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Ossoff Widens Lead Over Perdue, Senate Control On The Line; Warnock Wins, Ossoff Leads As Dems Eye Senate Majority; Soon: Congress To Count Electoral Votes Confirming Biden Win. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired January 06, 2021 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Meanwhile, CNN can project the Democrat Raphael Warnock will defeat Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler. He will become the first black senator to represent Georgia. Warnock is ahead in that race at this hour by 53,430 votes.

So the balance of power in the United States senate is now within reach for Democrats. They are just one seat away from winning back the majority in the senate, which, of course, would change the course of Joe Biden's presidency, John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: And it means if Jon Ossoff wins this race, we are watching so closely, again Democrats will control the senate. I want you to look at the margins right now.

Ossoff leading by 0.4 percent. Why is that so important? Because if it gets to 0.5 percent or higher, it's outside the range where David Perdue can request a recount. And there is reason to think, there is reason that the Ossoff campaign this morning thinks that that lead will grow, because of where the outstanding vote in Georgia still is.

Fulton County, Metro Atlanta, 4,000 votes at least left to count. You can see Jon Ossoff is leading with 71 percent there, so his lead will expand.

Gwinnett County, over here he has got about 60 percent of the vote. There is about 4,800 votes left to count there. You go down to Chatham County where Savannah is. You can see that he is getting about 60 percent of the vote. 3,000 votes still to count there. There is a smattering of votes from elsewhere around the state, but these are the biggest groups. And if Ossoff continues to win at the percentage he is, you can expect his lead to grow, not shrink.

Let's talk about why Raphael Warnock? And we have called that race already, why Raphael Warnock was able to win and why Jon Ossoff was able to lead. Take the Joe Biden presidential win in November as your base line. He won by 11,000 votes, that is the bare minimum that a Democrat needs to win there.

Well, how did Raphael Warnock do compared to Joe Biden? Every state that's colored in, either blue or red here is a county - every county, I should say, colored in is a county where Raphael Warnock outperformed Joe Biden.

So the point is, Warnock's doing well almost everywhere. Better than Biden almost everywhere. And the same is true for Jon Ossoff.

I want to talk about President Trump for a second here. We have an indication, an illustration of maybe the effect that Trump had are on this race and on this state.

I'll go back to here. The county that he visited, just before the election, was Whitfield County. You can see, Raphael Warnock got 29 percent of the vote there. Kelly Loeffler got 71 percent.

You'll be like, oh, Donald Trump visited. Kelly Loeffler got 71 percent. That's great. Well, not really. It's not that much different than what Joe Biden and Donald Trump did there in the presidential election. Biden got 29 percent, Raphael Warnock got 29 percent there. So Trump's visit didn't really do anything to change the election results there.

Republicans were not able to turn out the numbers that they were hoping and counting on. And it seems, if anything, the activities of Donald Trump over the last two months probably depressed the Republican vote in the state. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, John. We know you'll be counting all morning. Thank you very much. So as John just said, thousands of votes still being counted, including in Georgia's largest county.

CNN's Ryan Young is live in DeKalb County with more. So what's happening there, Ryan?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Alisyn. Look, we talked to voters yesterday, who told us how they were tired of all the negative ads. We saw the counting going on all through the night. And in fact, last night they stopped around 4:00 in the morning. We're told they are going to start counting again around 10:30. Those workers looked exhausted as they left this building early this morning.

And on top of that, we found out there was one little thing that was sort of a hiccup, which was there was a memory card that had an issue, so they started having the hand count. So that sort of slowed things down. They believe they'll have an update around 4:00 with another dump of information here.

But some of the campaigns, obviously, started reacting late last night with some of this information. Jon Ossoff's campaign basically said, when all the votes are counted, we fully expect that Jon Ossoff will have won this election to represent Georgia in the United States senate.

Now, David Perdue's campaign, let's not forget he was in quarantine because of COVID-19. He says they will mobilize every available resource and exhaust every legal resource so that you can see what that campaign is sort of pointing toward.

And then you had Kelly Loeffler, who put out a statement, who basically says, she believes there is still a path to victory. But the person who put out a video statement, I'm sure we'll see more of these today, is Raphael Warnock, the man who probably will be first black man ever to be a senator from the state of Georgia.

In fact, let's take a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAPHAEL WARNOCK, (D) GEORGIA SENATOR-ELECT: And so to everyone out there struggling today, whether you voted for me or not, know this, I hear you, I see you. And every day, I'm in the United States senate, I will fight for you. I will fight for your family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:05:00]

YOUNG: Yes. We saw a real synergy between the two campaigns of Ossoff and Warnock. I saw them even handing out food during thanksgiving and Christmas to families in need. There's been a lot of talk about getting COVID-19 relief out to some of the families who have been hard hit in this area.

