By Bill Barrow and Jeff Amy
ATLANTA (AP) — Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a Georgia runoff election Tuesday, ensuring Democrats an outright majority in the Senate for the rest of President Joe Biden’s current term and capping an underwhelming midterm cycle for the GOP in the last major vote of the year.
The victory gave Warnock, the first Black senator from Georgia, a full six-year term.
With Warnock’s second runoff victory in as many years, Democrats will have a 51-49 Senate majority, gaining a seat from the current 50-50 split with John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania. There will be divided government, however, with Republicans having narrowly flipped House control.
“After a hard-fought campaign — or, should I say, campaigns — it is my honor to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy: The people have spoken,” Warnock, 53, told jubilant supporters who packed a downtown Atlanta hotel ballroom.
“I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children,” declared Warnock, a Baptist pastor. “Georgia, you have been praying with your lips and your legs, your hands and your feet, your heads and your hearts. You have put in the hard work, and here we are standing together.”
LaTanya Millhouse, president of the Alabama Democratic Women and Josh Coleman, chair of the Alabama Young Democrats, were among a host of Alabama Democratic organizations canvassing neighborhoods on the Saturday afternoon ahead of the Tuesday election.
More than 200 Democrats from Alabama were in Georgia in support of Warnock.
“This moment is bigger than just Alabama or Georgia,” Millhouse said. “This is a time when Democrats across the nation are pulling together to secure control of the Senate. Our work will change the nation.”
Coleman said that Warnock has “proven to be a man of faith and of principles who will do what he believes is right for the people of Georgia and for the people of America.”
In last month’s election, Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast, but fell short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff. The senator appeared to be headed for a wider final margin in Tuesday’s runoff, with Walker, a football legend at the University of Georgia and in the NFL, unable to overcome a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions despite supporting a national ban on the procedure.
“The numbers look like they’re not going to add up,” Walker, an ally and friend of former President Donald Trump, told supporters late Tuesday at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta. “There’s no excuses in life, and I’m not going to make any excuses now because we put up one heck of a fight.”
Democrats’ Georgia victory solidifies the state’s place as a Deep South battleground two years after Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff won 2021 runoffs that gave the party Senate control just months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate in 30 years to win Georgia. Voters returned Warnock to the Senate in the same cycle they reelected Republican Gov. Brian Kemp by a comfortable margin and chose an all-GOP slate of statewide constitutional officers.
Walker’s defeat bookends the GOP’s struggles this year to win with flawed candidates cast from Trump’s mold, a blow to the former president as he builds his third White House bid ahead of 2024.
Democrats’ new outright majority in the Senate means the party will no longer have to negotiate a power-sharing deal with Republicans and won’t have to rely on Vice President Kamala Harris to break as many tie votes.
National Democrats celebrated Tuesday, with Biden tweeting a photo of his congratulatory phone call to the senator. “Georgia voters stood up for our democracy, rejected Ultra MAGAism, and … sent a good man back to the Senate,” Biden tweeted, referencing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
About 1.9 million runoff votes were cast in Georgia by mail and during early voting. A robust Election Day turnout added about 1.4 million more, slightly more than the Election Day totals in November and in 2020.
Total turnout still trailed the 2021 runoff turnout of about 4.5 million. Voting rights groups pointed to changes made by state lawmakers after the 2020 election that shortened the period for runoffs, from nine weeks to four, as a reason for the decline in early and mail voting.
Warnock emphasized his willingness to work across the aisle and his personal values, buoyed by his status as senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.
Walker benefited during the campaign from nearly unmatched name recognition from his football career, yet was dogged by questions about his fitness for office.
A multimillionaire businessman, Walker faced questions about his past, including his exaggerations of his business achievements, academic credentials and philanthropic activities.
In his personal life, Walker faced new attention on his ex-wife’s previous accounts of domestic violence, including details that he once held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. He has never denied those specifics and wrote of his violent tendencies in a 2008 memoir that attributed the behavior to mental illness.
As a candidate, he sometimes mangled policy discussions, attributing the climate crisis to China’s “bad air” overtaking “good air” from the United States and arguing that diabetics could manage their health by “eating right,” a practice that isn’t enough for insulin-dependent diabetic patients.
Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy and Ron Harris contributed to this report.
Joan Reynolds and her “Mighty Alabama Strike Force” have their walking shoes on and are canvassing neighborhoods identified as Republican leaning in Canton, Georgia.
About 140 miles south is Josh Coleman who is joined with a host of Alabama Democratic organizations canvassing neighborhoods ahead of a Saturday afternoon rally in Columbus, Georgia.
Reynolds is the chairperson of the Shelby County GOP. Coleman is chair of the Alabama Young Democrats. Their politics are vastly different, but for this weekend they share something in common with a Ray Charles song: Georgia is on their minds.
“We’re the only game in town,” said Charles Bullock III, a political science professor at the University of Georgia. “They are all welcomed. They come here to volunteer and are putting in the work by knocking on doors.”
Indeed, the nation’s political attention has turned for the second time in two years to a Georgia runoff election. Though the stakes are not as high during Tuesday’s runoff as compared to 2020, Democrats and Republicans are pushing to get their voters to the polls.
Alabama volunteers will play a role. The Democratic Party is renting out buses paid for by the Right Side of History PAC that is administered by former Democratic Senator Doug Jones of Alabama.
Coleman anticipates 200 volunteers going to Columbus for a “Day of Action” in support of Democratic incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock.
Reynolds said she has taken a total of 90 volunteers to Georgia during multiple trips to the state during multi-day door-knocking swings through Republican-dominated communities in support of Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
The Alabama GOP’s field team is also on the ground and has been for the past two weeks, according to John Wahl, chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. In addition, the state GOP’s political director Philip Foster, is organizing and training teams of volunteers from around the country, Wahl said.
