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Georgia Votes in Senate Runoff; Counties to Watch in Georgia; Crucial Race in Georgia; Power Remains out in North Carolina; Jonathan Davis is Interviewed about His North Carolina Hospital Operating without Power; Gas Prices Continue to Fall. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 06, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

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[09:00:33]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good Tuesday morning. I'm Erica Hill.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto. It is election day in Georgia. Right now, polls are open across the state as the Republican Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, looks to unseat the Democratic senator, Raphael Warnock, in a runoff. Ahead we're going to take you outside one polling site in Atlanta.

Plus, more than 36,000 customers remain without power in Moore County, North Carolina, this morning, as officials are still searching for the person who damaged Moore County's power infrastructure. We have new details on the FBI's warning in the week leading up to the attack.

HILL: Plus, the highest honor Congress can bestow, the Congressional Gold Medal, set to be awarded to several law enforcement members as Congress honors those who protected the Capitol during the January 6th riots. We are live on Capitol Hill.

We do begin, though, this morning in Georgia with that Senate runoff. Yes, the day is finally here.

CNN national correspondent Dianne Gallagher outside a polling sight in Fulton County, Georgia.

So, polls open for just about two hours now, Dianne. We know there were a lot of early votes cast. How is it looking on election day?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Easy breezy right now here in Atlanta. Aside from a little bit of misting rain, people are going in and coming right out.

I'm actually going to bring a voter in with me right now.

This is Carmen Anderson.

And, Carmen, it hasn't been as easy for you today. What are you trying to do and what's happened here? And I'm going to bring you in just a little bit closer here. Carmen, what's going on? CARMEN ANDERSON, GEORGIA VOTER: I am dropping off an absentee ballot

for my disabled son. And we filled it out and all of that good stuff, went online to try to find a place to drop it off to and was told to come here. But, to my surprise, I'm not able to drop it off here. I'm being told that I need to go to several other places that have the ability or capability of accepting my absentee ballot. But I'm just disappointed.

GALLAGHER: Were you coming here expecting to see really big, long lines, you were going to have to wait in to do this?

ANDERSON: Absolutely. I was expecting to see a long line. But with all of the other votes, the early voting, then, you know, it was 50-50. But definitely just trying to get him his voice heard.

GALLAGHER: Carmen, I'm going to let you go ahead and do that and get your son's ballot in. Good luck today and thank you guys for participating in the democratic process. I appreciate that.

ANDERSON: Great. Thank you. Have a great day.

GALLAGHER: You too, Carmen.

And, look, she mentioned that, all those early votes. More than 1.85 million Georgians have already cast their ballots. And we're kind of seeing the reflection of what we saw in those days of early voting here this morning. According to Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer of the Georgia Secretary of State's Office, they estimate more than 100,000 Georgians have actually cast their ballots today, but the average wait time is around two minutes. They say processing, which is when you step up to actually go and sign in from the time they go and vote is under a minute. And so we're seeing a stark difference from those extremely long lines, especially on the first and second and last day of early voting. Remember, on Friday, more than 350,000 people voted on that day.

So, it seems like, if you haven't voted yet, and you're a registered voter in Georgia, today is a good day to go out and you're not going to have to potentially wait so long.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Interesting difference between the early voting days and the day itself.

Dianne Gallagher, thanks very much.

All right, CNN's John Berman, he is at the magic wall.

John, so which areas are we watching based particularly on how the midterms went?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, I am watching, Jim and Erica, three counties in particular. These were the results one month ago in Georgia. Raphael Warnock, Herschel Walker here. Three counties I'm looking at, Jefferson County, Sumter County and Clay County. Why? And then I have that orphan line right there. Why these three counties? Because of all 159 counties in Georgia,

that's a lot of counties, these were the only three that voted for the Democratic Senate candidate, Raphael Warnock, and the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Brian Kemp.

Let me just show you that effect one more time. Red for Brian Kemp. You can see blue for Raphael Warnock. Red Kemp. Blue, Raphael Warnock.

Why does that matter? Well, look at this. Because in the election one month ago, Herschel Walker got about 1.9 million votes. Let me write that down, 1.9 million votes. But on this very same ballot, the very same ballot with the Senate race was the gubernatorial race, and Brian Kemp, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, he got 2.1 million votes.