Let's not forget about that surge when it comes to COVID-19. A lot of people wearing masks, people wanted to get out to vote early. We saw more than 3 million people get out to vote and that was one of the things that people said that was a great momentum pusher in this state.

Beyond that, let's not forget, the more than $500 million spent on some of these ads. I've talked about this over and over again. It's just the fact that they were so negative at some point and you couldn't escape them. People were ready for that part to end, but you can hear the voice of Georgia, as obviously people turned out to vote. John?

BERMAN: All right, Ryan. Thanks so much for being there for us. Please keep us posted. We are expecting more votes to come in. I keep looking over at the wall to see if they're coming in yet. But keep us posted if you hear anything about when those votes will be released.

Joining us now, CNN's senior political reporter, Nia-Malika Henderson; Tim Alberta, he is the chief political correspondent at Politico; and LaTosha Brown, she is the co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund.

And I want to start with you, LaTosha, because overnight we heard from a lot of people, about both the negative forces, and that would be Donald Trump, and the positive forces that have helped put Democrats in the position they're in right now; poised to take the U.S. senate, poised to pick up these two seats in Georgia.

And of those positive forces, people pointed specifically to you and the efforts that you and others made to turn out and register the black vote in Georgia. We've seen in the county-by-county comparisons that counties with lot of African-Americans over performed for the Democrats, over performed in the early vote. Why? LATOSHA BROWN, CO-FOUNDER, BLACK VOTERS MATTER FUND: Because black voters matter. We really do matter. I am - we work really, really hard. I'm one-half of the team actually, I'm - I'm co-founded with Cliff Albright, and he has been as diligent and worked as hard. And we've said this, that we had a particular strategy. One that we knew that the strategy that you couldn't just focus on Metro Atlanta, but that you also had to get down in those black belt counties.

And when you saw the numbers come in last night, you saw this some of the edge in the Republican votes come off because of black voters who live, not only in Metro Atlanta, but also in those rural areas. In addition to that, we also knew that it was really important (inaudible) to engage people around the issues. And not just necessarily, the candidates were really important, but also to make sure that people felt a sense of their own power and how significant this race would be, not just for the nation but for the people of Georgia.

CAMEROTA: And so LaTosha, when you woke up this morning and saw what's happening, where Jon Ossoff is now something like 16,430 votes ahead. What is your feeling?

BROWN: What do you mean wake up? You're assuming that I went to sleep. It has been a long night for all of us. I think I'm going to go nap for a little bit. But I'm very hopeful, but I felt it, I've been feeling it, we've been saying it. There are those of us who are organizers that have been doing this work for a while that are saying that the south is red until it ain't. That the possibility and the potential of organizing voters, that part of what we've seen in the south has been very, very deeply underinvested.

And so this morning, when I woke up from my short nap, I was checking the numbers and I certainly feel like that we're going to be victorious. I believe that black voters have made their mark, but there are other voters in the state of Georgia who are quite frankly tired of the negative ads, who are quite frankly tired of Trump. And we know that the Republicans have been complicit in what he has done.

We've been impacted greatly by COVID-19. We've been impacted greatly about how economically this impacted us in this state. And we wanted to see real leadership, we wanted to see someone who is going to go to D.C. and fight for us.

BERMAN: All right. We just learned, I should tell you all, that Jon Ossoff will speak at 8:00 a.m., that's about 52 minutes from now. I assume he is going to come out and declare some kind of victory, even though the race has not been yet called for him, but he is ahead. The campaign expects to grow that lead and I'm sure he wants to get out there as soon as possible to put a face behind that lead.

Tim Alberta, we talked about the positive forces that Democrats see, LaTosha and others turning out the votes that they need, and then there was the Donald Trump factor. And Axios wrote it this morning, your fine political news organization wrote it this morning, called it an implosion. The Trump implosion in Georgia. Explain. TIM ALBERTA, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: Well, John, it turns out that when you spend a couple of months telling voters that their votes aren't going to be counted, that the process is rigged against them, that there is really no use in participating in democracy anyway, turns out some of them listen.

[07:10:00]

ALBERTA: And it turns out that it hurts your party, and ultimately there can be any number of conclusions drawn from these results down in Georgia and you can get down to a granular level looking at particular counties. But the macro takeaway from any intellectually honest individual on either side of the aisle here is that Donald Trump just sabotaged his own party, he sabotaged his party's senate majority, he sabotaged his party in countless ways moving forward. And ultimately, there is no way to spin what happened last night away from the president's doorstep.

It's quite clear, even to the president's own allies, who, of course, will not say this on the record yet. I'm sure that they will find their courage in a month or two, and some of them will start to speak to this publicly. But everyone agrees, the consensus here is universal, that these losses are on the president, that this is on him.

