With Warnock’s second run-off 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. There will be divided government,however,given Republicans narrowly flipped control of the House of Representatives last month.
“After a hard-fought campaign – or,should I say,campaigns – it is my honour to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy:the people have spoken,” Warnock,53,told jubilant supporters who packed a downtown Atlanta hotel ballroom.
Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock holds his son Caleb Warnock during an election night watch party in Atlanta. Warnock,a pastor,beat Trump-backed Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a run-off election in Georgia.AP
“I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children,” declared Warnock,a Baptist pastor and his state’s first black senator. “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.”
In last month’s election,Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast,but fell short of the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid the second round. Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver – who tallied 2.1 per cent of votes cast on November 8 – prevented either from taking a majority.
Walker,a football legend who first gained fame at the University of Georgia and later in the NFL in the 1980s,was unable to overcome a bevy of damaging allegations,including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions.
The race was also the last test of Donald Trump’s clout with voters as he seeks the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in 2024. The former president had a mixed record in his most competitive endorsements for Congress in the November midterm elections,including Walker.
Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka watch as former NFL player Herschel Walker throws a football during a White House event in 2018. Herschel joins a long line of Trump-backed candidates who lost in the the midterms.AP
“The numbers look like they’re not going to add up,” Walker told supporters late into the count at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta. “There’s no excuses in life,and I’m not going to make any excuses now because we put up one heck of a fight.”
The run-off set early voting records in Georgia in a race that has become the most expensive of the 2022 US midterm election season,with more than $US400 million ($600 million) spent.
Cold,rainy conditions greeted voters in the Atlanta area. At an elementary school in suburban Johns Creek,lines formed before the polls opened but later moved swiftly with voters undeterred by the weather.
Retired firefighter Keith Fields,58,showed up at the polls at 6am - an hour before they opened - to cast his ballot for Walker in Smyrna. He said he backed Walker because of his stance on immigration,taxes and abortion without exceptions.
Herschel Walker and Democrat senator Raphael Warnock.Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“It’s not so much Herschel as the man,but I do like the man,but I’m also voting for the policies that he is going to vote for,” Fields said.
The vote brings to a close a bitter fight between Warnock,the state’s first black senator and the senior minister of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King jnr preached,and Walker,a former University of Georgia football star and political novice who has campaigned with the support of Trump.
A Warnock victory solidifies Georgia’s status as a battleground heading into the 2024 presidential election.
Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock poses with supporters during an election day event in Norcross,Georgia.AP
Last month,Walker,60,ran more than 200,000 votes behind Republican Governor Brian Kemp after a campaign dogged by his meandering speeches and damaging allegations,including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions — accusations that Walker has denied.
Atlanta voter Tom Callaway praised the Republican Party’s strength in Georgia and said he’d supported Kemp in the opening round of voting. But he cast his ballot Tuesday for Warnock because he didn’t think “Herschel Walker has the credentials to be a senator”.
“I didn’t believe he had a statement of what he really believed in or had a campaign that made sense,” Callaway said.
Warnock,whose 2021 victory was in a special election to serve out the remainder of GOP Senator Johnny Isakson’s term,had said he had convinced enough voters,including independents and moderate Republicans who supported Kemp,and deserved a full term.
“I think they’re going to get this right,” the 53-year-old senator said on Monday. “They know this race is about competence and character.”
AP,Reuters
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