JACK KINGSTON

Former President Donald Trump is set to make his first public appearances since his federal indictment.

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene once was shunned as a political pariah for her extremist rhetoric.

Sen. Raphael Warnock is still the prominent freshman who helped his party win control on Capitol Hill.

Republicans’ U.S. Senate nomination in a premier battleground like Georgia is a plum political prize, but a year before GOP voters choose a nominee for the 2022 midterms, they have no clear options.

“The party has a real choice to make on where we go from here,” said Michael McNeely, a former Georgia Republican vice chairman. Trump fueled Republican turnout, especially in rural areas and small towns, that overwhelmed Democrats in states less diverse than Georgia. Plenty of Georgia Republicans embrace Trump’s imprint, at least publicly. “Absolutely four Republican votes in this house,” she said, including her young adult children casting absentee ballots. But all three are Democratic districts, and they include the two most concentrated Democratic districts, the 4th and 5th in the metro Atlanta core.

“He’s not flamboyant,” said Alec Poitevint, a Georgia businessman and GOP activist who serves as Perdue’s campaign chairman. Perdue's runoff campaign has focused on ensuring Trump's base shows up to vote again. Though Perdue hasn’t repeated Trump’s election fraud claims, he backed a failed Texas lawsuit that sought to invalidate Biden’s victory in Georgia. After the “Access Hollywood” recording of Trump boasting about groping women surfaced in the 2016 campaign, Perdue acknowledged that “this guy's no choir boy." Aside from rallies with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, Perdue has sought to avoid the media spotlight.

ATLANTA – President-elect Joe Biden told Georgia voters on Tuesday they must deliver two Democratic Senate runoffs victories in January so his administration can forcefully confront the coronavirus pandemic and other national challenges. “They fully embraced nullifying nearly 5 million Georgia votes,” said Biden, the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the state since 1992. Democrats would need to win both Georgia seats to force a 50-50 Senate, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be the tiebreaking vote. Republicans need one of the two Georgia seats for McConnell to remain majority leader and set the Senate agenda. Biden also used the trip to catch up with key supporters who helped him win Georgia.

President Donald Trump participates in a video teleconference call with members of the military on Thanksgiving, Thursday, Nov. 26, 2020, at the White House in Washington. Republicans acknowledge Trump as the GOP’s biggest turnout driver, including in Georgia, where Biden won by fewer than 13,000 votes out of about 5 million cast. “Followers of Trump will follow Trump, but they’re not blind to the huge stakes. Before November, Democrats dreaded a second Trump term more than Republicans feared Trump losing, Robinson reasoned. “I couldn’t be more excited to welcome” the president “back to Georgia,” Loeffler wrote on Twitter after Trump confirmed his plans.

Republican candidate for Senate Sen. David Perdue speaks during a campaign stop at Peachtree Dekalb Airport Monday, Nov. 2, 2020, in Atlanta. But if the Democratic challenger wins, the ambitions of a Biden presidency could well come down to Georgia. But if the Democratic challenger wins, the ambitions of a Biden presidency could well come down to Georgia. That was cemented Friday evening when Democrat Jon Ossoff and Georgia Sen. David Perdue narrowly advanced to a second round after three days of vote counting. Otherwise, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, could wield the power to block Biden.