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WASHINGTON – The Democratic Party appears willing to retake control of the United States Senate. He has flipped one of the two seats in a historic second-round victory in Georgia state and leads the other as of late Wednesday morning (January 6).
Democrat Raphael Warnock, a 51-year-old pastor of the former congregation of civil rights giant Martin Luther King Jr, will become Georgia’s first black senator with his defeat of Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler.
Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff has declared victory with a slim 16,000-vote lead over his Republican opponent David Perdue, a gap that is expected to widen as the remaining votes to be counted come from areas that have a strong Democratic bias.
At 33, he will be the first Jewish senator from Georgia and the youngest in the country since President-elect Joe Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1973 at age 30.
The results were a surprising change from November, when both Democrats scored slightly lower than Republicans.
They underscored the political shift in the formerly deeply Republican state of Georgia, which has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1996 but voted for Biden in November after months of campaigning and voter registration drives by Democratic activists and organizers. local.
It could also indicate a rejection of US President Donald Trump, who personally campaigned in Georgia on behalf of Republican senators, and his divisive policy and strategy of falsely alleging voter fraud. It doubled on Tuesday when Warnock’s victory became probable, stating without evidence on Twitter that the election was rigged against Republicans.
Mr. Warnock paid tribute to his mother and highlighted the improbability of his trip made possible “because this is America”, as he promised to work for all Georgians.
“The other day, 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 a video message to late at night to supporters.
If the Democrats change the Senate, they will have unified control of Congress and the White House for the first time since 2009, albeit by a narrower majority.
Both Democrats and Republicans will have 50 Senate seats if Ossoff wins, giving Vice President Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote.
It could take days to get a final tally of the outcome of the Perdue-Ossoff contest, as 17,000 military and foreign votes, and some domestic absentee votes, can still be counted through Friday. The narrow results will almost certainly lead to legal challenges or recount that could also delay a final determination of Senate control, according to the Bloomberg news service.
Meanwhile, Washington is gearing up for a big drama Wednesday as Congress meets to count and announce the victory of Biden’s electoral college.
The day could see internal GOP tensions flare openly in Congress as pro-Trump protesters take to the streets. But all of that wouldn’t change Biden’s electoral college victory over Trump from 306 to 232.
The House of Representatives and the Senate will meet in a constitutionally prescribed joint session beginning at 1:00 p.m. to count electoral votes, all of which have been legally certified by the states.
Mr. Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, will preside over a list of the 50 states and Washington DC. Each state’s sealed certificates, containing their electoral votes, will be officially opened and counted.
If at least one senator and one member of the House of Representatives object to the results of a state, both houses will debate the objection separately and vote on whether to support it. To override a result, the House and Senate must agree by a simple majority to do so.
So far, 13 Republican senators and about 140 congressmen had said they would object to the results, likely in at least six states where Biden won: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But 23 Republican senators had said they would not join the objections, which are sure to fail, given Democratic control of the House.
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