[09:05:07]

So, 200,000 more votes than Republican Herschel Walker. Herschel Walker needs some of that 200,000 vote total right there. I'll write down that number. It's 200,000 votes he needs to - he -- Brian Kemp won more of those than Herschel Walker. You can see Herschel Walker only trailed Raphael Warnock by some 37,000 votes. So, if Walker can do well among those 200,000 hypothetical voters who liked Brian Kemp more than Herschel Walker, he can make up some of that ground.

I'll also point out, the libertarian, one month ago, Chase Oliver, he got 81,000 votes. Again, that's a lot more than 37,000. There will not be a third candidate in this, just two candidates in this runoff. So you can see where Herschel Walker hypothetically could make up some ground.

I pointed out those three counties. They're not very big, right? Clay County, down here, is -- you can see just - you can see the margins there. You're talking about several dozen votes Raphael Warnock beat Herschel Walker.

Sumter County, which I pointed out to you, also notable. This was one of the counties that voted for Raphael Warnock and Brian Kemp. This is the home - home county of Jimmy Carter. Plains, Georgia, is in Sumter Country right there.

Those are small. Where Herschel Walker stands to make up the most, if he can, is in a place like Cobb County here, where you can see Herschel Walker -- and this is suburban Atlanta. It used to be Republican suburbs. Now Democratic. Herschel Walker got just 40 percent of the vote there. Brian Kemp got 47 percent. So, you can see where Herschel Walker could make up ground if he appealed to those voters out there who liked Brian Kemp one month ago.

Jim. Erica.

HILL: Yes, we'll see. Definitely important to watch those.

J.B., appreciate it. Thank you.

Joining us now to talk about all of this, Kevin Riley, editor in chief for "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution," and David Swerdlick, CNN political commentator and senior staff editor for "The New York Times" Opinion.

Good to see you both this morning.

You know, it feels like, Kevin, we have dissected this race every single way we can. I think it's important to dive down on those counties, as John just showed us. But we've looked the ad spending. We've looked at early vote turnout. We've looked at polling. Is there anything you think, especially from this national perspective, Kevin, that we have missed leading into election day here for this runoff?

KEVIN RILEY, EDITOR IN CHIEF, "THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION": Well, it's hard to think of anything that's been missed. This race has gotten so much attention and so much polling.

But here, if you want to keep it simple today to try to figure out what's going to happen, think of it this way. If we went back to the election a month ago, Raphael Warnock would have won if we only counted early voting, and Herschel Walker would have won if we only counted election day voting.

So, the real question today is, who can run up the score? Can Warnock run up the score enough with all of that early voting, or will enough people come out on election day for Walker so that he can run up the score? Who knows? I mean I -- everyone's guess - everyone's guessing. But I think it's very hard to tell because we've never had a runoff in Georgia with -- that just went four weeks after the election. So, things are very different this time than they've been in the past.

SCIUTTO: Kevin, can I ask you a question, and I don't know how widespread this is, but you see Gabriel Sterling talking about very short wait times today on election day. We saw quite long lines on early voting days. Does that speak to - I mean given where the party's advantages in early voting versus the day of the election, is there anything to that or is that just coincidental?

RILEY: Well, it remains to be seen, Jim, because, as you pointed out, I mean we see short lines so far. It is - we've got some rain here in Georgia. We have many, many more polling places open than we had in early voting. And don't forget that early voting period was extremely compressed. We only had a month. We had record days of early voting, but we still had many fewer early voters than we had in that election a month ago.

HILL: David, as we look at where we're at, there are, I think without question, broader lessons here for both parties. And that's not limited to the candidates you pick. It's also about how the campaigning is done. What the messaging is. What are you seeing as some of those broader lessons?

DAVID SWERDLICK, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning, Erica.

And I think a lesson for Democrats is that Warnock could have put Walker away earlier on if he had done a little better job of touting the positive aspects of President Biden's record. (INAUDIBLE) they had (INAUDIBLE). He had trouble answering that charge when Herschel Walker kept saying, you voted with Joe Biden 86 percent of the time. And I think Democrats nationwide going into the 2024 presidential year need to take something away from that.

On the other hand, you have someone like Walker, who has struggled to articulate an agenda beyond saying that he's tied closely to Trump and that he is able to espouse sort of Republican talking points on wedge issues.

