The Democratic twin victories in Georgia have huge implications for President-elect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda, as he will not be forced to navigate a Republican Senate and negotiate with majority leader Mitch McConnell during the early years of his administration.
Georgia’s results also represent a triumphant end to the Democrats’ 2020 campaign season, which began last year with high hopes of regaining control of the Senate.
Instead, Democratic candidates fell short on many battlegrounds across the country, while disputes over Georgia’s two Senate seats moved on to the second round after no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote in the November election.
In that election, Perdue – a former business executive and first-term senator – narrowly missed the 50 percent limit for re-election, but still managed to get about 88,000 votes ahead of Ossoff.
Since then, the two candidates have been in a one-on-one dispute, with Ossoff repeatedly attacking Perdue over the timing of his stock negotiations amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Ossoff leveled especially fierce criticism during a debate in October, prompting Perdue to skip a subsequent televised forum in December.
For his part, Perdue often pointed to the fact that he won tens of thousands of votes more than Ossoff in November, and accused his opponent of being a “trust baby” with “scandalous ties” to foreign powers.
In recent weeks, however, the battle for Perdue’s re-election has become increasingly entangled with President Donald Trump’s own efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 White House race.
The president’s particular interest in reversing the election results in Georgia, where he lost to Biden, complicated the campaign by Loeffler and Perdue – who clung to Trump while he attacked Governor Brian Kemp and other Republican state officials.
The two candidates sought to defend the president’s allegations of electoral fraud, while pleading with Republican voters to return to the polls in January for runoff contests.
Perdue was also quick to express support for Trump’s offer to raise coronavirus stimulus checks to $ 2,000, a last-minute demand from the president that broke with the public stance of most Senate Republicans.
But after McConnell blocked the proposal, Ossoff and Warnock started campaigning for increased payments.
More recently, runoff runs have been shaken by news of a connection between Trump and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which the president pressured the state’s top electoral officer to “find” enough votes to nullify the victory of Biden.
Republican lawmakers and party officials were increasingly anxious that Trump’s rhetoric aimed at sowing doubts about Georgia’s electoral processes could cost Republicans the Senate.
And in the last few days before the election, Perdue was forced to abandon the campaign when he started quarantining after coming into close contact with an individual who tested positive for the coronavirus.
Ossoff, 33, is the youngest Democrat elected to the Senate since Biden in 1972.