CUMMING, Ga.—Raphael Warnock on Saturday asked voters in Cumming, Georgia, to come out for him one more time during his Dec. 6 Senate runoff, and his fifth Senate-related election in two years.
Cumming is in the fast-growing Forsyth County, considered a Georgia swing district where Georgia Democrats have focused lately to pick up exurban votes. Part of a tech corridor extending north from Atlanta, Forsyth has attracted migrants from other states during the pandemic and boasts an increasingly diverse population. This was in evidence on Saturday with signs like “Latinos for Warnock” and “Asian Americans for Warnock.”
There aren’t many African Americans in Forsyth, and Warnock, who was nearly an hour late—an hour in which candidates from the recent election, winners and losers alike, vamped to fill the time—joked about it.
“You need someone who’s serious about working with everybody on both sides of the aisle. Really, I’m serious about working with everybody. I came to Cumming,” Warnock said as the crowd laughed. “Thank you. I read the charts. I know where I am. Glad to be here. Where’s the BBQ?”
A person who’s not serious, he said, is his Republican opponent Herschel Walker.
“You need a serious person. Here’s the danger. I happen to be running against somebody who is not a serious person,” he said.
“You actually have to know stuff to do this job,” Warnock said, a catchphrase he returned to several times.
It’s one that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also turned back against Warnock while campaigning with Walker on Thursday night in Gainesville.
“Warnock said today, ‘To go to the Senate, you actually have to know stuff,’” Graham said. “Let’s test that out. You know what I know and Herschel knows? Women shouldn’t be competing against men. You know what I know and Herschel knows? Why should you be forced to buy oil from people who hate your guts when you got a bunch of it here at home?”
