Georgia runoff election: Democratic challenger Warnock ousts Republican incumbent Loeffler

Democrat Raphael Warnock has defeated incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler in their battle for a Senate seat in Georgia, according to the Associated Press.

Speaking shortly before the result was called, Mr Warnock said Democrats "were told we couldn’t win this election”. “But tonight, we proved that with hope, hard work and with the people by our side, anything is possible.

“Thank you, Georgia,” he said. “I am going to the Senate to work for all of Georgia, no matter who you cast your vote for in this election.”

Mr Warnock’s victory is another sign of a major political shift in the longtime Republican stronghold, coming nearly two months after President-elect Joe Biden took the Peach State in November. Some Republican officials already were pointing blame at one man.

“Look, Republicans won both of these races in November. If they fall short today, it's for one reason only: President Trump's decision to relentlessly promote nutty conspiracy theories about the Georgia election system,” Michael Steel, a former aide to then-Speaker John Boehner told The Independent on Tuesday night.

Josh Holmes, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who now heads a Republican political consulting firm, tweeted: “Suburbs, my friends, the suburbs. I feel like a one trick pony but here we are again. We went from talking about jobs and the economy to Qanon election conspiracies in 4 short years and - as it turns out- they were listening!”

Mr Warnock’s victory caps Ms Loeffler’s term in the Senate at just over a year.

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The Georgia businesswoman, who is currently the richest member of Congress by a considerable margin, was hand-picked by the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, in December 2019 to replace former Senator Johnny Isakson, who resigned amid health problems.

Mr Warnock will be Georgia’s first black senator in state history and one of just three black senators in the 117th Congress. (Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina and Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey are the other two.)

A longtime minister, Mr Warnock has served since 2005 as senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. was once a co-pastor with his father. Mr Warnock also attended King’s alma mater Morehouse College, before studying for a Masters of Divinity degree at Union Theological Seminary.

The senator-elect emerged as the national Democratic party’s favoured candidate in the special election in November, where he captured 32.9 per cent of the vote to Ms Loeffler’s 25.9 per cent in a wide open field of more than a dozen candidates. There were no primaries to whittle down the field.

Mr Warnock and Ms Loeffler’s race often devolved into personal attacks down the home stretch, with the GOP incumbent accusing her opponent of being a Trojan horse for “communism” and “socialism” and of hating police and members of the US military.

She has drawn extensively on Mr Warnock’s archive of sermons and writings, cherry-picking quotes without context to make him appear “radical.”

At their lone head-to-head debate in December, Ms Loeffler referred to her opponent as “radical liberal Raphael Warnock” no fewer than 14 times, drawing mockery even from Fox News for her “robotic” performance.

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Mr Warnock has denied such characterisations of his politics.

He does, however, provide Mr Biden another ally in the Senate, which could swing back into the hands of the Democrats if Jon Ossoff defeats GOP Senator David Perdue in the other Georgia runoff held on Tuesday.

Mr Warnock focused his campaign message on helping “ordinary people” with a particular emphasis on bread-and-butter Democratic proposals to reform the criminal justice system and American policing, expand health care access, and provide more funding for education.

“I’m concerned that Washington is not focused about ordinary people,” at his debate with Ms Loeffler in December.

“You can’t tell the difference between Washington backrooms and corporate boardrooms. My opponent represents the worst of that kind of problem,” he said of Ms Loeffler, one of countless attacks against her corporate background.

Ms Loeffler yanked her campaign sharply to the right over the last few months, appearing alongside hardcore right-wing candidates and running a widely ridiculed ad claiming to be “more conservative than Atilla the Hun.”

She tied her political fortunes to Mr Trump and his continued insistence that he had actually won the 2020 election over President-elect Joe Biden. (Mr Biden defeated Mr Trump by several dozen votes in the Electoral College.)

At a rally headlined by the outgoing president on Monday, the day before the election, Ms Loeffler spoke for roughly 90 seconds.

She used that time to announce she would object to Congress’ certification on Wednesday of Mr Biden’s electoral victory, a move that is doomed to ultimately fail, but which aligned her with Mr Trump’s interests.

“We’re going to get this done,” Ms Loeffler said alongside Mr Trump on Monday in Dalton. “This president fought for us. We’re fighting for him.”

It is likely to be one of Ms Loeffler’s last votes of consequence as she becomes a lame-duck senator.

Mr Warnock is slated to be sworn in on Friday, 15 January.