Equipo Nizkor - Warnock Beats Loeffler in Georgia Senate Race.

Democrats moved a major step closer to gaining control of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday morning as Georgia voters elected the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the pastor at the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church, in a hard-fought runoff contest that became roiled by President Trump's false claims of voter fraud in the state.

Mr. Warnock's victory over the Republican incumbent, Kelly Loeffler, represented a landmark breakthrough for African-Americans in politics as well as for Georgia: He became the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the South.

For Democrats to take the Senate, which is crucial to enacting President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s first-term agenda, they also need to win Georgia's other Senate runoff held on Tuesday. The votes were still being counted in that race between the Republican candidate, David Perdue, and his Democratic rival, Jon Ossoff.

But turnout in rural, overwhelmingly white counties where Republicans needed a strong showing was lagging without Mr. Trump on the ballot, and many of Georgia's heavily Black localities saw turnout levels that neared those of the presidential race in November.

"May my story be an inspiration to some young person who is trying to grasp and grab hold to the American dream," Mr. Warnock, who grew up in poverty, said in an online video just before 1 a.m. Wednesday. Invoking his mother, he said: "Because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States Senator."

With about 97 percent of the vote counted in the early hours of Wednesday, Mr. Warnock held a lead of roughly 47,000 votes over Ms. Loeffler, after surging ahead late Tuesday night when heavily Democratic DeKalb County reported a trove of ballots.

While Mr. Warnock's win was a major gain for his party -- he is the first Democrat to be elected to the Senate from Georgia since 2000 -- both political parties remained on edge over the unresolved Ossoff-Perdue race and its implications for the next two years in American politics. Whichever party wins that race will control the Senate, with Republicans counting on Mr. Perdue to prevail and give them the ability to constrain Mr. Biden's policy ambitions.

After Mr. Biden's triumph in November, Mr. Warnock's victory provides yet another comeuppance for the Trumpist politics that have come to define the Republican Party over the past four years. Ms. Loeffler had rebranded herself as a hard-line Trump loyalist to fend off a challenge from the right in the first round of voting. In recent weeks, she has continued to embrace the president, even using an election-eve rally with Mr. Trump in Northwest Georgia to proudly declare that she will oppose certifying his loss to Mr. Biden when Congress meets on Wednesday.

Mr. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff ran as a virtual package deal, as did the two Republicans, often appearing at events together and crafting similar messages about the stark consequences for the nation if the other side won.

Republicans used much of the runoff to focus on Mr. Warnock's sermons, a line of attack that appeared to mobilize African-American voters, especially in more conservative rural Georgia where the church is a pillar of many communities.

Mr. Trump's refusal to acknowledge his defeat also robbed Ms. Loeffler of what might have been her best argument in what is still a slightly right-leaning state -- that she would be a check on the liberal excesses in a government fully controlled by Democrats.

Even before polls closed on Tuesday, senior Republican campaign officials were pinning the blame on the president, noting that their polling testified to the power of the "check-and-balance" argument that the party was unable to make because of Mr. Trump's denial of the election results.

The election was a tumultuous coda to Mr. Trump's presidency, with control of the Senate and the first two years of Mr. Biden's term in the balance. The runoffs were also an important bellwether for a Deep South state where once-dominant Republicans have begun to see their advantage slip because of an increasingly diverse electorate and the changing preferences of suburban voters.

Election-day turnout was pivotal for Republicans, who were playing catch-up to Democrats. During an early-voting period that ended last week, more than three million Georgians cast their ballots, and turnout was heavy among African-Americans and in liberal bastions around Atlanta.

For voters, the choice between the two pairs of candidates was stark: Mr. Perdue, 71, and Ms. Loeffler, 50, are both white millionaires who leaned into more conservative policy positions like gun rights and opposition to abortion. They also made the case to voters that their business success gave them real-world experience in handling economic matters.

Mr. Warnock, 51, and Mr. Ossoff, 33, were a more diverse team. Mr. Warnock is a prominent pastor at the church in Atlanta where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. Mr. Ossoff, who is Jewish, is the head of a video production company and worked as a congressional aide.

Both men promised a more robust response to the coronavirus pandemic and an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and they embraced the national Democratic Party.

05Jan21

Warnock Beats Loeffler in Georgia Senate Race

[Source: By Jonathan Martin and Richard Fausset, The New York Times, Atlanta, 05Jan20]

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