Political organizations devoted to mobilizing right-wing evangelical voters are collaborating to an extraordinary degree in the Georgia Senate races, My Faith Votes’ Jason Yates told participants in a prayer call hosted by the pro-Trump Intercessors for American Friday afternoon. Longtime religious-right political operative Ralph Reed also joined the call to talk about efforts by his Faith and Freedom Coalition. Reed made it clear that religious-right groups will once again use fear mongering about supposed threats to religious freedom to motivate conservative evangelical voters.
“Literally the survival of our nation and our rights as Americans and as Christians is on the line with these two races on Jan. 5 in Georgia,” Reed claimed.
Reed warned that unless “something happened” to reverse the certification of votes in the presidential election, “we’re looking at the possibility and the prospect of a Vice President Kamala Harris being able to break the tie and turn control of the U.S. Senate over to Chuck Schumer, AOC and the squad, and the far left,” Reed said. (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of “the squad” serve in the House of Representatives, not the Senate.)
“The country that we have known for over 230 years will be gone and there will be no protection for our rights as believers or of the minority rights of the conservatives in the Senate,” Reed said. (Reed did not address the fact that Rafael Warnock, one of the Democratic Senate candidates, is a Christian pastor whose faith has been attacked by his Republican opponents.)
Reed warned that if Schumer became Senate Majority Leader, “the first thing that would happen is they would abolish the filibuster.” Reed added:
And then once he abolishes the filibuster, then it's ‘Katie, bar the door.’ They can pack the U.S. Supreme Court. They can add more circuit courts. They can add more district courts. They can pack them. They can pass the Green New Deal. They could admit Guam and D.C. as states. That could literally all happen in the first year. And then after that, the Green New Deal, socialized medicine. Kamala Harris has actually proposed gutting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects our religious freedom. They could do that with 50 votes.
Reed described the strategy that Faith & Freedom Coalition and its “data partners” are pursuing: They have identified 1.5 million “born-again, Bible-believing evangelical Christians” in Georgia and are working to maximize their turnout through massive door-knocking and phone calling.
Intercessors for America has loaded the same 1.5 million voters into its online “prayer map” so that IFA intercessors can pray by name that those voters will be moved to vote according to a conservative interpretation of “biblical values.”
Reed said that he expects total spending on the two races will add up to about $1 billion; he said that his group’s turnout campaign has a $4 million budget.
IFA’s Dave Kubal prayed that God would make sure that Reed has the money he needs, reminding God that “you own the cattle on a thousand hills.”
Reed urged people to “put feet to our prayers” and turn out “the largest Christian vote that has ever been seen in the Peach State in our lifetimes.” He said his group has budgeted to house volunteers from out of state who want to knock on doors.
In response to concerns that “stolen election” claims by Trump and right-wing activists may actually discourage people from voting in the Senate races, Reed assured people that the January elections will not be a “replay” of Nov. 3, adding that his group is mobilizing its “most muscular and robust ballot security and election integrity project we have ever undertaken,” and that they plan to transition their 700 GOTV volunteers into positions as poll workers, poll watchers, and election observers.
“We aren’t going to let them steal this election,” Reed vowed.
Jason Yates of My Faith Votes, a religious-right data and voter mobilization operation, joined the call after Reed. He praised Reed’s “fantastic ground game” in Georgia and what he described as a historic level of collaboration among conservative Christian turnout groups.
Yates said My Faith Votes volunteers have committed to sending 1 million postcards to potential Georgia voters and is encouraging people to sign up through Georgia Faith Voters—a collaborative effort—to write and send personal GOTV letters to conservative Christians in the state.
