AUGUSTA, Ga. — If you turn off the sound while watching a campaign speech in the Georgia Senate runoff races, ignore the signs and hats, you can still tell which party it’s for by the faces in the audience.
But, taking their cue from President Trump, Republicans by and large have disdained those warnings. That was conspicuously on display in Georgia on Friday, when Democrat Jon Ossoff held an outdoor drive-in rally in a parking lot in Augusta where nearly all attendees wore masks. But in another part of the state, Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both running for reelection, held a joint rally in a restaurant where hardly anyone in the standing-room-only crowd wore masks.
Story continues“Change is coming to Georgia,” Ossoff said. “The nightmare is ending and we have a chance to define the future we believe in.”“As a former military pilot, it’s best to stay safe,” Moses McIntosh, 47, told Yahoo News. “Ossoff put the public’s safety before his own and that’s what we all have to do.”
“We proved to the rest of the country that Georgia is not turning blue,” said Perdue, overlooking the results of the balloting for president. “What we have to do is not persuade people. We have to get the vote out.”