Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won the Georgia runoff election conducted on Tuesday, December 6, 2022. He becomes Georgia’s first Black Senator.
Warnock defeated Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, ensuring Democrats an outright majority in the Senate for the rest of President Joe Biden’s current term.
With Warnock’s second runoff victory in as many years, Democrats will have a 51-49 Senate majority, gaining a seat from the current 50-50 split with John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania.
“After a hard-fought campaign or, should I say, campaigns, it is my honor to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy: The people have spoken,” Warnock told jubilant supporters who filled a downtown Atlanta hotel ballroom.
“I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children. Georgia, you have been praying with your lips and your legs, your hands and your feet, your heads and your hearts. You have put in the hard work, and here we are standing together.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock
In last month’s election, Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast, but fell short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
The senator appeared to be headed for a wider final margin in Tuesday’s runoff, with Walker, a football legend at the University of Georgia and in the NFL, unable to overcome a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions despite supporting a national ban on the procedure.
Walker benefited during the campaign from nearly unmatched name recognition from his football career, yet he faced questions about his past, including his exaggerations of his business achievements, academic credentials and philanthropic activities.
Democrats’ Georgia victory strengthens the state’s place as a Deep South battleground two years after Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff won 2021 runoffs that gave the party Senate control just months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate in 30 years to win Georgia.
Voters returned Raphael Warnock to the Senate in the same cycle they reelected Republican Gov. Brian Kemp by a comfortable margin and chose an all Republican slate of statewide constitutional officers.
Democrats’ new outright majority in the Senate means the party will no longer have to negotiate a power-sharing deal with Republicans and won’t have to rely on Vice President Kamala Harris to break as many tie votes.
National Democrats celebrated the win, with Biden tweeting a photo of his congratulatory phone call to the senator.
“Georgia voters stood up for our democracy, rejected Ultra MAGAism, and … sent a good man back to the Senate,” Biden tweeted, making reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
About 3.3 Million Votes Were Cast In Total
About 1.9 million runoff votes were cast in Georgia by mail and during early voting. A robust Election Day turnout added about 1.4 million more, slightly more than the Election Day totals in November and in 2020.
Total turnout still trailed the 2021 runoff turnout of about 4.5 million.
Voting rights groups cited the changes made by state lawmakers after the 2020 election that shortened the period for runoffs, from nine weeks to four, as a reason for the decline in early and mail voting.
Warnock emphasized his willingness to work across the aisle and his personal values, strengthened by his status as senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.
With Herschel Walker’s defeat, he joins failed Senate nominees; Dr. Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona, Adam Laxalt of Nevada and Don Bolduc of New Hampshire as Trump loyalists who ultimately lost races that Republicans once thought they could win.
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