Georgia Democrat Senate candidate Raphael Warnock claimed victory over Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler in the razor-thin runoff election early Wednesday morning.
Even before most media corporations took the plunge to make a prediction about Warnock’s run against Loeffler, the leftist reverend gave a virtual speech shortly before 1:00 a.m. celebrating his more than 35,000-vote lead in the Peach State.
“We were told we couldn’t win this election, but tonight, we proved that with hope, hard work, and the people by our side, anything is possible,” Warnock said.
“May my story be an inspiration to some young person who is trying to grasp and grab hold of the American dream,” he continued, nodding to the fact that he would become the state’s first black senator.
Warnock, who has expressed radical beliefs such as praising communist dictator Fidel Castro, condemning and insulting law enforcement officers, criticizing Israel as an “apartheid” state, and openly advocating for the murder of unborn babies, has also come under fire after reports resurfaced of his involvement in a 2002 child abuse investigation. A political organization he formerly led, the New Georgia Project, is also under investigation for allegedly sending ballot applications to non-residents.
The other race in the Senate runoff election between GOP incumbent David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff struck a delicate 50/50 balance before vote-counting in larger counties such as Fulton was discontinued by the Georgia secretary of state for the night, with the incumbent pulling ahead by just over 1,000 votes.
This small margin is well within the state’s requirement for either of the candidates to request a recount.
Georgia recount margin is 0.5%, so Perdue-Ossoff looks headed for that. So we're about to have a lot more everyone's favorite "call, what call" SecState Brad Raffensperger in our lives, and as added drama, he *hates* Perdue.
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) January 6, 2021
To keep control of the Senate, Republicans must win at least one of the two runoff races. If both Warnock and Ossoff pull off a victory, the U.S. Senate will be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris acting as a tiebreaker for votes.
