Troubles pile up for Trump as Democrats hold Senate
Raphael Warnock’s victory in Georgia underlines Republican woes ahead of 2024 White House race
DONALD TRUMP suffered a further setback with US voters yesterday as another of his Republican protégés was defeated in the race for the final Senate seat in the midterm elections.
In the southern state of Georgia, Herschel Walker, a former American football star, lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock, a pastor at the church of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, leaving President Joe Biden in control of the Senate with a 51-49 Democrat majority.
The defeat has dented Mr Trump’s chances of returning to the White House in 2024, as Republicans lambasted the former president for backing the scandal-prone Mr Walker, who failed to win in a traditionally Republican state.
Scott Jennings, a former aide to Mitch Mcconnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said: “Georgia may be remembered as the state that broke Trump once and for all.”
Matt Whitlock, a Republican strategist, said: “Georgia has grown impervious to Trump’s charms. If he’s on a future ballot there, I’d count the state in the blue column (again).”
The Georgia race went to a runoff after neither candidate reached 50 per cent on midterm election day on Nov 8.
Before the midterm elections, the Senate was split 50-50 and Democrats had to rely on the casting vote held by the vice- president, Kamala Harris.
The additional seat means any single recalcitrant Democrat senator is less likely to be able to block Mr Biden’s legislative initiatives, as Senator Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, has done repeatedly over the past two years.
It also gives Democrats greater control of Senate committees, speeding up confirmation of Mr Biden’s judicial nominees and other appointees.
Additionally, Ms Harris will not have to be in Washington to cast tie-breaking votes, allowing the White House to send her around the country to promote Mr Biden’s agenda.
The Democrat victory also boosted the chances of Mr Biden, 80, running for a second term in office in 2024.
Last night, it emerged that Jill Biden, the First Lady, told Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, at a recent state dinner that she and her husband were “absolutely” ready to run again.
Mr Macron reportedly then led the table in a playful toast to Mr Biden’s 2024 campaign, raising a glass of wine while the US president held up his glass of Coca-cola.
Mr Biden is expected to make a formal announcement early next year on whether he will seek re-election.
The president hailed the Georgia result as a rejection of “Ultra Maga-ism”, a reference to Mr Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda.
Mr Biden won a surprise victory in the state in 2020 and both of its US senators are Democrats. Mr Warnock won 50.8 per cent of the vote and Mr Walker took 49.2 per cent.
Following the result, Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social social media platform: “Our country is in big trouble. What a mess!”
The Georgia runoff setback comes after defeats for Trump-backed midterm candidates in other key states for Republicans including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and New Hampshire.
The race, between two black candidates, became a focus for both parties with an estimated $400 million (£328million) spent on campaigning. Mr Walker campaigned against abortion but faced allegations, which he denied, that he had paid for former girlfriends to have abortions.
In his victory speech in Atlanta, Mr Warnock said his mother “grew up picking somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco. But tonight, she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator”.
He said: “I am Georgia. I am an example and an iteration of its history, of its pain and its promise.”