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:03

    That people kinda viewed him? Not as just like a Joe Biden Democrat. It’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:09

    clear from this group that there are a lot of voters who believe that and that’s obviously an important thing And, you know, voters care so much about a politician’s tone and demeanor. It matters what they’re saying, but voters also are so perceptive about, like, do you seem nice? Right? Do you present yourself well? When you speak, do you seem mad about everything?
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:33

    Or are you sort of saying it with a smile? And so, yeah, I’ve covered so many politicians over the years whose opponents were trying to make the case that they were evil and extreme and had all these, like, crazy positions. But if the guys in an ad with some puppies and speaks with a smile, voters just will not believe it. So that’s a big part of it too is creating this image with people that you’re a nice guy. And that goes a long way.
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:00

    Howard Bauchner: So one of the other things that was clear in this group is people seem to
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:05

    be aware of, like, walker’s messy personal history and some of the really horrible things in this past. But they also some of them knew that Warnecke had his own incident or his wife had alleged that he’d run over her foot in the driveway while they were having an argument. I think he was never charged with anything. In fact, the first responders found no evidence of injury on his wife’s foot, but there is this real attempt to sort of raise that equivalence as a kind of what about? Like, you know, oh, these guys are the same.
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:37

    They both have these allegations from wives. Listen.
  • Speaker 4
    0:38:43

    But the question is, Wornock, he’s got a lot more credibility. Wade presents itself right now than Walker. I think Walker’s values will be more in line with what we need. So there’s the confliction there. But My question I keep asking is Walker rehabilitated really with all the stories and a lot, you know, in that regard, we’re not has domestic violence charged in the past, but how long ago was this decades ago or was this six months ago?
  • Speaker 4
    0:39:09

    I mean,
  • Speaker 6
    0:39:10

    that’s horrible that they have that background, honestly. So just go based on that
  • Speaker 3
    0:39:16

    agenda with
  • Speaker 6
    0:39:17

    Walker that just keeps coming up with him. And like I said, he’s not showing any type of redemption. At least Walmart shows some type of redemption. I’m not trying to be the judge here, but it’s more of a feeling that I get. Even though
  • Speaker 5
    0:39:33

    they both have domestic violence
  • Speaker 3
    0:39:36

    charges, I think there’s
  • Speaker 5
    0:39:36

    severity to there’s different levels of them. And when you point a gun at someone’s head and and hold it there, and and you do it multiple times, I think that’s a little different than maybe, like, pushing somebody off, you were restraining him so another level of
  • Speaker 3
    0:39:56

    violence. Yeah. I mean,
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:57

    I guess, they seem to understand or have a sense that, like, okay, there’s one allegation against Warrnock that’s, like, kinda muddy and doesn’t
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:04

    sound great,
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:04

    but, like, there’s an avalanche of evidence against Walker. But, like, obviously, the Republicans are trying to what about. They’re trying to make it, like, equivalent so that people say, you know, they’re both kind of scumbags. So I’m just gonna vote for the person who shares my political sensibilities. So do you think that they’ll be effective at mounting the waters here?
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:23

    Or is the accumulation of evidence against Walker just titanic?
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:29

    Well, so a
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:30

    couple of things. I think, like you said, it is striking that most of these voters did have a sense of proportion about the two candidates. Like, it wasn’t an equivalence for them. For the most part, you did have that one woman saying, they’re both damaged, so I’m just gonna vote based on their agenda because I sort of can’t distinguish who’s worse behavior wise. But the other thing it tells me is we’ve seen Barnock has tried to stay out of the walker scandals He hasn’t done ads about them.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:58

    He has not engaged with the issue on the campaign trail when he’s been asked about it. And I get that, you know, on the one hand, voters seat is unseemly if you lean heavily into something like that when your opponent has a scandal. But on the other hand, you don’t have a lot of people making the connection between walker’s alleged behavior and his fitness to be a senator or his truthfulness. Right? Had some voters there connecting the dots saying he just lies so much.
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:28

    I don’t feel like he can trust him. That’s not a message that we’ve really heard from warn off or the warn off campaign to draw a connection and say it’s not just this guy has a troubled history, but it’s that this is someone who you can’t believe what comes out of his mouth. So even if you feel like he shares your values, are you going to trust what he’s doing up there in the Senate?
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:49

