The Hill’s Campaign Report: Biden calls Trump’s refusal to concede an ’embarrassment’ | Cunningham concedes in North Carolina | Georgia Senate runoffs get underway

Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, your daily rundown on all the latest news in the 2020 presidential, Senate and House races. Did someone forward this to you? Click here to subscribe.

We’re Julia Manchester, Max Greenwood and Jonathan Easley. Here’s what we’re watching today on the campaign trail:

PROGRAMMING NOTE: It’s been a pleasure for us to provide readers with the latest campaign news of the day during the 2020 cycle. However, we’re announcing that the newsletter will begin to wind down starting today, with future issues scheduled for this Thursday, Nov. 12, and Wednesday, Nov. 18. 

LEADING THE DAY:

Election Night was a week ago, and the transition process is in limbo as President Trump refuses to concede the race and as President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team moves forward. 

Biden called Trump’s refusal to concede “an embarrassment” during a press conference on Tuesday. 

“The only thing that — how can I say this tactfully — I think it will not help the president’s legacy,” Biden said. 

The president-elect also commented on Republican lawmakers publicly supporting the president’s move to not concede. 

“I think that the whole Republican Party has been put in a position with a few notable exceptions of being mildly intimidated by the sitting president. But there is only one president at a time. He is president,” he said. 

Biden said that he has not yet spoken with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell but said he expects to “in the not too distant future.” 

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is pressing on with a number of legal challenges in multiple states. On top of that, several government agencies have signaled they will not begin working with Biden’s transition team until the General Services Administration certifies him as the president-elect.

Additionally, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not acknowledge a future concession in a press briefing on Tuesday, saying there will be “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” 

The rocky beginning to the transition process has sparked concerns that Trump’s refusal to give up the reigns of control, for now, will put the U.S. in jeopardy, especially in terms of national security. 

But global community appears to be rallying behind Biden….

The president-elect held a call with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday and spoke on the phone with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday. 

A number of world leaders have also congratulated Joe Biden, including Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who Biden has been critical of in the past. However, a number of other world leaders described as “autocrats or strongmen” have yet to acknowledge Biden’s win, including Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.

FROM THE STATES:

In North Carolina…

The closely watched Senate race in North Carolina appears to have reached its conclusion, as Democrat Cal Cunningham announced on Tuesday evening that he had conceded to his Republican rival, Sen. Thom Tillis. 

“The voters have spoken and I respect their decision,” Cunningham said in a statement in which he revealed he called Tillis on Tuesday. 

“While the results of this election suggest there remain deep political divisions in our state and nation, the more complete story of our country lies in what unites us: our faith and sense of confidence in our democracy, our civic values and common humanity, our shared aspiration to care for one another, and our belief that we live in a country that does exceptional things,” he continued. 

The development comes as ballots continue to be counted in the Tar Heel State after a large number of voters cast their ballots by mail this election. 

Tillis led Cunningham by more than 100,000 votes, according to The Associated Press. 

Meanwhile, in Georgia…

Election Day was only a week ago, but the runoff campaigns for Georgia’s two Senate seats are already underway. Democrat Jon Ossoff kicked off a statewide tour in Atlanta on Tuesday in his opening gambit against Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.). And in the state’s other Senate contest, Democrat Raphael Warnock debuted his second television ad in less than a week as he prepares to take on Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.)

Neither party can afford any downtime between now and the Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia. The two contests will ultimately decide which party controls the Senate when Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, and both parties are preparing for a mad dash to the finish line. On Monday, former Georgia gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams announced that she and her group Fair Fight Action had already raised some $6 million to help both Ossoff and Warnock. 

Perdue and Loeffler, meanwhile, are lashing out at Georgia’s top elections official for his handling of the 2020 general elections. In a joint statement on Monday, the two Georgia Republicans called on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, himself a Republican, to resign, accusing him of failing “to deliver honest and transparent elections.” Raffensperger quickly refused their demand, which was seen by many political observers as an effort to rally Trump’s supporters at a time when the president faces darkening political prospects in Georgia.

A reminder on how we got here…

Georgia state law required the candidates to notch at least 50 percent of the vote to win their elections outright. The race between Ossoff and Perdue advanced to a runoff last week after neither candidate managed to hit the 50 percent threshold (Perdue won 49.7 percent of the vote to Ossoff’s 47.9 percent). But in the race featuring Warnock and Loeffler, a runoff appeared almost certain from the beginning; because it is a special election, there were no partisan primaries, meaning that multiple candidates from multiple parties all appeared on the same ballot. Loeffler and Warnock advanced to the runoff after finishing in the top two spots. 

Max has more on Georgia here and here.