The victory of Ossoff and that of his Georgia Democratic colleague, Rev. Raphael Warnock, reverses the Senate, giving President-elect Joe Biden the power to enact comprehensive and liberal legislation and promote cabinet nominations without Republican support. The party’s Senate split will be 50-50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris breaking the vote.
Warnock, the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and Ossoff will be, respectively, the first black and Jewish senators to represent Georgia.
“In this time of crisis, while Covid-19 continues to devastate our state and our country, when hundreds of thousands lost their lives, millions lost their livelihood, Georgia’s families are having a hard time putting food on the table – fearing foreclosure or eviction, having a hard time making ends meet – let’s unite now to beat this virus and hasten economic aid to the people of our state and the American people, “said Ossoff on Wednesday before the CNN projection.
After no Georgia Senate candidate received 50% of the vote in November, disputes turned to two second rounds with Senate control at stake. While Ossoff and Warnock vied for unity, Trump refused to admit his own defeat, sparking a fight within the Republican Party and disenchanting some of his supporters, who believed in their false claims that the vote was rigged.
Trump’s continued attack on Republican officials responsible for the elections put pressure on the two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, to make a choice: join the president in an attempt to overturn the democratic outcome or risk losing Trump supporters.
Despite three recounts and no evidence of widespread fraud, Loeffler and Perdue decided to join the president in supporting an objection to Congress’ certification of the results of the Electoral College on Wednesday in a final and deluded show of devotion to Trump supporters.
“I’m obviously disappointed,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a former Georgia Republican strategist. “Clearly the distractions and secondary presentations impacted the result.”
Progressives are already looking at how Democrats should use their new power, advocating that the Senate “go nuclear” and remove obstruction, which requires most legislation to get 60 votes to move forward in order to approve a more ambitious agenda . Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York evaded a question on Wednesday about whether his caucus will lower the limit for a simple majority vote, saying he is united in wanting “big, bold changes” and “discuss the best ways to do this..”
He said “one of the first” projects he would like to approve as a Senate majority leader would provide $ 2,000 stimulus checks to help Americans suffering from the coronavirus pandemic, which Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, recently blocked, despite President Donald Trump’s support for strengthening aid. Democratic senators, who have been in the minority for six years, are now considering how to handle their hammers on various committees to deal with health and economic crises.
“Georgia voters delivered a resounding message yesterday: they want action in the crises we face and they want it now,” said Biden in a statement. “At Covid-19, economic relief, climate, racial justice, the right to vote and more.”
Schumer will have a tiny margin of error when balancing the priorities of the left and the politically vulnerable.
Democrats have recognized the intraparty struggle that lies ahead. Maine’s independent senator Angus King, who agrees with Democrats, told CNN that he is “very reluctant” to remove the obstruction, but hopes to change the rules to discourage his “abuses”.
Montana Democratic Senator Jon Tester, a moderate facing a 2024 election in his red state, said on Wednesday that he hoped the obstruction would continue to encourage bipartisanship.
“Bipartisan legislation tends to stand the test of time,” said Tester.
But the left wants Schumer to get rid of him so that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and the Senate can approve her long-awaited wish list. Massachusetts Democratic MP Ayanna Pressley tweeted on Wednesday that “the movement” to end cash bail, abolish immigration and customs enforcement and support black lives “has organized to deliver” Congress and the House White. “It’s time to deliver it to them,” she said.
A Democratic-led Senate can also confirm Biden’s nominees without Republican support, allowing the new government to be bolder in its cabinet choices and begin to review the conservative’s massive gains on the judicial bench in the past four years.
“Obviously, with Democratic control [of the Senate], Joe Biden’s ability to advance nominations will be easier, ”said Schumer.
Perdue and Loeffler entered the second round of the Senate with some advantages. Loeffler, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, spent tens of millions on his run, while Perdue, a first-term senator and former CEO of the Fortune 500, won 88,000 more votes than 33-year-old Ossoff two months ago .
Warnock and Ossoff campaigned to end the coronavirus crisis, which infected more than 20.8 million Americans and killed at least 354,000 in order to reopen the economy. They pushed for a debt-free public college and a new Voting Rights Act. And they attacked Republican senators for their multimillion-dollar stock transactions during the pandemic, claiming they profited from it. The senators denied any wrongdoing.
But Loeffler and Perdue’s campaigns were quickly overwhelmed by Trump’s attacks on the Democratic outcome. Trump recently appeared to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on a private call, urging him to “find” enough votes to reverse his defeat in Georgia, a state that all Republican presidential candidates have won since 1996. Raffensperger, a Republican, refused.
Perdue and Loeffler tried to avoid the intra-party struggle by focusing their comments on their Democratic opponents.
Perdue’s final message was fraught with attacks, saying in a one-minute video that if Republicans lose, undocumented immigrants will vote, Americans’ private health insurance will be “removed” and Democrats will package the Supreme Court and take police money.
“We won Georgia, we saved America,” said Perdue to the camera.
But Warnock and Ossoff countered that they would “demilitarize” rather than strip the police, create a legal path for undocumented immigrants and support a public option to decrease the number of uninsured. None of the Democratic candidates advocated adding judges to the court.
“Kelly Loeffler spends tens of millions of dollars to scare you,” said Warnock in an ad. “She is trying to make you afraid of me because she is afraid of you. Afraid that you will understand how she used her position in the Senate to enrich herself and others like her. Afraid that you realize that we can do best.”
Now, Democrats will face the question of how far they will go after the Trump administration. They spent Wednesday celebrating their rapid reversal of fortune after being out of power for so long.
“I think we’re going to do great things,” said Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. “I think the overwhelming number of Democrats is pointing in the same direction in all of this. Some faster than others, but all in the same direction.”
This story was updated with further developments on Wednesday.
Lauren Fox and CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.