Reverend Raphael Warnock Wins Reelection in Georgia
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Posted By: S. Moore on December 07, 2022 ATLANTA — Democratic Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock has won the state’s runoff election, according to the Associated Press, defeating Republican Herschel Walker in one of the fiercest campaigns of 2022 and giving Democrats a 51-49 majority in the U.S. Senate. “Thank you, Georgia. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and to God be the glory,” Warnock said in his victory speech just before midnight on Tuesday. “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 is the state’s first Black senator and senior pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Originally elected last year in a special election to replace retired GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson, he has now been chosen to serve a full six-year term in the Senate. The Georgia residents in attendance at Warnock’s victory party Tuesday said they could not be more thrilled about the results. "We're fighting for a democracy,” Erica Ferguson of Marietta, Ga., who attended the event with her college-age son, told Yahoo News. “I have a son, and I want to leave this world a better place for him, and Rev. Warnock is the only answer." Atlanta resident Athena Soule, who has volunteered with the Warnock campaign since January 2020, said she’s been “excited and happy” ever since the pastor announced he would run for office more than two years ago. "I feel like Sen. Warnock is dedicated to the well-being of Americans, and I trust that he's going to be working hard for us,” Soule said. Most polls had the two candidates in a dead heat for the majority of the race, despite a flurry of reports alleging that Walker, a staunch anti-abortion advocate, paid for a former girlfriend to undergo the procedure in 2009. Then another woman claimed he made her get an abortion during a years-long affair in the early 1990s. In both instances, he denied he had ever paid for a woman to get an abortion. Walker’s campaign had tried to turn the election into a referendum on President Biden. But Walker has been hamstrung by a series of scandals and bizarre gaffes, including a recent digression on vampires and werewolves, as well as his close ties to former President Donald Trump. Back in August, Warnock was praising a passed bill signed into law by President Biden as a big win for the state's historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). “HBCUs are incubators for innovation, and they have been for a long time,” Warnock told GPB News. “These schools have been punching way above their weight. They've been doing so much for so many, for so long, with so very little that I think people barely notice. But we can ill afford as we move into the 21st century to leave these schools underfunded.” The new law authorized investments in HBCU-conducted scientific research. It also ordered federal research agencies to report to Congress a “strategic plan” that detailed how they intended to expand HBCU participation in the years ahead. Born in 1969, Warnock grew up in the Kayton Homes public housing complex in Savannah, Ga. He went on to attend Morehouse College, an HBCU located in Atlanta, before earning his PhD from Union Theological Seminary. In 2005 he was appointed to the role of senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. once served as an associate minister. He continues to preach there to this day. “The influences [Warnock] got at Morehouse are the same influences that came to bear on Martin Luther King,” Andrew Young, former Atlanta mayor and U.S. congressman, told New York magazine. The race marked the first time that two Black candidates from opposing parties had competed for a Senate seat in Georgia. Walker ran as a right-wing Republican closely aligned with Trump, while Warnock portrayed himself as a moderate who was broadly supportive of Biden’s agenda. “The only reason [Warnock] got in office is because he was in Dr. King’s church,” Walker said at a campaign stop last week. “He’s been fooling us, trying to take us down that elevator. I’m not falling for it.” Throughout the campaign, Warnock stressed his belief in abortion rights. “A patient’s room is too small for the patient, her doctor and the United States government,” he said in October at a Savannah rally. Walker’s stance on abortion was more fluid. Early in the campaign he stated that he opposed the procedure with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Months later, he said he agreed with a proposal that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks at the federal level. Then, during his one debate against Warnock, Walker said he supports Georgia's 2019 law that outlaws most abortions around six weeks but contains exceptions. And both candidates talked about rising crime rates, with Warnock supporting bipartisan gun control legislation that passed the Senate. He has also called for an end to cash bail, specifically for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses, and co-sponsored a piece of legislation that would provide $250 million to support smaller law enforcement agencies around the country. It passed the Senate unanimously in August. "We need to make it clear who we support,” a Black woman, who asked to stay anonymous but identified as a Democrat, said Tuesday after voting at a South Fulton, Ga., polling station. “That's why it was so important for me to come out and vote again. Our voices need to be heard, and we need to support the right candidate. The only way we can do that is if we vote." SOURCE YAHOO! 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