And the real question is how does the party recalibrate from here and move forward? There are an awful lot of people, John, who are going to look at what happened last night and they are going to say, you know what, actually, the reason the Republican electorate didn't max out, didn't really juice its margin is because Trump wasn't on the ballot.

And what we've seen in the last few months is proof positive that actually we only perform well with Trump on the ballot and they are going to argue that that makes the case all the more emphatic that they need him to run again in 2024 of course. They have a lot of other people in the party drawing the exact opposite conclusion that the party ceiling is just too low as we saw with these results in Georgia last night.

So the fun is just getting started, even as Donald Trump exits stage left in a couple weeks here. There is going to be dueling autopsies inside the Republican Party on what comes next.

CAMEROTA: Nia-Malika, any way you slice it, it was a monumental night. Even as we await the word on what will happen with Jon Ossoff. Even if he doesn't win, still reverend Raphael Warnock, first black senator from Georgia being sent to Washington. And the historic turnout for a runoff race, 4.4 million people voted in this race, which is more than the 2016 presidential race. And so what's the big picture here as you see it?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER, CNN: This was a long time coming and all the credit really goes to those organizers who did look at Georgia as at most a purple state, at least a purple state. And looking at those are black voters there who, Republicans, actively tried to suppress the vote in those African-American communities. And you saw organizers say, ok, we will fight that in the courts, but

we'll also try and organize these folks. And you saw obviously what LaTosha Brown said there. And that ultimately ended up working. You saw black voters max out in many of these counties and you saw a holistic view of what African-Americans are. Not only are they in the cities, but they are also in some of these rural counties as well.

It also goes to, I think, the poor strategy that Democrats have had more broadly in these southern states, sort of, the strategy over the last decade or so has been, just put Obama on the ticket, put Obama on the radio, put Obama in some of these states. And that's enough to draw out African-American voters. And so now you see real organizers on the ground there.

And I think you also saw from the Republican Party, a terrible candidate in Kelly Loeffler, somebody who was quite lazy in terms of how she ran. She essentially thought, I can run against Raphael Warnock, who is a minister, the pastor of one of the most legendary churches in all of America. She thought she could run against him as a scary black man, a radical socialist, and cling to Donald Trump and that would be enough.

She wasn't offering voters much of anything beyond that. And we saw that backfire terribly and really awaken the black church, right? One of the most powerful organizing institutions this country has ever seen. If you think about their primary involvement, their primary organizing strategy around the civil rights movement. So that's what you see happen.

I think the question is, can you replicate this in other southern states across the country? Places like South Carolina, places like Mississippi, where the black vote also 20, 30 percent or so, and that will be the question for Democrats, but they've got some good news here with what happened in Georgia, sun-belt state, and also what happened in Arizona.

And listen, Republicans made a decision. It was to suppress the black vote, ignore other diverse voters that are in those states, and they really thought they could win just on the white vote. But again, you see the white vote declining in many of these states. Latinos moving in, API individuals as well, and then the black voters as well.

So this was a long time coming for Democrats and we'll see what's next. And really, obviously, good news for Joe Biden.

[07:15:00]

BERMAN: It's good news for Joe Biden, it's good news for the Democratic Party. Thank you all for being with us.

We just got word that we are going to be joined by the new senator- elect from the state of Georgia, reverend Raphael Warnock. We will discuss his historic win.

And as we said, if Jon Ossoff manages to pull out the race - the other senate race there, Democrats will control both chambers of congress. What does that mean for president-elect Joe Biden? What does it mean for the pending cabinet nominations? What does it mean for the Supreme Court? One of the senators who was closest to the president-elect joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

CAMEROTA: Breaking news. Democrats on the verge of securing both U.S. senate seats in Georgia's runoff elections. Jon Ossoff is holding a 16,000-vote lead over Republican David Perdue.

CNN projects reverend Raphael Warnock will defeat Senator Kelly Loeffler with - sorry, 53,430 more votes.

Joining us now is Democratic Senator, Chris Coons, a longtime Joe Biden friend and supporter. Senator, good morning. What do you - if you're just waking up to these results, what are your thoughts?

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Good morning, Alisyn. I think it's a good morning. I think this is great news for the people of Georgia, for the United States, and for the incoming Biden and Harris administration.

Obviously, these are not final because the votes haven't been tallied to the very last vote, but I think that Georgia has made history, both in electing reverend Warnock, and I think when these votes are final tallied in electing Jon Ossoff.

