US Elections: Democrat Raphael Warnock Becomes First Black Senator in Georgia History

Democrat Raphael Warnock won one of Georgia’s two Senate elections today, becoming the first black senator in his state’s history and putting the Senate majority within the reach of Democrats.

A pastor who spent the past 15 years leading the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr preached, Warnock defeated current Republican Kelly Loeffler. It was a harsh rebuke from outgoing President Donald Trump, who made one of his last trips in office to Georgia to rally his loyalist base behind Loeffler and the Republican running for the other seat, David Perdue.

The focus now shifts to the second race between Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff. That contest was too early to call as the votes were still being counted. If Ossoff wins, Democrats will have full control of the Senate, strengthening President-elect Joe Biden’s position as he prepares to take office on January 20.

Warnock’s victory is symbolic of a surprising shift in Georgia politics as the growing number of diverse, college-educated voters exercise their power in the heart of the Deep South. It marks the end of nearly two decades in which Democrats have been excluded from state office and follows Biden’s victory in November, when he became the first Democratic presidential candidate to rule the state since 1992.

Warnock, 51, acknowledged his unlikely victory in a message to supporters earlier in the day, citing his family’s experience with poverty. His mother, he said, used to pick “someone else’s cotton” as a teenager.

“The other day, as we are in the United States, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick someone else’s cotton picked their youngest son to be a United States senator,” he said. “Tonight, we demonstrate with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible.”

Loeffler declined to give a short message to his followers shortly after midnight.

“We have work to do here. This is a game of inches. We are going to win this election,” insisted Loeffler, a 50-year-old former businesswoman who was appointed to the Senate less than a year ago. by the state governor.

Loeffler, who remains a Georgia senator until today’s election results are finalized, said she would return to Washington tomorrow morning to join a small group of senators who plan to challenge the Congressional vote to certify Biden’s victory. .

“We’re going to keep fighting for you,” Loeffler said, “it’s about protecting the American dream.”

Georgia’s other second round of elections pitted Perdue, a 71-year-old former business executive who held his Senate seat until his term expired Sunday, against Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist. At just 33 years old, Ossoff would be the youngest member of the Senate.

Trump’s false claims of voter fraud cast a dark shadow over the runoff elections, which were held only because no candidate reached the 50 percent threshold in the general election. He attacked the state electoral chief on the eve of the elections and raised the possibility that some votes would not be counted even when votes were cast this afternoon.

Republican state officials on the ground reported no major problems.

This week’s elections mark the formal end of the turbulent 2020 election season, more than two months after the rest of the nation finished voting. Unusually high stakes transformed Georgia, once a solidly Republican state, into one of the nation’s major battlegrounds for the final days of the Trump presidency – and likely beyond.

Both races tested whether the political coalition that drove Biden’s victory in November was an anti-Trump anomaly or part of a new electoral landscape. To win in today’s election, and in the future, Democrats needed strong African-American support.

Building on his popularity with black voters, among other groups, Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by roughly 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast in November.

Trump’s claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election, albeit without merit, resonated with Republican voters in Georgia. About 7 in 10 agreed with his false claim that Biden was not the legitimately elected president, according to the AP VoteCast, a poll of more than 3,600 voters in the second round elections.

Election officials across the country, including Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, as well as former Trump attorney general William Barr, have confirmed that there was no widespread fraud in the November election. Almost every legal challenge from Trump and his allies has been dismissed by the justices, including two rejected by the Supreme Court, where three Trump-nominated justices preside.

Even with Trump’s claims, voters from both parties were drawn to the polls because of how much was at stake. The AP VoteCast found that six out of 10 Georgia voters say that party control in the Senate was the most important factor in their vote.

In the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, Kari Callaghan, 37, said she voted “all Democrats” on Tuesday, an experience that was new to her.

“I’ve always been a Republican, but I’ve been very upset with Trump and the way Republicans are working,” she said. “I feel like the Republican candidates continue to support Trump and the Trump campaign feels pretty rotten. These are not the conservative values ​​I grew up with.”

But Will James, 56, said he voted “directly for the Republican Party.”

He said he was concerned about the recent support from Republican candidates for Trump’s challenges to the Georgia presidential election results, “but it didn’t really change the reasons I voted.”

“I believe in the balance of power and I don’t want either side to have a referendum, basically,” he said.

Even before today, Georgia had broken its record for participation in a runoff with more than 3 million votes by mail or during early voting in person in December. The previous state record was 2.1 million in a Senate runoff in 2008.

– AP