[09:10:11]

And so both campaigns are looking for a win in an election that's going to be close but in a situation where, as Kevin said, it's going to come down to a battle of turnout, the early vote versus the same day vote. And it's also going to come down to some of these demographics that we've talked about so much in the last few election cycles. Warnock last time won big among African Americans. He won big -- not big, but he won women. He won among college graduates.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SWERDLICK: And so, if you have some of those demographics together, and we see high turnout for black voters in a state that's over 30 percent black, if you see high turnout among white voters with college degrees, particularly white women in the suburbs with college degrees, then it could be a good day for Warnock. If not, Walker could eke this one out.

SCIUTTO: There's been a lot of talk of Governor Kemp putting his get out the vote machine to Walker's advantage here. How impactful might that be, David?

SWERDLICK: So, Jim, I'm sorry, I didn't hear that whole question from you.

SCIUTTO: Governor Kemp famously has a get out the vote machine that benefitted him in the election in the midterms.

SWERDLICK: Yes. Right.

SCIUTTO: And he's put that behind Herschel Walker. Does that make a difference?

SWERDLICK: I think it makes a difference for Walker to some extent. But as John was just showing on that map of those three counties, Governor Kemp had coattails on the regular election day.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SWERDLICK: Governor Kemp is not on the ballot now and so Walker is going to have to make up some of that difference where you had Republican voters coming out to vote for Kemp, who may or may not come out now just to support Walker against Warnock.

SCIUTTO: All right, gentlemen, Kevin Riley, David Swerdlick, thanks so much. SWERDLICK: Thank you.

RILEY: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, CNN's special live coverage of the Georgia runoff starts later today at 4:00 Eastern Time right here on CNN.

HILL: Still to come this hour, the North Carolina governor says the suspect who attacked that power substation knew what they were doing to disable the power for tens of thousands. We're going to speak with the head of a hospital there about the challenges they're facing now as this investigation into that power outage rolls on.

Plus, health officials issuing a warning about holiday gatherings and how they could potentially push already high rates of respiratory infections even higher. We'll take a look at how they're preparing.

SCIUTTO: And we'll go to Capitol Hill, where leaders will come together to bestow Congress' highest honor on those who defended the Capitol during the insurrection. Will it be a bipartisan show of support? That's coming up.

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[09:16:56]

HILL: Right now an increasing number of people in eastern North Carolina are cold. Some of them may be in the dark. Sun coming up. The sun is up, of course, in some areas. We're still talking no power. This power outage now entering its fourth day. The latest data shows those numbers, 36,000 residents without electricity.

SCIUTTO: Listen, it's having a big impact. Schools remain closed. The county remains under a state of emergency as authorities are still searching for a suspect or suspects behind what they call a targeted criminal attack on the state's power grid system.

CNN's Whitney Wild, she is in Moore County, North Carolina.

Whitney, the FBI was warning about attacks like this in advance? What do we know?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Two weeks ago the FBI sent out a bulletin to private industry to basically say, look, these electrical grids are a very attractive target for domestic violent extremists and they, the FBI, warned that they were particularly worried about racially motivated attacks on the electrical grid. Basically, what this bulletin said, and it's so chilling, is that domestic violent extremists who are racially motivated would see an attack as an opportunity to cause societal breakdown and thus prompt a race war.

It is so chilling, it is so alarming, and it follows a pattern that we've seen from other federal officials. The Department of Homeland Security had warned earlier this year that the electrical grid could be a target for domestic violent extremists. A similar alarm was raised November 30th when DHS renewed a national threat assessment bulletin that basically said the same thing, that critical infrastructure among many targets are attractive ways for domestic violent extremists to mobilize to violence.

So, all of these alarms. Now what is happening here in North Carolina now proving that those alarms are not without merit. It is -- it is a shocking event here and law enforcement now scrambling to try to figure out who did this and why. Officials releasing very little details, saying only that, yes, these two substations were fired upon. They sustained millions of dollars' worth of damage. At one of those substations, a gate that leads to the substation was taken off of its hinges. But other than that, we have very little detail about what happened. So, we are now turning to state officials, like Governor Roy Cooper, who is saying very plainly this was a targeted attack.

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GOV. ROY COOPER (D-NC): This was a specific act. The person or persons knew what they were doing and what it took to disable this substation. So, what we're going to have to do is to work with state and federal officials, and I think this needs to be a national conversation about the level of security that we have at these substations across the country.

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WILD: We've asked about security here at this substation and the other one that was attacked. And while Duke Energy declined to give many specifics about the type of security they have here, they did say they don't have say a physical security guard here.

And just - just to put this into greater context, this substation that I'm at right now, in Carthage, North Carolina, is basically in a neighborhood.

