EEW Magazine News // Politics

A man of the cloth is headed to the halls of congress. Christian pastor and democrat Raphael Warnock won one of Georgia’s two Senate runoffs Wednesday, becoming the first Black senator in his state’s history and putting the Senate majority within the party’s reach.

A pastor who spent the past 15 years leading the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Warnock defeated Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler.

Warnock, 51, acknowledged his improbable victory in a message to supporters early Wednesday, citing his family’s experience with poverty. His mother, he said, used to pick “somebody else’s cotton” as a teenager.

“The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton picked her youngest son to be a United States senator,” he said. “Tonight, we proved with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible.”

Warnock was declared the winner after an analysis of outstanding votes showed there was no way for Loeffler to catch up to his lead. Loeffler refused to concede in a brief message to supporters shortly after midnight.

“We’ve got some work to do here. This is a game of inches. We’re going to win this election,” insisted Loeffler, a 50-year-old former businesswoman who was appointed to the Senate less than a year ago by the state’s governor.

Now Warnock has stripped her of her position and is free to begin working to fulfill the promises he made while campaigning.

“I’ve committed my whole life to service and helping people, and this pandemic and period of unrest in our country has brought into sharp relief the need for moral leadership, clarity, and servant leaders. I believe that now more than ever,” he said in a recent interview with Atlanta Magazine.

He continued, “Millions of people, like the ones I’ve counseled at my church and those like them all across the state, are wondering why no one is looking out for them and why those in power aren’t being held accountable for their misdeeds.”

He is seeking to change all that.

This week’s elections mark the formal finale to the turbulent 2020 election season more than two months after the rest of the nation finished voting. The unusually high stakes transformed Georgia, once a solidly Republican state, into one of the nation’s premier battlegrounds for the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency — and likely beyond.

Drawing on his popularity with Black voters, among other groups, President-Elect Joe Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by about 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast in November.

Even before Tuesday, Georgia had shattered its turnout record for a runoff with more than 3 million votes by mail or during in-person advance voting in December. Including Tuesday’s vote, more people ultimately cast ballots in the runoffs than voted in Georgia’s 2016 presidential election.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.