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Thursday, December 8, 2022
Voters in the US state of Georgia elected Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock to a full term Tuesday in a runoff. Democrats have now won 51 seats in the Senate, giving them a majority of two.
Warnock attracted voters with a manifesto promising increased voting rights, abortion rights, and bipartisanship.
Warnock, a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church (where Martin Luther King, Jr. once preached), was first elected to the Senate in a 2021 special election runoff; his defeat of Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler made him the first African American to represent Georgia in the Senate.
Warnock’s opponent, Republican Herschel Walker, was a college football player for the University of Georgia and is now a “multimillionare businessman”.
After neither man won a majority in the general election on November 8 (although Warnock barely finished ahead then), they were obliged to participate in Tuesday’s runoff. As of Thursday, with 99% of the expected votes in, Warnock has won with 51.4% to Walker’s 48.6%.
Walker conceded the race on Tuesday night at Atlanta’s College Football Hall of Fame: “The numbers look like they’re not going to add up…There’s [sic] no excuses in life, and I’m not going to make any excuses now because we put up one heck of a fight.”
Warnock also addressed his supporters in Atlanta, declaring, “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…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.”
The Senate is composed of 100 Senators who serve six-year terms; each state elects two. For a party to fully control the Senate, they need an outright majority of 51 seats, as Democrats currently have, or 50 seats and the vice presidency. The new session of the US Congress will begin on January 3.