Warnock Wins Georgia(Dems Have The Senate No Deals with Munchin)Midnight Train!!

(1 or 1.5 minutes read)

Midnight Train to Georgia, it gave the Dems the senate plus one which means no 
deals with singular Senators to get personal things Vs. The Nation (the munchkins)

 

ATLANTA — Senator Raphael Warnock defeated his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, in a runoff election that capped a grueling and costly campaign, securing a 51-seat Democratic majority and giving the first Black senator from Georgia a full six-year term.

Mr. Warnock’s victory was called by The Associated Press late Tuesday evening as the senator’s lead was expanding to 51 percent compared with Mr. Walker’s 49 percent. It ended a marathon midterm election cycle in which Democrats defied history, limiting the loss of House seats that typically greets the party that holds the White House, and now gaining a seat in the Senate.

Throughout one of the most expensive Senate races in American history, Mr. Warnock used the cadences and lofty language he honed as the senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church to ask Georgia voters to rise above the acrimony and division of Donald J. Trump’s politics.

“I am Georgia,” he proclaimed Tuesday night in Atlanta, invoking the martyrs and heroes of the civil rights movement and the small towns and growing cities of his childhood. “I am an example and an iteration of its history, of its peril and promise, of the brutality and the possibilities. But because this is America, because we always have a path to make our country greater against unspeakable odds, here we stand together.”

He uttered what he called the four most powerful words in a democracy: “The people have spoken.”

The defeat of Mr. Walker, who was handpicked by Mr. Trump, culminated a disastrous year for the former president, who set himself up as a Republican kingmaker, only to watch his Senate candidates in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire — as well as his picks for governor in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia — go on to defeat in primaries or in last month’s general election.

Mr. Walker’s loss will almost certainly lead to soul-searching for a Republican Party that must decide heading into the 2024 election how firmly to tether itself to a former president who has now absorbed powerful political blows in three successive campaign cycles. An exhausted-looking Mr. Walker spoke only briefly after his defeat, asking his supporters at an event at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, “We’ve had a tough journey, have we not?” He added, “God is good.”

The Georgia result also holds a bold message about race in the rising New South.

Senator Raphael Warnock took the stage on Tuesday night in Atlanta after winning Georgia’s Senate runoff election. “I am Georgia,” he told supporters. Credit...Nicole Craine for 

The New York Times

 

 

 

Mr. Warnock’s supporters at his election-night party. The senator is one of just three Black lawmakers now serving in the Senate.

Mr. Warnock’s supporters at his election-night party. The senator is one of just three Black lawmakers now serving in the Senate. Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times

Mr. Warnock was the first Black person from Georgia to be elected to the Senate when he won a 2021 runoff. Republicans chose another Black candidate to try to deny him a full term — a former football star with no political experience and little ideological depth — elevating the role of race and identity in a contest where the Republican candidate denied the existence of racism and the Democrat spoke of painful injustices that have yet to be remedied.

Now, with six years ahead of him in the chamber, Mr. Warnock will remain part of a stunningly small group: Of the more than 2,000 people who have served in the United States Senate, only 11 have been Black. Of the Senate’s 100 current members, just three are Black: Mr. Warnock; Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; and Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina.

Mr. Warnock’s campaign officials said on Tuesday that they intentionally treaded lightly on the racial dynamics of the matchup against Mr. Walker, understanding that a heavy-handed message on race could alienate moderate white voters. Mr. Warnock was also wary of running a negative campaign while maintaining his post behind the pulpit of a high-profile church.

Instead, in the final weeks of the general election campaign, the Warnock team segued to a violent episode from Mr. Walker’s past. The campaign and allied groups poured more money into advertisements highlighting the account of Mr. Walker’s ex-wife, who said he had threatened her life.

To Republicans who have said the strong turnout in the general election and the runoff showed the absence of any voter suppression, Mr. Warnock disagreed. “Just because people endured long lines that wrapped around buildings, some blocks long, just because they endured the rain and the cold and all kinds of tricks in order to vote,” Mr. Warnock said, “doesn’t mean that voter suppression does not exist. It simply means that you, the people, have decided that your voices will not be silenced.”

Mr. Warnock and his Democratic allies funneled millions of dollars into the race, outspending Mr. Walker by more than two to one in less than a month. By the final week of the runoff campaign, Mr. Warnock had topped $53 million on the airwaves, while Republicans had spent only $24 million. That was just a fraction of the $400 million spent in total on the race by the candidates, their committees, and outside groups during the midterm election cycle, according to OpenSecrets, a group that tracks money in politics.

Mr. Warnock won with overwhelming support from Black voters, who make up one-third of Georgia’s electorate and are integral to its Democratic base. Black voters in Georgia expressed disappointment, even anger, on Tuesday at what they saw as an effort to manipulate them to support a flawed Republican candidate who they believed had been selected because of his race by political figures who would dictate his actions.  

“Herschel Walker is a product of Georgia politics,” Aisha Horan, 47, said after casting her ballot on Tuesday for Mr. Warnock at the Cobb County Civic Center in Marietta. “Someone looked around and said: ‘We need to counter Warnock, especially for those Black folks. Let’s just stack the deck against them a little bit more.’”

Republicans struggled to articulate a message to galvanize their voters after Democrats secured Senate control during the general election. And while Mr. Walker, 60, used his fame to vault to the top of the Republican candidate field, he made a series of missteps and contended with a near-constant flow of damaging headlines about his personal life and business career.

He did not dispute his ex-wife’s previously aired accusations of domestic violence. But he was also accused, for the first time, of fathering children he had not previously disclosed, exaggerating and lying about his business prowess, and urging women he was in relationships with to have abortions. His campaign denied all of these claims.

Those scandals and a series of nonsensical verbal diatribes — on the relative merits of werewolves and vampires, China’s “bad air” and a bull on the wrong side of a fence eyeing several cows — appeared to have a profound impact on his standing, especially with Black men, some of whom saw Mr. Walker as the white power structure’s mistaken idea of a candidate who would appeal to them.

“It was embarrassing, and I heard other Black men in my circle talk about their embarrassment,” Rachman Holdman, a 48-year-old information technology manager in Sandy Springs, said after voting for Mr. Warnock on Tuesday.

An array of Republican figures visited the state regularly to bolster Mr. Walker’s campaign during the runoff period, including Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida.

But in the final days, Mr. Walker held few events — and he disappeared from the campaign trail altogether during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, baffling his G.O.P. allies who saw it as a crucial window. By Election Day, he appeared to be unable to encourage a sizable portion of moderate voters, particularly those who had supported Gov. Brian Kemp in the general election, to turn back out for him.

Mr. Kemp, a Republican, had to walk a fine line in the runoff, preserving his political capital in a contest that was trending away from the G.O.P. while appearing to lend enough support to Mr. Walker to maintain his reputation as a devoted party leader.

Complicating the issue for Mr. Kemp was Mr. Trump. The former president had urged a former Republican senator, David Perdue, to challenge the governor in the primary in May. Mr. Trump wanted revenge for Mr. Kemp’s refusal to back his attempt to overturn his defeat in Georgia by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020.

Mr. Kemp easily defeated Mr. Perdue in the spring, only to be left propping up Mr. Trump’s Senate candidate in the fall.

Alyce McFadden and Richard Fausset contributed reporting.