And I think that sends a clear message to the American people from the voters in Georgia. That they want us to focus on meeting their real needs and not on chasing President Trump's conspiracy theories, not on further divisiveness, but in finding ways to come together, to protect their health care, to respond to the pandemic, and to build our economy back better to be more inclusive and more vibrant.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about exactly what this means for president-elect Joe Biden. Does this - if Jon Ossoff holds on to his lead, does this make president-elect Biden's pick for attorney general easier?

COONS: Well, it means that everyone that Joe Biden has picked to join his cabinet is likely to have an easier time getting confirmed in the senate. It means that the confirmation process can't be slow walked or obstructed and that he will be able to have the talented and capable and seasoned group that he's already chosen serving early in his administration. Given the ways in which the delays over the last two months since the election have hampered the transition, I think this is good news for the administration. I think it also gives him broader options for who to choose for attorney general.

My hope is that he will choose my colleague from Alabama, but he's got a number of very capable, seasoned folks who have experience in the justice department and in law enforcement and in the judiciary in front of him, as potential choices.

CAMEROTA: Here are the names that have been floated. Federal Judge Merrick Garland, we know what happened with him with the Supreme Court; your colleague, whom you just referred to, former Alabama Senator, Doug Jones; and then, the - I guess, wild card, former acting attorney general, Sally Yates.

Do you think that he is inclined towards Sally Yates and this will make that pick easier?

COONS: Look, I think the president-elect has very carefully weighed and considered different options for his cabinet broadly and for attorney general in particular, because of the urgency of restoring a sense of professionalism and independence to the Department of Justice. The attorney general will play a key role in that.

We also have unresolved challenges around policing and racial justice in our country and the attorney will play a critical role in that. So I respect the process that the president-elect has been following. Remember, as a former chairman of the senate judiciary committee and former vice president, he has deep and broad experience in this. And I'm confident he'll make the right choice.

CAMEROTA: How about some of his more controversial picks, such as Neera Tanden for OMB. Does this morning that become more of a reality?

COONS: That becomes much more of a reality. If there are 50 Democratic votes in the senate and a tiebreaking vote from the vice president- elect, that means we can confirm Joe Biden's cabinet. Because of the rules changes in recent years, it just takes a simple majority to confirm a member of the cabinet.

I do think that we will continue in the direction that Joe Biden has already laid out, which is bringing our country together, working across the aisle, but focusing on his agenda, which is delivering a competent response to this pandemic, restoring our economy, addressing things like climate change and racial inequality, and moving our country forward.

CAMEROTA: On Monday, president-elect Joe Biden went to campaign in Georgia and he said to the crowd, the power is in your hands. It's you, Georgia voters, you have all of the power and you make the difference between those $2,000 stimulus checks getting to people and them being squashed. And so, if this looks - if this goes in the direction that it looks like it is this morning, should we expect $2,000 relief checks in January going to Americans?

[07:25:00]

COONS: Alisyn, we should expect, first, that Mitch McConnell, if he is no longer the majority leader, won't be able to block bills coming to the floor that would move forward things like the $2,000 stimulus check.

I'll remind you, in the last year, we had a bold stimulus relief package passed by the house nine months ago and it didn't get to the floor in the senate until a bipartisan group of senators finally crafted a solution that broke Mitch McConnell's obstruction and moved us forward. We're going to have similar challenges because of the rules of the

senate, but I think the chances that we'll be able to move forward on Joe Biden's agenda, which is delivering real relief to the American people, just went way up.

I also have to say, someone I've known for decades and long admired, Stacey Abrams, former house seniority leader in Georgia, played an absolutely essential role in organizing statewide grassroots efforts that made last night's victory possible. She and two very strong candidates running for the senate as Democrats deserve a huge amount of the credit for making last night's win possible.

CAMEROTA: What was bigger? What Stacey Abrams did in turning off the vote or the Trump rigged rhetoric that kept people away from the polls?

COONS: Well, I do think there is a lesson here for Republicans that simply lashing yourself to the mast of Trumpism and ignoring the concerns and the issues that working people from your state are trying to raise with you is not a winning strategy.

Donald Trump continued to campaign both for the two Republican candidates and against the Republican leadership of the state of Georgia attacking relentlessly, the governor and secretary of state. And I think following that famous hour-long rambling and frankly, completely and wildly inappropriate call that President Trump had with the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, where he was trying to persuade him or beg him or threaten him into finding 11,000 votes is a reminder that President Trump's unconventional and divisive style of leadership did not produce the results Republicans might have hoped for in Georgia.

CAMEROTA: Senator Chris Coons, thank you for your time. We really appreciate talking to you this morning.

COONS: Thank you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK. So as the votes are still being counted in Georgia, the focus this afternoon turns to congress counting the electoral votes. Will Mike Pence stand in the way of Joe Biden's victory? What's his plan for today? We have new reporting, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)