Campaign

Cruz to stump for Walker as Georgia race heads to runoff

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced he will stump for Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker on Thursday as the campaign shifts to next month’s runoff election.

Neither Walker nor Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) garnered a majority in Tuesday’s election, meaning the two will face off again in a Dec. 6 runoff mandated by state law.

Cruz announced on Twitter that he will appear alongside Walker on Thursday at a bus tour stop in Canton, Ga., which is located about 40 miles north of Atlanta.

Politico first reported Cruz’s appearance.

If Democrats and Republicans each win one of the Nevada and Arizona Senate races, the Georgia runoff would dictate which party wins control of the Senate.

The runoff campaign is likely to draw multiple high-profile surrogates, similar to when both of Georgia’s Senate seats headed to runoff elections in 2020.

In that year’s runoff, former President Obama, President Biden and Vice President Harris all campaigned for Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Former President Trump, former Vice President Pence and other Republicans, meanwhile, headed to the Peach State to campaign for Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both of whom narrowly lost their runoffs.

On Election Day, Warnock led Walker by 0.9 percentage points, or roughly 35,000 raw votes.

But Libertarian Chase Oliver garnered about 2 percent of the vote, preventing Warnock from clinching a majority and winning outright on Tuesday. Warnock won about 49.4 percent of the vote.