Warnock wins Georgia, brings US Senate democrats to new majority

By Hazel Trice Edney
Contributing Writer

(TriceEdneyWire.com) — Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) has won re-election to the U. S. Senate, solidifying a clear Democratic majority in the 100-member body. The win ends a hard-fought run-off against Donald Trump-backed Herschel Walker, former star football player who ran neck-in-neck against Warnock in the mid-term election.

Warnock’s 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent win on Tuesday, Dec. 6 – is especially important for those issues overseen by powerful Senate committees. Those committees include the Budget; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; Environment and Public Works; Finance; Health Education, Labor and Pensions; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Joint Economic Committee; the Judiciary; Rules and Administration; Select Commit-tee on Ethics; Select Committee on Intelligence; Small Business and Entrepreneurship and Veteran’s Affairs.

The Warnock win brings the Senate Democratic majority to 51-49; thereby eliminating the need for Vice President Kamala Harris having to break ties in the case of 50-50 votes. The win also signals another blow to the influence once held by former President Donald Trump and his endorsed candidates, most of whom failed miserably in the mid-term elections Nov. 8.

Following Walker’s concession speech in which he encouraged his supporters to continue to believe in America, Warnock declared in front of a cheering crowd what he described as “the four most powerful words ever spoken in a Democracy – The people have spoken!”

The current pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, once pastored by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., continued, “I am an example and an iteration of [Georgia’s] 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 also pointed to the fact that just because voters suffered through long lines in inclimate weather did not mean voter suppression and intimidation did not exist.

The Warnock-Walker race had for weeks set the political world on edge as millions anticipated who would win between President Biden and Obama-backed Warnock and Walker, who was backed by Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp among other so-called MAGA (Make America Great Again) Republicans. In the end, Warnock won those traditionally Democratic and predominately Black areas such as Atlanta and Augusta while Walker got his votes from largely rural areas, but not enough.

Perhaps Warnock’s greatest line Tuesday night was when he introduced his mother:

“I want to say thank you to my mother, who is here tonight. You’ll see her in a little while. But she grew up in the 1950s in Waycross, Ga., picking somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco. But tonight she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator.”

This article originally published in the December 12, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.