    Right. Yep. So in this group, out of the eight people, all of whom we’re gonna vote for camp, seven, we’re gonna go
  • Speaker 3
    0:41:58

    warnock, including
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:59

    the woman whose voice we heard talking about while they’re both bad. From a from a group perspective, like, that’s all but one are saying they’re gonna be Kemp, warlock voters. But the most interesting part to me was the guy who from the beginning was gonna go walker like, and had a really specific reason. We’ve heard his clips through much of the show where he’s talking about how look, I just think Walker is gonna vote more in line on the economy for what I want. And so I know he’s a mess, and I know it’s terrible, but I’m gonna vote for Walker.
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:32

    BUT BY THE END AFTER HAVING TALKED ABOUT IT FOR ninety MINUTES, HERE’S WHAT HE SAID AT THE END.
  • Speaker 3
    0:42:38

    Adrienne: AMEA, AFTER
  • Speaker 4
    0:42:39

    TALKING, I WOULD SAID WALL beginning, but you don’t have to
  • Speaker 3
    0:42:42

    think about it.
  • Speaker 4
    0:42:43

    I think I don’t know Walker’s a wildcard. I might go more towards the warn op just because this is surprising me, but he’s done
  • Speaker 3
    0:42:52

    okay. He
  • Speaker 4
    0:42:53

    hasn’t what I call, would politics crash the car? That’s my role. Don’t crash the car. And he’s done a good job. And I think that if he stayed the road in path, it won’t be the worst thing ever.
  • Speaker 4
    0:43:06

    Right? Walker. I like the way I think he’s gonna boat, but he might crash the car. Like, very early on, he might just run that thing off a cliff. I don’t know.
  • Speaker 3
    0:43:16

    I thought that guy
  • Speaker 1
    0:43:18

    was great just because he really did. He had a theory of the case coming in, which is Walker
  • Speaker 3
    0:43:22

    because he’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:43:23

    gonna vote the way I like. And by the end, he was just like, I don’t know. This guy is a disaster. And he knew all of that in the beginning. It was just after thinking about it for a little bit.
  • Speaker 1
    0:43:30

    And it seemed to me like, this is the guy you gotta get. The guy who sort of if he hasn’t been thinking about it too much, it’s like, well, I just want the guy’s gonna vote like me, but that thought about it for a minute. And actually, this guy can’t go into the senate. That’s crazy. This was also a guy who was very down on Biden and the
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:46

    democrats. Right? This was someone who absolutely did believe that Biden had crashed the car felt that he voted for Biden to get rid of Trump, but it had just been a disaster. I think he was one of the ones who said he voted for Trump again. So this is not someone who’s favorably disposed to the democrats.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:01

    And like you’re saying, you can really just hear him laying out the factors in how cross pressured he is, where on the one hand he understands that He wants a senator who’s going to push back on the Biden agenda. He wants to put someone in Washington who’s going to say to Biden and the democrats, no stop. You’re hurting us. But then as he thought about it more and more, these personal considerations and the actual quality of the candidates at issue and not for nothing, the fact that Barnock hadn’t done anything to
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:32

    lose his support, that became more and more important to him. Yeah. That was the part that to me really stood out, which was how mad he was it Biden, but he was like, but you know, we’re not doing fine — Mhmm. — which I would say in this group of low information voters, and I don’t mean more information negatively. I just mean people who do not live in brief politics, and they’re not following it super closely.
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:53

    And I view that as a perfect moral truth.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:56

    A lot
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:57

    healthy
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:58

    voters who have better things to do than
  • Speaker 3
    0:45:00

    read about athletes
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:01

    all the time.
  • Speaker 3
    0:45:01

    As soon
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:02

    as I say, load formation voters, people think of being me. I’m like, no, I have a healthy regard. For for all information voters, good for them for our living lives and not doing what we do. But but like, this is where the benefit of incumbency really plays is when people are like, yeah, but this guy’s fine. Why do I I don’t need to replace this guy, especially because that’s the hurdle for Walker is that he has to say there’s a great reason to replace this guy with me.
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:27

