Historic Georgia Senate Election Shifts Congressional Power
Illustration by Johnny Neville | The Corsair
Democrats in Georgia are projected to flip both Republican-held U.S. Senate seats, according to the Associated Press, consolidating a unified government for the incoming Joe Biden administration. Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, and Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff defeated Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue.
No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia since 2000. With victories by Ossoff and Warnock in the traditionally ruby-red state, Democrats will solidify power with razor-thin majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Wednesday’s election results completed a dramatic reversal from four years ago, when incoming President Donald Trump was sworn into office with his Republican party firmly in control of both the House and the Senate. He will be the first president in nearly a century to lose reelection and both chambers of Congress during his first term.
Democrats currently hold a 222-211 edge in the House, with one vacancy and one outstanding election result. Republican Rep.-elect Luke Letlow of Louisiana died of COVID-19 less than a week before he was to be sworn in. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ office announced that there will be a special election on March 20 to fill the vacant 5th Congressional District seat. New York’s 22nd Congressional District remains the only undecided race nationwide. While attorneys for Republican Claudia Tenney and Democrat Anthony Brindisi are currently battling in New York State Supreme Court over the counting of ballots, Tenney currently holds a 29 vote lead over Brindisi, a margin of just 0.009%.
Republicans and Democrats will each have 50 votes in the Senate, with Independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont joining the 48 Democrats on legislative matters. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the incoming President of the Senate, will be the tie-breaking vote.
“This means that Chuck [Schumer], rather than Mitch McConnell, will be majority leader,” said Santa Monica College professor of political science, Steven Kurvink. “All congressional committees will now be chaired by Democrats. Needless to say, this will make things somewhat easier for Biden. All of his appointments are now likely to be confirmed.”
Kurvink expressed caution for those expecting radical change, stating that, “with such a slim majority for the Democrats I would not expect a lot of progressive legislation to be passed. The Republicans will use the filibuster to block bills that they oppose. Also, the Democratic majority includes moderates like Joe [Manchin] who represent conservative states like West Virginia.” While just a simple majority is required to pass bills, Senate rules state that 60 votes are needed to end a filibuster, which is a political procedure used by members of the minority party to delay or altogether block legislative action.
Warnock becomes not just the first African American senator to represent the state of Georgia, but the first African American Democratic senator from any of the former Confederate states. A senior pastor at Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Rev. Warnock's congressional race against Loeffler was his first entry into politics. Loeffler has been a sitting member of Congress since last January when Georgia Republican Gov. Brain Kemp appointed her to replace retiring Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, who stepped down due to health concerns.
At the time it was believed that Loeffler would be a moderate voice who could attract suburban voters that had fled the Republican party during the 2018 midterms. In recent months, however, she has supported the president’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in his election defeat, going so far as to pledge her support in objecting to Congress’ counting of Georgia’s state-certified electoral college votes. Loeffler later changed her mind after a pro-Trump mob violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 while Congress counted votes. She has since conceded her defeat to Warnock.
33-year-old Ossoff will become the youngest sitting senator in Congress, and the youngest Democratic senator elected since President-elect Biden won his first senate seat almost half a century ago. The former documentary filmmaker will also become the first Jewish senator to represent the state of Georgia on Capitol Hill. He previously lost a U.S. House race for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in 2017. Perdue, who had represented Georgia in the Senate since 2015, also conceded defeat only after the mob violence in the nation's capitol.
Many Republican politicians in Georgia and around the country have blamed Trump for the Senate losses. The day before the election, an audiotape was released in which the president can be heard berating Georgia officials over his November presidential election loss. Trump pleaded with the Georgia secretary of state for help in overturning the election, stating, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” The president lost the state of Georgia to President-elect Biden by 11,779 votes. Three recounts were conducted by the Republican-controlled state before they certified Biden’s victory.
Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and top election official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, placed responsibility for a potential loss on Trump. In an interview with CNN the night of the election, Sterling stated that if either Loeffler or Perdue lost, the responsibility would "fall squarely on the shoulders of President Trump and his actions since November 3."
"When you tell people your vote doesn't count and has been stolen, people start to believe that,” Sterling continued. “You go to the two [Georgia] senators and ask the [Georgia] secretary of state to resign, and trigger a civil war in the Republican Party when we need to unite. All of that stems from [Trump’s] decision-making since the November 3 election."
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the only Republican senator who voted to convict the president after he was impeached by the House last year, stated, “It turns out that telling the voters that the election is rigged is not a great way to turn out your voters.”
Many see the election results in Georgia as not just a one-off, but instead a sign of larger political shifts across the country. “It is safe to say that Georgia, like Virginia and Arizona, is now a competitive state,” said Kurvink. “Some of this is due to demographic changes, but also to the efforts of Stacey Abrams and others to register Democrats and motivate them to turn out and vote.”
Georgia’s election of a Democratic president and two Democratic senators serve as strong indicators that the state is ready for a shift not just in politicians, but in policy — mirroring trends seen across the country at large.
