Rev. Raphael Warnock is expected to win the Georgia Senate special round of elections, flip a Republican seat and bring 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 incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler, a former businessman appointed to temporarily fill the Senate seat.
Warnock is the first black senator to be elected from Georgia and the first Democratic black senator to be elected from the south. He will be one of three black senators in Congress and the 11th black senator to ever serve.
“I come before you tonight as a man who knows that the unlikely journey that led me to this place in America at this historic moment can only take place here,” Warnock said early Wednesday morning in a speech. “I promise you this tonight: I’m going to the Senate to work for all of Georgia, regardless of who you vote for in this election.”
Even when Warnock took the lead and the number of outstanding votes declined, Loeffler did not give in on Wednesday morning, claiming “we are going to win these elections”.
Republican David Perdue, whose first term in the Senate ended Sunday, also faced a second round against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff. NBC News has not projected a winner in that race as of Wednesday morning, as Ossoff is in the lead with 98% of the expected votes counted.
With Warnock’s expected victory, the Democratic caucus has 49 members in the upper chamber, while Senate Republicans have 50 seats. If Ossoff wins the remaining second race, the Senate will be split evenly, giving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the shared vote. Democratic control over Congress would give President-elect Joe Biden more leeway to set his legislative priorities.
Warnock, 51, and Loeffler, 50, emerged as the top two winners of a busy November special pageant. The seat opened after former Republican Senator Johnny Isakson retired early in his tenure. When no candidate got more than 50% of the vote in November, Georgia’s electoral rules called for the race to move to a January second round.
The special election between Loeffler and Warnock is the second-most expensive senate race ever, just after this year’s match between Perdue and Ossoff, according to the impartial Center for Responsive Politics. Loeffler and Warnock’s race pulled nearly $ 363 million on Monday.
During the campaign trail, Warnock often highlighted his life’s journey, from growing up in Savannah’s public housing to preaching in the legendary Atlanta pulpit where Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. once stood.
Loeffler repeatedly labeled her opponent as “radically liberal Raphael Warnock,” and tied him to what she believes is a socialist agenda, including “Medicare for All,” the Green New Deal, and the firing of the police. Warnock himself does not support this policy, although he has advocated for Medicaid expansion, green energy investment and criminal justice reform.
“He is someone who would fundamentally change this country,” Loeffler told Fox News on Sunday. “His values are not in line with Georgia.”
Loeffler’s campaign used sound bites from Warnock’s earlier sermons to accuse him of being anti-gun, anti-military, anti-police, and anti-Israel. The Warnock campaign said those clips were taken out of context and do not reflect his views.
A coalition of black pastors in Georgia wrote an open letter to Loeffler at the end of December, asking that Warnock no longer be labeled “radical” or “socialist.”
“We see your attacks on Warnock as a broader attack on the Black Church and the faith traditions we stand for,” said the pastors.
Loeffler tried to link Warnock to a visit by Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro in 1995 to a church where he was a youth pastor. Warnock said he had never met Castro and PolitiFact found no evidence that he was involved in any decisions regarding appearance.
Meanwhile, Warnock beat up Loeffler for snapping a photo during a campaign event with White supremacist Chester Doles, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
“Kelly had no idea who that was, and if she did, she would have immediately kicked him out for condemning everything he stands for in the loudest of terms,” Loeffler spokesman Stephen Lawson told The Atlanta Journal- Constitution.
GOP Governor Brian Kemp has partially appointed Loeffler to appeal to more moderate suburban women who have shifted from the GOP in response to Donald Trump’s presidency. While Loeffler once backed Senator Mitt Romney, she has had a strong bond with Trump since becoming a Senator, including by backing his baseless claims about widespread electoral fraud.
Loeffler has refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory or that the president-elect won Georgia’s electoral votes. She announced in a statement Monday evening that she would oppose certification of the Electoral College results on Wednesday, a maneuver that is expected to fail. The move came after Trump threatened Georgian Republican Secretary of State Raffensperger via a phone call and pressured the election official to find popular votes that would tilt the count in his favor and destroy the election results.
Senator Loeffler has the responsibility to speak out against the baseless allegations of fraud, to defend the election of Georgia and put Georgia first. She has not and never will, “Warnock said in a statement Sunday. .
Warnock repeatedly accused Loeffler, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, of insider trading, saying that she used the private knowledge she had gained as a senator about the coronavirus pandemic to conduct profitable stock trading in early 2020.
“She threw out millions of dollars in stock, played it out, and when she could help ordinary people, she didn’t. And the people of Georgia haven’t seen relief for months,” Warnock said on December 6. debate against Loeffler.
Loeffler and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and chairman and CEO of the holding company Intercontinental Exchange, came under scrutiny in March for transactions selling up to $ 3 million in securities. Those sales came just before the stock market indices fell dramatically in value in response to Covid’s spread in the US.
The senator’s investment activities led to investigations by the Justice Department, but prosecutors declined to press charges. Loeffler has repeatedly denied allegations of illegal or inappropriate stock trading.
Loeffler praised the CARES law and the approval of the recent $ 900 billion Covid bill as evidence that she provided much-needed help to struggling Georgians during the pandemic. Democrats, she said, stopped efforts to pass on an aid package earlier.
When Trump pushed for larger $ 2,000 stimulus vouchers, Warnock took the opportunity to criticize Loeffler for opposing greater direct payment earlier in the Covid emergency relief negotiations. Loeffler later broke with many Senate Republicans to support the president’s push for $ 2,000 direct payments to Americans.
The seat will be eligible for re-election in the Senate for a six-year term in 2022.