Since early December, Daniel P. Matthews, a Needham select board member, has been knocking on doors in a community far from home. After the Nov. 3 election, Mathews packed a suitcase and his favorite music and headed to Georgia to take part in a nationwide effort to help two Democratic candidates for Senate win run-off elections.
On Tuesday those races — pitting incumbent Republican U.S. Sens. David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler against Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, respectively — finally come to a head. Both President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden are scheduled to be in the state Monday to campaign on behalf of their parties’ favorites.
Biden narrowly won the state in November with fewer than 12,000 votes. Polls suggest both Senate races are too close to call, though Republicans have enjoyed an historical advantage in turnout for run-off elections. If Democrats win both races, they will win back control of the U.S. Senate, which is why volunteers and operatives from Massachusetts have joined activists from around the nation to flood into the state.
Matthews is not part of the official Massachusetts Democratic Party effort to win the two Senate seats there. He is spending his own time and money on the effort. Speaking to GBH News from his hotel in Gwinnet County, Matthews —who describes himself as a “moderate Democrat” — said he feared that Republicans would sweep the two run-off races if folks like him don't get personally involved.
"I was particularly concerned during the general election that I felt that when the Republicans went to in-person campaigning and COVID denial, they did a lot of damage to public health. But it gave them a big advantage," Matthews said. "When the Democrats began campaigning COVID-safe door-to-door here in Georgia, I thought I should put my money where my mouth is." He said that he has been on the ground since the beginning of December.
Leonard Lee has also been on the ground in Georgia. On Dec. 14, he joined a 20-car caravan esorted by a squadron of local police cruisers through poor and working-class Black neighborhoods in Savannah, encouraging folks to head to the polls on that first day of early voting. Lee described the two-hour event as celebratory and joyous.
"People came out waving at us, we were passing out masks, people were saying, ‘I voted, I voted, I'm going today. I'm going,'" Lee said. "I mean, just the enthusiasm. We had people coming down from Chicago, Detroit. It was just amazing.” Lee said the day's event was topped off with a fish fry in 70 degree weather.
Lee, a public health specialist and former director of child and youth violence prevention at Massachusetts Department of Public Health, was in Georgia as part of a volunteer effort by the Transformative Justice Coalition to turn out the vote. The groups is a nationwide, non-partisan organization focused on stopping voter suppression. Lee says he agreed to provide masks and other protection for voters heading to the polls. He was joined on the ground in Georgia by former state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, who was tapped to lead a telephone operation.
“As we say, I was 'volun-told' to serve as the chair of the Phone Banking Committee," Wilkerson said. "We have now over a thousand people making calls into Georgia every day.”
The outreach to Georgia by the Transformative Justice Coalition is complimented by similar virtual phone banking initiatives launched by the Massachusetts Democratic party.
On Dec. 17, Massachusetts Democrats sponsored a call-out to Georgia voters with Boston City Council President Kim Janey, Framingham Mayor Yvonne Spicer, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. In a Zoom call, Pressley told a panel of Georgia residents that Democrats must regain control of the Senate this year.
“The reason why the American people have only received 450 pennies a day for the last nine months is because of Mitch McConnell and this GOP-led Senate,” Pressley said in reference to the various stimulus proposals swatted down by the Senate majority leader.
Veronica Martinez, executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, said it has made thousands of calls to Georgia from virtual phone banks in Massachusetts and has assigned staff to work on other initiatives as well. “We've also helped stand up an effort to make sure that every ballot is counted," she said. "It's called curing the ballots. If there are any issues with signatures or anything like that, we're helping follow up and make sure that every vote that's cast is counted.”
Martinez added that some of the states’ 400 Democratic committee members were in Georgia “knocking [on] doors as we speak.”
Massachusetts unions are also playing a major role in the get-out-the-vote effort in Georgia. Roxanna Rivera, vice-president of SEIU Local 32 BJ, which represents service workers, said the pandemic has made it even more critical for her union to help Democrats win the Senate. Among other issues, she said, “The Republican Party has been unwilling to act on legislation around COVID relief.”
Rivera said union members are making a special effort to contact Spanish-speaking voters. That relatively small but influential group in the Peach State is considered key to victory by both Democrats and Republicans.
“We reached out to Latino voters, a demographic in Georgia that has become more active in voting just in this past general election. Many of our members are immigrants, and the issue of immigration reform — we know that we can't do that without a Democratic Senate,” Rivera said.
The Massachusetts GOP has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Loeffler and Purdue in Georgia for what it describes as “the last line of defense to block Democrats’ socialist agenda.”
“The bottom line is that we need to help our conservative allies in the Peach State," Mass GOP chairman Jim Lyons wrote in one email appeal. "Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are proven conservative leaders who will consistently vote to block the left’s radical legislation.”
The Massachusetts Republican Party did not respond to GBH News' request for comment by press time.
Democrats in Massachusetts have raised millions for a race that already has driven more than 2.5 million people to cast ballots in Georgia in early voting. Between them, Ossoff and Warnock have raised more than $150 million from out-of-state donors.
Neither side is completely confident they will come out on top. In a last-minute drive to get voters to the polls, Wilkerson said she recruited actors Rob Reiner, Alyssa Milano and Debra Messing to make calls to Georgia. She said the outcome will have a major impact way beyond the major Georgia cities of Atlanta, Savannah and Macon.
“What happens in Georgia is going to affect every single American, no question whatsoever," Wilkerson told GBH News. "It is about the simple protection of this thing we call a democracy."
Georgia officials believe Tuesday’s balloting, combined with votes already cast, will be the biggest turnout for a run-off election in state history. And Massachusetts activists will have contributed to that history from a thousand miles away.
