Georgia on the cusp of handing over the U.S. Senate to the Democrats as Warnock wins, Ossoff leads

Democratic US Senate candidate Raphael Warnock speaks on his campaign YouTube account after the second round of the election against Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, on January 6, 2021. Warnock for Georgia / Social media via REUTERS.

ATLANTA – Democrats won a race for the United States Senate in Georgia and led another on Wednesday, approaching a sweep in a deep southern state that would give them control of Congress and the power to advance the political goals of the president-elect Joe Biden.

Raphael Warnock, a Baptist preacher from the historic Martin Luther King Jr. Church, beat Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler to become the first black senator in Georgia history.

Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker who at age 33 would become the youngest member of the Senate, also declared victory with a slight lead over incumbent David Perdue, though the media, including Edison Research, had yet to call for that. career.

If held, the results would amount to a final defeat for outgoing President Donald Trump, who will become the first US president since 1932 to lose the White House and both houses of Congress in a single term.

Trump held rallies for both Republican candidates but overshadowed the campaign with false accusations that his own defeat in the November presidential election in Georgia was tainted with fraud, repeatedly targeting Republican officials in the state.

With 98% of the vote and the counting mostly stopped overnight, Warnock was ahead of Loeffler by 1.2 percentage points, or about 54,000 votes, according to Edison Research. Ossoff led Perdue by more than 16,000 votes, or 0.4 percentage points, just shy of the 0.5 percent threshold to avoid a recount. Most of the prominent votes were from Democratic-leaning areas.

Winning both races would give Democrats control of the Senate, creating a 50-50 split and giving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tiebreaker vote once she and Biden take office on January 20. The party already has a narrow majority in the US House of Representatives.

Holding onto either seat would have given Republicans a veto over Biden’s political and judicial appointments, as well as his legislative initiatives in areas from coronavirus relief to climate change, healthcare and justice.

The final days of the campaign were overshadowed by Trump’s attacks on his own electoral defeat in the state, including a recording of a phone call in which he intimidated Republican officials in Georgia into “finding” enough votes to turn him into the winner.

ON TRUMP’S SHOULDERS

United States Senate Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff speaks after the second round of elections against Republican Senator David Perdue in a still image from a video in Atlanta, Georgia, USA on January 6, 2021 Jon Ossoff for Senate / Pamphlet via REUTERS.

If the Democrats won, the losses “would fall squarely on the shoulders of President Trump and his actions from Nov. 3,” Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and senior state election official, told CNN.

The election marked a change in the politics of Georgia and the wider and deeper South. Black voters, the region’s most trusted Democratic supporters, resulted in unprecedented numbers for a runoff.

In a video message, Warnock, whose Ebenezer Baptist Church is legendary in Georgia because of its role in the civil rights movement under King, recalled his humble upbringing as one of 12 children of a woman who worked in cotton fields.

“Because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick someone else’s cotton went to the polls and elected their youngest son to be a United States senator,” he said.

In declaring victory, Ossoff said he looked forward to “serving you in the United States Senate with integrity, humility and honor.”

Both Republican senators, following the lead of Trump, who never acknowledged his own defeat, predicted that they would eventually win and insisted they would keep fighting: “We have a path to victory and we will stick with it,” Loeffler told supporters in Atlanta. .

During the campaign, Republicans had painted Ossoff and Warnock as radicals who would pursue a far-left agenda. But that message failed to resonate with many white suburbanites who have increasingly abandoned the Republican party under Trump.

Trump’s shaky efforts to reverse his own defeat carry over to Congress later on Wednesday, when Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the recount of electoral votes to certify Biden’s victory.

Trump has asked Pence to release the results in the states he narrowly lost, although Pence has no authority to do so. Some Republican lawmakers have said they will try to reject some state bills, a move that has no chance of success but could force debate and prolong the certification process.

Trump supporters plan to demonstrate on the streets of Washington, with the city bracing for possible violence. Police expelled the leader of a far-right group from the city and made several arrests as protests escalated Tuesday. Trump will address the crowd at 11 a.m.

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