Georgia delivers U.S. Senate to Democrats

ATLANTA • Democrats on Wednesday completed a sweep of the two U.S. Senate seats up for grabs in run-off elections in Georgia, giving the party control of the chamber and boosting the prospects for president-elect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.

Raphael Warnock, a Baptist preacher from Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, beat Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler to become the first Black senator in the deep South state’s history while Democrat Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker who at 33 will be the Senate’s youngest member, beat Republican David Perdue.

The Georgia results are a last-minute repudiation of outgoing President Donald Trump, who stands to be the first U.S. president since 1932 to lose the White House and both chambers of Congress in a single term. Democrats now have narrow control of both chambers of Congress, making it easier to appoint liberal-leaning judges and advance legislative priorities from coronavirus relief to climate change when Biden takes office on Jan. 20.

“Georgia’s voters delivered a resounding message yesterday: they want action on the crises we face and they want it right now,” Biden said in a statement. He said he would work with both parties to confirm key administration officials quickly.

Trump held rallies for both Republican candidates, but overshadowed the campaign with false accusations that his own loss in the November presidential election in Georgia was tainted by fraud, repeatedly attacking Republican officials in the state.

Winning both contests hands Democrats narrow control of the Senate by creating a 50-50 split and giving vice president-elect Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote from Jan. 20. The party already has a thin majority in the U.S. House.

T he campaign’s final days were overshadowed by Trump’s attempts to pressure Republican Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s win in the state, as well as his unfounded fraud accusations. He has yet to admit defeat.

“We will never give up, we will never concede,” Trump told thousands of supporters at a rally.

Some Republicans blamed Trump for the Georgia losses. “It turns out that telling the voters that the election is rigged is not a great way to turn out your voters,” Senator Mitt Romney, one of Trump’s few Republican critics in Congress, told reporters.

The election signalled a shift in Georgia. At least 4.5 million voters participated, smashing earlier turnout figures for run-off races. Democrats have worked hard to increase turnout among Black voters, their most reliable supporters in the region.

Both Republican senators, following Trump’s lead, vowed to fight on. “We will mobilize every available resource and exhaust every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots are counted,” Perdue said in a statement.