RJC and JDCA in a last-ditch effort to win Jewish vote in Georgia
“With Joe Biden winning Georgia by just over 12,000 votes, we knew that the Jewish vote played a critical role as part of the coalition that ensured his victory."
By OMRI NAHMIASDemocratic US Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock look on as they appear together at a campaign rally ahead of US Senate runoff elections in Augusta, Georgia, US, January 4, 2021.(photo credit: REUTERS/MIKE SEGAR)
WASHINGTON – Georgia is headed to a double runoff on Tuesday that will determine which Party is effectively controlling the US Senate, after no candidate crossed the 50% threshold on November 3. And with Republicans holding 50 seats and Democrats currently holding 48, the race outcomes could be dramatic.If Democrats win both seats, there will be a tie, and Kamala Harris, as vice president-elect, could cast a tie-breaking vote. If Republicans win at least one of the two races, they would secure a majority in the chamber during Joe Biden’s first two years in office, blocking many items on his legislative agenda.Incumbent Kelly Loeffler (R) is facing Reverend Raphael Warnock in one race, and incumbent David Perdue (R) is facing Jon Ossoff in the other.Given the small margins between the candidates, the Jewish vote in Georgia, estimated at around 100,000 voters, could have an impact. Both the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) are spending the final stretch of the elections in “get-out-the-vote” efforts, phone banking and digital ads.“We’ve been conducting extensive grassroots outreach to targeted Jewish communities in the key Atlanta suburbs of Fulton and DeKalb counties,” RJC political director Sam Markstein told The Jerusalem Post.The group targeted more than 100,000 Jewish voters in those key counties by sending text messages, making phone calls and knocking on doors, he said.“We had people on the ground in Georgia canvassing neighborhoods for days,” Markstein said. “We’ve knocked on thousands of doors. We’ve made hundreds of thousands of phone calls and text messages. And we’ve also been conducting really aggressive and, frankly, unprecedented fundraising for the campaigns through the RJC PAC.”“In the span of a couple weeks, RJC PAC raised close to $700,000 for the campaigns,” he said. “We’ve been doing a lot of grassroots outreach, and we feel really confident in both Sen. Perdue’s and Sen. Loeffler’s chances on Tuesday.”“We’ve been following and tracking on a hyper-targeted basis who’s already voted,” Markstein said. “So we are specifically targeting the Jewish voters that we know, if they turn out to vote, will vote Republican, will vote for Perdue and Loeffler, but have not voted yet, and all we have to do is turn them out. Those are the people that we’re going to be heavily focusing on in the next two days.”JDCA CEO Halie Soifer told the Post she was “even more confident than I was a few days ago that it is not only possible but likely that the Democrats are going to win both races and with it control of the Senate.”
“In the past 24 hours, we have seen the corruption and illegality of President [Donald] Trump, and this is not something that Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are walking away from,” Soifer said. “In fact, they have aligned themselves with Trump.”“After the November election, it was clear to us that the Jewish vote was going to be absolutely critical in determining the outcome of these runoff elections,” she said. “With Joe Biden winning Georgia by just over 12,000 votes, we knew that the Jewish vote played a critical role as part of the coalition that ensured his victory.“We have been targeting 86,000 Jewish voters in Georgia for the past few weeks, using text messages, phone banking, targeted digital advertising to their devices, print ads and direct mail. And on top of that, we’ve had an aggressive ad campaign we made four video ads in support of Warnock and Ossoff and had numerous community conversations about the race, including with the candidates themselves.”JDCA is hosting high-level phone banks with Jewish celebrities daily, Soifer said.“Our files are updated every day to indicate who’s already voted, so we can be very targeted in our phone banking,” she said. “We are only calling those who have not yet voted, so we will know in advance of Tuesday who has already early voted, and we’ll take them off our list and [identify] who still needs to get to the polls, and we will call them.”“If there is one more voter for Ossoff and Warnock than for Loeffler and Perdue, one more in each of those races, and they are declared the victor, I will be happy because we will control the Senate, and that’s all that matters,” Soifer said.
