Georgia Republicans faced a dilemma after the presidential election.
President-elect Joe Biden was preparing to enter the White House, but President Donald Trump continued to repeat his claims of a stolen election, zeroing in on the Peach State, a conservative stronghold that had drifted into the Democratic column by roughly 12,000 votes.
The state Republicans knew that the Georgia Senate would be voting in January 2021. David Perdue and Kelly loeffler would need a unified effort to stop the Democrats from sweeping both races and regaining the US Senate.
Rudy Giuliani, the onetime personal lawyer for Trump, was traveling across the country whipping up conservative lawmakers and Republican activists with false claims of evidence pointing to a national election result.
According to a new book by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's political reporter Greg Bluestein, Giuliani held a meeting with the Georgia Senate Republicans shortly before the election and continued to speak about the 2020 results despite the federal races that would have a big impact on the party.
According to Bluestein's book, "Flipped: How Georgia turned purple and broke", the speaker of the Georgia Legislature made up an excuse to leave the conference call after listening to Giuliani.
Giuliani tried to make the case that the Georgia legislature could overturn the election results, but Republican Gov. Brian Kemp rejected the idea of calling a special session to pursue such a plan, which incensed the then-president and many of his most fervent supporters.
The book said that Giuliani told the senators that they could overturn the election on their own. Perdue got off the line a few minutes later.
Bluestein was told that aides were putting out fires and affecting the Senate campaign.
Trump continued to pressure the state's Republican leadership, which included Kemp and the Secretary of State, to help invalidate Biden's victory.
In December 2020, Perdue and Loeffler issued a statement of support for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who asked the US Supreme Court to invalidate the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The move would put them in the camp of Trump.
During the period between the November general election and the January runoffs, the efforts by Trump, Giuliani, and other high-profile presidential associates to overturn Biden's victory dominated the news cycle, but Democrats were focused on their turnout efforts and engaging with potential voters who had met the December deadline
As they watched the GOP civil war intensify, the Democratic campaigns couldn't deny a wash of optimism that the stars were aligning in their favor.
While the Democratic candidates were talking about the economy and health care, the pre- election rallies that Trump held for Kemp and Loeffler continued to distract from the presidential election.
When the election results for the January runoffs came in, Ossoff and Warnock emerged as the victors, with a marked decline in many pro-Trump rural counties.
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