Democratic Reverend Raphael Warnock won a US Senate seat in Georgia, defeating Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler in one of the January 5 run-off elections.
The race was called by the Vox electoral partner’s Decision Bureau at 11:13 pm Eastern Time.
Warnock’s victory is historic; he is the first black senator to be elected in Georgia, who fought alongside the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Warnock is the 11th black candidate ever elected to the Senate and will be one of only three black senators in the current Congress, along with Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Tim Scott (R-SC).
“Georgia is Martin Luther King Jr.’s home state,” Warnock told Vox in an interview this fall. “It has long been the spearhead for change in America. And I think that through this movement that we are building, once again it will be a central focus for this change. “
Warnock’s victory signifies a potential change in Georgian politics. This comes a few months after Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992. House Democrats also changed their only district governed by the Republican Party in 2020 in Georgia’s Seventh Congressional District, in the suburbs of Atlanta.
Another Senate run-off between Republican Senator David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff has yet to be called.
This state, once strongly conservative, has undergone immense demographic changes in recent years, but it has also seen an increasingly organized Democratic Party. Democrats can thank voting rights groups that seek to attract mass colored voters for Warnock’s victory, which was powered by non-white voters.
“We knocked on our 2 million door yesterday, made 5 million phone calls, 3 million text messages to Georgia voters,” said Nsé Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, a voting rights group, to Vox. “We were all surprised by the results of the November elections and I keep Georgia as a battle state.”
What Warnock’s victory means for Senate control and Biden’s agenda
President-elect Joe Biden won the presidency on November 3, but he has little chance of meeting the bold agenda he proposed without Congressional membership.
Biden is taking office in the face of several crises: the Covid-19 pandemic is worsening in the United States, even though vaccines are starting to be distributed across the country, and millions of people are still out of work due to coronavirus-related layoffs. After months of party stalemate, Congress was able to approve a $ 900 billion economic aid package before the new year. Biden said he wants more economic stimulus, but whether a future package can be approved will be largely determined by which party controls the Senate.
Democrats will have to fight Senate Republicans anyway. Winning both seats in Georgia would give Democrats 50 seats in the Senate, in addition to vice president-elect Kamala Harris serving as a crucial tiebreaker for the simple majority of votes. (To be clear, Georgia’s other dispute has not yet been called, so we still don’t know which party will control the Senate).
The problem is that most bills need an absolute majority of 60 votes in the Senate. So even if Democrats have control of the Senate, they still need about 10 Republican votes to get things done – unless they vote to remove the obstruction and change the Senate rules to a simple majority vote in the legislation. Several Democrats, including West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, are firmly opposed to this.
Warnock’s victory means that Democrats will have to win fewer Republican senators to do some basic work; now they have yet another reliable vote in the routine but important Senate functions, such as confirmation by the Biden Office or judicial appointments.
Warnock’s victory in Georgia takes Democrats one step closer to governance.