Reverend Raphael Warnock is expected to win the second round of the Georgia Senate special election, drawing a Republican seat and bringing Democrats one step closer to unified control of Congress and the White House, according to NBC News.
The senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church will defeat current Republican Kelly Loeffler, a former business executive who has been appointed to temporarily occupy the Senate seat.
Warnock is the first black senator elected in Georgia and the first black Democratic senator elected in the south. He will be one of three black senators in Congress and the 11th black senator to serve in history.
“I come before you tonight as a man who knows that the improbable journey that took me to this place in this historic moment in America could only happen here,” Warnock said in a speech on Wednesday morning. “I promise you tonight: I am going to the Senate to work across Georgia, no matter who you vote for in this election.”
Even as Warnock led and the pending votes waned, Loeffler did not give in on Wednesday morning and said “we are going to win this election”.
Republican David Perdue, whose first term in the Senate ended on Sunday, also faced a second round against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff. NBC News did not project a winner for the race until Wednesday morning, as Ossoff leads with 98% of the votes counted.
With Warnock’s projected victory, the Democratic bench has 49 members in the upper house, while Senate Republicans have 50 seats. If Ossoff wins the second round, the Senate will be divided equally, giving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tiebreaker vote. Democratic control of Congress would give President-elect Joe Biden more leeway to approve his legislative priorities.
Warnock, 51, and Loeffler, 50, emerged as the top two in a crowded special election in November. The seat was opened after former Republican Senator Johnny Isakson retired early in his term. When no candidate received more than 50% of the vote in November, Georgia’s electoral rules dictated that the race be moved to the second round of January.
The special election between Loeffler and Warnock is the second most expensive Senate race ever, after only this year’s race between Perdue and Ossoff, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. The Loeffler and Warnock race drew nearly $ 363 million as of Monday.
In the election campaign, Warnock often highlighted his life journey, from growing up in a public building in Savannah to preaching in the celebrated Atlanta pulpit, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been.
Loeffler has repeatedly labeled his opponent a “radical liberal Raphael Warnock”, linking him to what she believes to be a socialist agenda, including “Medicare for Everyone”, the Green New Deal and the emptying of the police. Warnock himself does not support these policies, although he has advocated expanding Medicaid, investing in green energy and reforming criminal justice.
“He’s someone who would fundamentally change this country,” said Loeffler on Fox News on Sunday. “Their values are at odds with Georgia.”
Loeffler’s campaign used catchphrases from Warnock’s previous sermons to accuse him of being anti-weapons, anti-military, anti-police and anti-Israel. Warnock’s campaign said these clips were taken out of context and did not reflect their positions.
A coalition of black pastors in Georgia wrote an open letter in late December to Loeffler asking him to stop characterizing Warnock as “radical” or “socialist”.
“We see his attacks on Warnock as a broader attack on the Black Church and the faith traditions we uphold,” said the pastors.
Loeffler tried to link Warnock to a 1995 visit by Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro to a church where he had been a youth pastor. Warnock said he never met Castro, and PolitiFact found no evidence that he was involved in decisions about appearance.
Meanwhile, Warnock criticized Loeffler for taking a photo at a campaign event with white supremacist Chester Doles, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
“Kelly had no idea who he was, and if she did, she would have thrown him out immediately because we condemned in the strongest terms everything he stands for,” Loeffler’s spokesman Stephen Lawson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Republican Party Governor Brian Kemp has named Loeffler in part to appeal to the more moderate suburban women who are moving away from the Republican Party in response to Donald Trump’s presidency. Although Loeffler has previously supported Senator Mitt Romney, she has sided strongly with Trump since becoming a senator, including supporting his baseless allegations of widespread electoral fraud.
Loeffler refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory or that the president-elect won Georgia’s electoral votes. She announced in a note on Monday night that she would oppose the certification of the results of the Electoral College on Wednesday, a maneuver that should fail. The move came after Trump threatened Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Raffensperger, by phone and pressured the electoral officer to find popular votes that would skew the count in his favor and overturn the election results.
“Senator Loeffler has a responsibility to speak out against unfounded allegations of fraud, to defend Georgia’s election and to put Georgia ahead of herself. She did not and will never do so,” Warnock said in a statement on Sunday.
Warnock repeatedly accused Loeffler, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, of insider trading, saying she used the private knowledge she was given as a senator on the coronavirus pandemic to make beneficial stock deals in early 2020.
“She got rid of millions of dollars in shares, downplayed it and, when she could help ordinary people, she didn’t. And the people of Georgia haven’t seen relief in months,” Warnock said in a December 6 debate against Loeffler.
Loeffler and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, president of the New York Stock Exchange and president and CEO of his holding company Intercontinental Exchange, were examined in March for negotiations involving sales of up to $ 3 million in bonds. These sales occurred just before the stock market indexes fell dramatically in response to the Covid spread in the US
The senator’s investment activities led to investigations by the Justice Department, but prosecutors refused to open the charges. Loeffler has repeatedly denied allegations of illegal or improper stock trading.
Loeffler praised the CARES Act and the approval of Covid’s recent $ 900 billion relief bill as proof that it brought the necessary help to Georgian warriors during the pandemic. Democrats, she said, stopped efforts to approve an aid package earlier.
When Trump pushed for $ 2,000 higher stimulus checks, Warnock took the opportunity to criticize Loeffler for opposing a higher direct payment early in Covid’s relief negotiations. Loeffler later broke with many Senate Republicans to support the president’s push for $ 2,000 in direct payments to Americans.
The seat will be re-elected in 2022 for a six-year term in the Senate.