[09:20:05]

These are accessible to people, heightening what DHS is saying about how vulnerable these areas are.

Back to you.

HILL: Yes, absolutely.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: Whitney, appreciate the reporting this morning. Thank you.

Well, that power outage understandably having a serious impact across the county there. We're talking emergency services, health care.

Joining me now is Jonathan Davis. He's the president of FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital, which has postponed elective surgeries, but is open, operating on a backup generator.

Good to have you with us this morning. So, I know you told my colleagues yesterday you could essentially operate indefinitely on that backup generator power. So, based on that, what is your biggest concern? What are your biggest needs this morning?

JONATHAN DAVIS, PRESIDENT, FIRSTHEALTH MOORE REGIONAL HOSPITAL: Yes, good to be with you today.

Our biggest concerns and biggest needs are really around communication. You know, you recognize the internet's out and it really is kind of the mainstay of communication. So that's been a challenge for us, communication and cell phones, et cetera. So, we have patched that together.

We practice for these as health care providers across the country. And FirstHealth of the Carolinas is prepared always to manage these situations, whether it's inclement weather, Covid. We had two years -- two and a half years of practice with our safety huddles and our command centers up and running all throughout that event. So we have - we are prepared.

HILL: Yes, all of that work is certainly paying off. The communications are understandably a massive part of this equation. But I also know there's some concern about even folks at home who may not have considered coming to the hospital but who need power for things like a CPAP or an oxygen machine. There are concerns about dialysis, refrigerating insulin. You're also trying to work with the community to give them access, whether it be power, or is it even refrigeration. How is that rolling out?

DAVIS: Yes. So, for us at the hospital, we have 60,000 gallons of fuel stored. And that's three days of use. And we refuel on an every two- day basis so we stay ahead of that.

Initially when this came, the power outage came on Saturday, we really act quickly to make rounds in our hospital and then also the next day we opened up our command center. We were really triaging the needs of our community. So, for us as a health care provider, we really focused on getting people access to their medical devices, charging their medical devices. And then the Hillcrest Rec Center, which houses -- can hold up to 250 people, has overnight stays. And then, you know, also helps people with power, charging their devices, medical devices, as well.

So, I do -- I think the longer this goes on, the more challenging it is to certainly stay in your home without power. So we are really focused on the public health and the safety needs of our community. And people come here for a bit of respite to get food, et cetera. And we're a city in and of ourselves just within Pinehurst of FirstHealth. So, we're meeting all those needs.

HILL: You know, the FBI bulletin, hopefully you could hear the reporting from my colleague Whitney Wild there, but this bulletin that went out a couple of weeks ago, concern for infrastructure. Do you have any concerns at all for the hospitals overall infrastructure? DAVIS: I have no concerns on the hospital side. I think that we are

always focused on being self-sufficient with our backup fuel. We are a health system of four hospitals located in south central North Carolina, in the -- with our flagship hospital here in Moore County in Pinehurst. And we are move - and have moved a lot of our patient volume out to the other three hospitals that can support patients and have electricity.

So, I think, as a health system, we have really been symbiotic and leveraged our ability to take care of the region at large and are well on our way to do that each and every day, hour of the day, with our great team.

HILL: Jonathan Davis, really appreciate you taking the time to join us this morning. Thank you.

DAVIS: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead, the flu, RSV and Covid all coming together to push respiratory illness rates to abnormally high levels. Why health officials are wary of holiday gatherings this month and how hospitals are preparing. That's coming up.

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[09:29:07]

SCIUTTO: New this morning, the national average for a gallon of regular gas dipped by another two cents overnight to $3.38 a gallon, this according to AAA. Way down, Erica. Remember $5 a gallon over the summer?

HILL: Oh, yes.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: I certainly do remember that. Prices, in fact, now down 42 cents in the past month. Oil markets fell sharply yesterday. They're actually down again this morning. That's despite this EU embargo on Russian oil imports that went into effect yesterday.

Why does that matter? Matt Egan is going to tell us why.

So, Matt, in all seriousness, we were talking about -- so gas prices are down. That's great. Oil continues to fall, which is also a good thing. The reason we say despite this, despite, of course, this new embargo is because there's concern about whether those penalties could end up backfiring I guess in some ways and jacking prices again.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Right, Erica and Jim, that is definitely the concern.

[09:30:01]

So far, though, oil markets are not freaking out about this, which is pretty amazing. The oil price is down almost 1 percent today.