Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock has defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in Georgia’s Senate runoff. Democrats will control 51 Senate seats to the GOP’s 49.
Addressing the enthusiastic crowd in his victory speech, Warnock alluded to the fact that he won his fourth campaign in two years.
"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," said Warnock. “I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children. You have put in the hard work and here we are standing together.”
While Walker, a MAGA candidate endorsed by Donald Trump, resides in Texas, Warnock spoke about his roots in the “Peach State.”
“I am Georgia,” he said. “I am an example and an iteration of its 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.”
President Biden called and congratulated Warnock on his victory.
“Tonight Georgia voters stood up for our democracy, rejected Ultra MAGAism, and most importantly: sent a good man back to the Senate,” Biden tweeted. “Here’s to six more years.”
Warnock’s win capped off a successful midterm election cycle by the Democrats when most political pundits were predicting a “red wave,” in which the Republicans would take the majority in the Senate and the House. Walker’s defeat continued the trend of Trump-endorsed candidates who lost in the midterms.
For the first time since he was elected in a special election in 2020, Warnock will now serve a full six-year term.
Warnock also thanked his mother who grew up in rural Georgia for her unyielding support.
“I want to say thank you to my mother, who is here tonight,” he told the crowd. “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.”
