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WASHINGTON: Senate control likely won’t be decided until a January runoff in Georgia, even after Democrat Joe Biden won the White House on Saturday (November 7).
That post-election suspense will determine the balance of power in Washington, as neither party appears to have a majority in the Senate at this time.
So far, the tally for the next Senate is 48 Republicans and 48 Democrats after Tuesday’s election. Two seats in Georgia head into the runoff on January 5. And the seats in North Carolina and Alaska are still too early to call.
The stakes are high for a momentous political struggle in Georgia during the final days of President Donald Trump’s failure in office.
READ: Trump says ‘elections are far from over’, campaign will challenge results in court
The state is sharply divided, with Democrats making headway over Republicans, driven by a surge in new voters. But no Democrat has been elected senator in about 20 years. Up to $ 500 million could be spent on the two races, said one strategist.
“Now we take Georgia and then we change America,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told a crowd celebrating Biden’s victory on Saturday in the streets of Brooklyn.
With a Democratic majority in the Senate, the party that also controls the House would have a firm grip on power in Washington. Biden would have freedom over the nominees, including for his cabinet, and the opportunity to push important parts of his legislative agenda in Congress.
If the Democrats fall short, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, could wield the power to control Biden’s ambitions.
“The Senate is the last line of defense,” the Senate Republican National Committee tweeted as soon as the presidential race was called for Biden. It was a fundraising appeal.
Republicans have been working to retain their majority, but even if they secure the last two elections where ballots are still counted in North Carolina and Alaska, they still would not reach the necessary 51 seats.
In North Carolina, Senator Thom Tillis is trying to fend off Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham in a close race that is too early to call. Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is the frontrunner for another term against Al Gross, an independent Democratic candidate.
The political mathematical problem for Republicans is that the vice president of the party occupying the White House casts the tiebreaker vote in the Senate. Next year she would be Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. That means 50 seats for Democrats would result in control of the House. But the Republicans would need 51 seats to consolidate their grip on power.
READ: Kamala Harris becomes the first black woman elected as US Vice President.
That would put Georgia on center stage, as many hope it will.
Both Senate seats in the state are now held by Republican incumbents. They were forced to run in the January runoff after no candidate reached the 50 percent threshold needed to win outright in multi-candidate races.
Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler will face Rafael Warnock, a black pastor, and Republican Senator David Perdue, a top Trump ally, will face Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff.
“Now more than ever, we NEED to keep the Senate in Republican hands,” Loeffler tweeted. She said Saturday that she and Perdue are “the last line of defense against the radical left.”
Ossoff’s campaign issued a new ad, detailing a “road to recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic and its economic consequences. He calls for advice from medical experts to deal with the virus and a massive infrastructure plan to create jobs.
“We need leaders to come together to do this,” Ossoff says in the ad.
Biden had been silent on the Senate balance sheet while awaiting the results of his own election, but offered a sneak peek before Tuesday’s election.
“I can’t tell you how important it is that we change the United States Senate. There is no state more transcendent than Georgia in that fight,” Biden said at a rally in Atlanta on Oct. 27, when he campaigned alongside Ossoff and Warnock.
Republicans agree. “Everything is at stake in Georgia,” said Steven Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, the McConnell-aligned outside group that invested heavily in maintaining control of the Senate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reminded her colleagues of the stakes for the entire game during the upcoming sprint.
“How we do it over the next two months will affect our performance in Georgia,” Pelosi told House Democrats, according to a person who was granted anonymity to discuss the convening of the private caucus. He reminded his colleagues to be “respectful.”