Though the Senate majority is not on the line as it was during the 2020 Georgia runoffs, the stakes are still high. A win for Warnock gives the Democratic Party a 51-49 majority, while a Walker victory maintains the 50-50 split, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaking vote.
The two sides in Alabama are offering plenty of hype.
“The Alabama Republican Party is committed to doing our part to help restore America and defend our conservative values,” Wahl said. “The U.S. Senate seat is far bigger than the state of Georgia. It’s about the future of our nation and fighting for our rights and freedoms.”
Said LaTanya Millhouse, president of the Alabama Democratic Women, “This moment is bigger than just Alabama or Georgia. This is a time when Democrats across the nation are pulling together to secure control of the Senate. Our work will change the nation.”
Reynolds said the 50-50 split is important for Republicans, who would continue to rely on moderate senators like Joe Manchin of West Virginia or Krysten Sinema of Arizona to side with the GOP on certain votes.
The 50-50 split also prevents Democrats from relying on key insurance in case of a party switch or an unexpected vacancy that could be filled by a GOP governor. Republicans enjoy a 28-22 advantage among governorships in the U.S.
“You can’t give up on something as important as the Senate especially at this point when we have control of the House,” said Reynolds, who started the Strike Force 14 years ago with the focus on sending dozens of Republican volunteers to so-called “swing states” in an effort to convince GOP-leaning voters to get out and vote during an election.
For the Democrats like Coleman, the Georgia race’s outcome could underscore the theme of “candidate quality matters” that animated the midterm elections and was a reason given by political pundits as to why Republicans underperformed.
Coleman said that Warnock, senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has “proven to be a man of faith and of principles who will do what he believes is right for the people of Georgia and for the people of America.”
Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Georgia and a standout running back for the Dallas Cowboys, has been plagued by multiple controversies that includes pressuring women to get an abortion while campaigning against abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother.
His ex-wife, during an interview on ABC News, alleged that Walker once threatened to kill her. His son has also called him a hypocrite and a liar.
Walker is also facing questions about his residency after reports surfaced that he claimed a homestead exemption on a house in Texas.
Jones, the Senator from Alabama from January 2018-January 2021, said the “overriding issue” of the midterm election is that the GOP candidates who denied the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and were endorsed by former President Donald Trump are overwhelmingly suffering ballot box consequences.
During the midterms, voters rejected many of Trump’s endorsed candidates, including far-right politicians in Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, Michigan.
Walker has been critical of Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for not contesting the results of the state’s 2020 presidential contest.
“The fact of the matter is you have an extreme wing of the Republican Party that is really the dominant wing of the Republican Party right now,” Jones said. “Quite frankly, that’s not sustainable for Republicans. As a Democrat, I don’t like to see that. I don’t like to see extremes in either party dominating a party. It’s a lack of competition for ideas and (involves) people who are playing to extreme bases not representing their state.”
Reynolds said she believes some of the campaign criticism directed at Walker is “taken out of context.” She said that while canvassing Georgia, she spoke with a woman whose husband – a former professional football player – relayed a story about Walker speaking during a mental health conference and being “very open with the problems he has had and being able to overcome them.”
“I think Herschel has been upfront on a lot of that,” Reynolds said. “People will use your past against you, naturally, in some areas and (even if) they have been able to overcome (past problems).”
The Georgia Senate election is bringing back memories of Jones’s improbable victory during the 2017 special Senate election over Republican Roy Moore, who was also compromised with scandal involving allegations that he made inappropriate sexual advances on teenage girls when he was in his 30s.
Indeed, there are similarities as celebrities and big-name politicians are in Georgia ahead of the Tuesday contest. Jones said he will not be there but will instead be at a wedding Saturday in Birmingham.
The Alabama Democratic Party, in a news release sent Wednesday, said that a midday lunch rally in Columbus is not the first time that Democrats in the two states worked together. Georgia Democrats were in Alabama in 2017, to support the Jones candidacy and “now Alabama Democrats are working together to return the favor.”
“They not only provided extra hands and feet, they provided extra energy as we saw that our election mattered to the whole country, and this is a small step to repay the favor,” Coleman said.
Bullock said that despite Walker’s problems, and Warnock’s overwhelming fundraising advantage, history is on the side of the GOP in Georgia.
Of the past five Senate general election runoff elections in Georgia, only once has an incumbent won – Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss in 2008.
Warnock led Walker by around 37,000 votes of 4 million cast during the November 8 election but came up short of the 50% needed to avoid the runoff. Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver’s 81,365 votes, or 2%, enabled the contest to go to the runoff.
The Georgia elections showed that split ticketing occurred in a state considered one of the few “purple” states in the U.S. where Democrats and Republicans battle for supremacy. Kemp, who handily defeated Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, received more than 164,000 votes than Walker.
Limited polling has revealed very little. A bipartisan AARP poll showed Warnock leading by 4 points. A survey released Wednesday by FrederickPolls, COMPETE Digital and AMMPolitical had both candidates deadlocked at 50%.
“If you look at history, it’s on Walker’s side and the Republicans side,” said Bullock, who said up until the 2020 Senate runoff races – which were won by Warnock and Democrat Jon Ossoff – no other Democratic politician had won the recent past Senate runoffs. “The pattern is usually that the Republicans are more successful in getting voters to come back.”
Bullock, though, said almost any other Republican candidate would have likely defeated Warnock during the first round of voting.
“(Walker) may be the only person Republicans nominated who couldn’t win,” he said. “Pick a person out of the phone directory and put an ‘R’ next to their name and they probably would win.”