    And so when Walker is so scandal plagued, for guys like this, you say, I don’t know, Warnerox did fine. I think that makes the bar higher, you know, you gotta give them a real reason to change. And I think that could be the saving
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:38

    grace there. This just occurred to me, but you’re totally right. I think part of the case that a non Walker Republican candidate could make against someone like warnock is, look, this guy’s only been in politics for two years. He’s sort of an accidental senator depending on how you figure. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:55

    There was an opportunity to to make the case against him as as an experienced or or not knowing what he’s doing or or something like that. But the fact that Walker is so much more politically inexperienced slash less qualified makes makes it able for him to really make that case against Mark that I think otherwise might have been persuasive to some people. So these are,
  • Speaker 1
    0:46:16

    again, Trump sixteen, Biden twenty twenty, But we asked them if you had to vote again, they run head to head in twenty four, how would people vote? And I gotta tell you this is happening in group after group. With these swing voters. It’s just a real red flag. I’ve I’ve been saying it on on this pod and others for a while in this group it was four people for Trump.
  • Speaker 1
    0:46:38

    Two people for Biden and two people who refuse to answer. And that is a problem for Democrats and people like me. There’s real backsliding because it didn’t used to happen. I I mean, I’ve been asking swing voters about Biden for forever and the one thing I could sort of rely on is is that as mad as they were a Biden, they still didn’t regret their vote. Like, that was just something that I saw, you know, for the first year and change.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:05

    No. People are like, no. No. No. I’m still glad it’s fine.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:07

    And I I wouldn’t wanna deal with Trump again. Not not anymore. Yeah.
  • Speaker 3
    0:47:12

    Yeah, it’s interesting.
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:12

    I mean, it didn’t surprise me too much. I’ve I’ve certainly encountered these kinds of attitudes in the wild. As you said, increasingly, now versus, like, a year ago when sort of the shock of the Trump era was still fresh to people. But Democrats and the Biden campaign, if there ends up being one, need to understand that this is how people feel. I think a lot of democrats sort of look at the polls and see the president’s approval rating and rationalize it in some way, oh, people don’t really dislike him.
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:43

    Right? Maybe people are disappointed or apathetic or whatever else, but surely no one out there is really this down on good old Joe Biden. People are very unhappy. And and the main source of their unhappiness was feeling of not being in control. They felt like they elected him to restore a sense of order to the world.
  • Speaker 2
    0:48:01

    And yet, things just kept being screwy and getting worse. And they’re not just talking about where their four zero one is headed, they’re talking about the feeling of chaos that’s out there. They don’t feel like by fix that. So, yeah, it is a big red flag. When and if this president decides to run for office again, he’s really gonna have to come to terms with the fact that for a lot of voters, no matter what he does now, he didn’t fix the one thing he was elected to fix.
  • Speaker 2
    0:48:29

    The other thing I would say is This tells you why so many Republicans are happy that Trump’s not on Twitter anymore because — Yeah. — people have really I think the longer time goes on, the more distance people get from that feeling of sort of just like white knuckle constant political chaos. Which people hated so much about Trump, not everyone, but many people disliked about the Trump era, they don’t want that feeling of chaos back and the fact that Trump is sort of out of sight, out of mind for the most part makes it easier for them to remember the good parts and not the
  • Speaker 3
    0:49:06

    bad parts. When
  • Speaker 1
    0:49:07

    I see this happen in the groups, I do have to remember that’s because Trump is not, like, blaring in their ears right now. Like, I wonder how much it would hold up. If Trump was sort of back center stage for them. But you can’t ignore the fact that a lot of people are in that place. But the other interesting thing to me about it is just the fact that normally being that down on the current president would really translate into just total disaster for that president’s party, and people really do seem to be disaggregating Biden from the individual candidates on the Democratic side, which is just a very unusual phenomenon.
  • Speaker 1
    0:49:41

    In politics. So, Mollie Ball, thank you so much for being here and talking about Georgia with us. We really appreciate all your reporting and what you brought to this conversation. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of The Focus Group. We will see you again next week we are three weeks out from the election.
  • Speaker 1
    0:50:00

    We got a few more excellent episodes. Don’t forget to go, leave a comment, or a rating on iTunes, and we will catch you next week. Bye.
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