Senate control, Biden’s agenda at stake in Georgia

CUTHBERT, Ga. — Control of the U.S. Senate — and with it, the likely fate of Presidentelect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda — will be on the ballot on Tuesday when voters in Georgia decide twin runoff elections.

The high-stakes campaign that has unfolded since Nov. 3, when Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the presidential election, has obliterated spending records and spurred unprecedented turnout. Political groups have flooded the southern state with a tsunami of television advertising.

Biden, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican, will visit today, underscoring the political stakes of the contests.

If either or both Republican incumbent senators — David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — win on Tuesday, their party would retain a narrow majority, effectively giving Senate Republicans the ability to block Biden’s most ambitious goals. A Democratic sweep would produce a 50-50 split, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris holding the tiebreaker that determines control.

Democrat Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, is challenging Perdue, while the Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at the historic Black church Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, will take on Loeffler.

Biden’s narrow Georgia victory in November — the first in a generation for a Democratic presidential candidate — completed the state’s shift from a Republican stronghold to a fiercely competitive battleground.