Pastor Warnock finally took it to Georgia. Democrats no longer need the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris to ensure they dominate the upper house of Congress.
From our correspondent in Washington
The victory of Raphael Warnock, re-elected senator from Georgia on Tuesday, gives the majority to the Democrats in the Senate. This Nov. 8 runoff was the last of the midterm elections, where Democrats fared better than expected, in a traditionally difficult election for the president’s party. Republicans won only a narrow majority in the House of Representatives. The Democrats get, thanks to Warnock’s victory, a crucial seat in the Senate compared to the distribution of the Upper House for two years, which was evenly divided between 50 Democratic senators and 50 Republicans. Only the voice of the vice-president, Kamala Harris, ensured the dominance of the Democrats.
The Baptist pastor won after a close election against his Republican opponent, former American football champion Herschel Walker. “After a hard-fought campaign, or rather campaigns, I have the honor of speaking the most powerful words in a democracy: the people have spoken”, Warnock said Tuesday night in Atlanta to cheering fans. Since 2020, Warnock has participated in five elections in two years: a primary, then two rounds against the substitute of a senator who resigned to finish the two years of his mandate, then again two rounds this year against Walker. During the ballot on 8th November last, Warnock had already beaten his opponent by 37,000 votes out of nearly 4 million votes cast, but he had not reached the 50% threshold necessary to avoid a second round. Georgia’s first black senator, Warnock is now elected for six years.
“A vote is a form of prayer”
” A vote is a form of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children.also said Warnock, a Baptist pastor at Ebenezer Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King preached.“ I am from Georgia. I am an example and a product of its history, of its pain and its promise, of its brutality and its possibilities.recalled Warnock, whose parents lived during the era of racial segregation. “ My mother grew up in the 1950s picking cotton and tobacco for someone else. But tonight, she helped choose her youngest son to be a United States Senator. »
Warnock’s victory is also a setback for Trump, who backed Herschel Walker in the Republican primaries. This choice had been criticized by many elected members of the party. “The quality of candidates matters”, had commented Senator Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican minority in the Senate. A legendary American football champion, Walker’s fame was not enough to ensure his political success. Questions were quickly raised about his fitness for the job, and his personality quickly sparked controversy.
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His campaign had also been disrupted by a series of incriminating allegations. In addition to some liberties taken with reality regarding his own biography, Walker, who campaigned for the ban on abortion, had seen two of his former girlfriends testify claiming that he had encouraged them to have abortions, paying for the cost himself. procedure. But Walker did not follow the example of his mentor Donald Trump. He admitted defeat on Tuesday night as soon as the projections gave his opponent the victory. “The numbers don’t seem to add upsaid the former footballer. There are no excuses in life, and I’m not going to look for any now, because we fought like hell.»
Trump, who announced his third run for the White House for 2024, was counting on the candidates he had backed to cement his control over the Republican Party. Walker’s defeat further weakens his position. While a number of elected Republicans are hinting at the possibility of supporting other candidates in 2024, the former president’s serial failures are playing against him. Trump, who backed Walker’s campaign last month, was conspicuously absent in the runoff.
Georgia, a disputed state
With Georgia, the Democrats beat all the Republican candidates for the Senate and for the governorships supported by Donald Trump in the five crucial states which had swung in his favor in 2016, before being taken over by Joe Biden in 2020: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. But this victory does not completely tilt Georgia, which retains its status as a disputed state between Democrats and Republicans.
In 2020, Biden had been the first Democratic candidate for president of the United States to win Georgia in thirty years. A few months later, in January 2021, when Trump contested the results of the presidential election, the election of Warnock and the other Democratic candidate, Jon Ossoff, had given his party control of the Senate in extremis. But Georgia also re-elected Republican Governor Brian Kemp with a comfortable margin on November 8, and a series of elected Republicans, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Both classic conservatives had resisted pressure from Trump to overturn Georgia’s presidential election.
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For Democrats and for Joe Biden, the new majority in the Senate provides welcome leeway. The party will no longer have to rely on the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris to get out of the tied votes. Democrats will no longer be dependent on the defection of a single senator to pass their bills or certify nominations, as had been the case for the past two years, when Joe Manchin, Democratic senator from West Virginia or Kyrsten Sinema, senator from Arizona, had repeatedly forced Biden and his party to revise their bills under pressure from these dissidents. The Democrats will also hold the majority in the Senate committees, so far divided with the Republicans.
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