ATLANTA — Democrat Raphael Warnock won one of Georgia’s two U.S. Senate runoffs early Wednesday, becoming the first Black senator in his state’s history and putting the Senate majority within the Democrats’ reach.
Candidates were locked in tight races as Georgia officials tallied the final votes in the two critical elections that will determine control of the U.S. Senate and, in turn, the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.
The two Senate runoff elections were leftovers from the November general election, when none of the candidates hit the 50% threshold. Democrats need to win both races to seize the Senate majority — and, with it, control of the new Congress when Biden takes office in two weeks.
President Donald Trump encouraged his loyalists to turn out in force even as he undermined the integrity of the electoral system by pressing unfounded claims of voter fraud to explain away his own defeat in Georgia.
A pastor who spent the past 15 years leading the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Warnock defeated Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler. It was a stinging rebuke of Trump, who made one of his final trips in office to Georgia to rally his loyal base behind Loeffler and the Republican running for the other seat, Sen. David Perdue.
The other election pitted 71-year-old former business executive Perdue, a Republican who held his Senate seat until his term expired Sunday, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist. At just 33 years old, Ossoff would be the Senate’s youngest member.
As of Wednesday morning on the East Coast, it was too early for the Associated Press to call that race.
Gabriel Sterling, a top official with the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said voting was smooth throughout the state with minimal wait times.
AP VoteCast found that 6 in 10 Georgia voters say Senate party control was the most important factor in their vote.
In Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, 37-year-old Kari Callaghan said she voted “all Democrat” on Tuesday, an experience that was new for her.
“I’ve always been Republican, but I’ve been pretty disgusted by Trump and just the way the Republicans are working and especially the news this weekend about everything happening in Georgia,” she said.
But 56-year-old Will James said he voted “straight GOP.”
He said he was concerned by the Republican candidates’ recent support of Trump’s challenges of the presidential election results in Georgia, “but it didn’t really change the reasons I voted.”
“I believe in balance of power, and I don’t want either party to have a referendum, basically,” he said.
