Biden will campaign in Georgia next week for Senate runoff races

Trip will be president-elect’s first campaign event since winning 3 November election

President-elect Joe Biden attends announcement of members of his health team, including his pick for secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, at the Queen Theatre on 8 December 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware ((Getty Images))

President-elect Joe Biden will travel to Georgia next week to campaign for Democratic candidates in the state’s two Senate runoff elections.

Mr Biden will travel to Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday to support Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and reverend Raphael Warnock, ahead of the elections on 5 January, according to the Associated Press.

Mr Ossoff will face senator David Perdue, while Mr Warnock will be up against senator Kelly Loeffler, after no candidate got more than 50 per cent of the vote in either race in 3 November’s election.

The runoff elections will determine whether the Democrats or Republicans will hold the Senate at the start of Mr Biden’s presidency, as the GOP currently has 50 senators, while the Democrats hold 46 seats, but are boosted to 48 by the two independents who caucus with them.

The Republicans need to win just one of the two elections to hold the majority, while the Democrats need to win both to give vice-president elect Kamala Harris the deciding vote.

The visit will be the president-elect’s first campaign event since he was declared the winner of November’s presidential election last month.

He has spent the majority of the month since planning for his administration with his transition team and selecting key members of his cabinet. A majority of the appointments will need to be approved by the Senate.

The trip was hinted at last month by Mr Biden’s newly-appointed chief of staff Ron Klein, who told NBC’s Meet the Press that both the president-elect and Ms Harris would campaign in the state. There is no word yet on when Ms Harris will campaign.

Georgia has been a Republican stronghold for more than two decades, but Mr Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since former president Bill Clinton in 1992.

President Trump held a rally in Georgia on Saturday in support of Ms Loeffler and Mr Perdue, but spoke for 90 minutes and made numerous false claims about the result of last month’s national election before he invited the senators on stage.

Although Mr Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Mr Trump has yet to concede, despite officially launching the transition process.

The president and his campaign team have falsely claimed that widespread voter fraud took place in the election, and have filed more than 50 unsuccessful lawsuits in battleground states that Mr Biden won. The Trump team has so far provided no definitive evidence of voting irregularities.

During Saturday’s rally, Mr Trump called on those in government with “courage and wisdom” to help him overturn Mr Biden’s win and falsely claimed that he won in Georgia. The US president lost the state by more than 12,000 votes.

Several Republican officials have expressed concern that President Trump’s repeated false claims about the legitimacy of the 3 November election will hurt GOP candidates on 5 January.

In a statement about Mr Biden’s visit on Thursday, President Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien said: “Joe Biden’s trip to Georgia next week proves that Democrats are taking the Senate runoff elections seriously and so should Republicans.

 “While President Trump continues his legal battle challenging the election, it is still of the utmost importance for Republicans to retain control of the Senate.

“Every Georgian should either vote early for Perdue and Loeffler or turn out on January 5th.”