Friday, September 20

Warnock and Ossoff win in Georgia, handing control of the Senate to the Democrats

AP

Washington Hispanic:

Democrats won both Georgia Senate seats and with them, the majority of the United States Senate as final votes were tallied on Wednesday, serving President Donald Trump a stunning defeat in his final days in office while dramatically improving the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s progressive agenda.

Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democratic challengers who represented the diversity of their party’s evolving coalition, defeated Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler two months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lead the state since 1992.

Warnock, who served as pastor of the same church in Atlanta, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. preached, becomes Georgia’s first African-American elected to the Senate. And Ossoff becomes the state’s first Jewish senator and, at 33 years, the youngest member

His success is symbolic of a surprising shift in Georgia politics as the growing number of diverse and college-educated voters flex their power at heart of the Deep South.

This week’s elections mark the formal end of the turbulent election season of 2020. The unusually high stakes transformed Georgia, once a solidly Republican state, into one of the nation’s major battlegrounds for the final days of the Trump presidency, and likely beyond.

In an emotional speech to Early Wednesday, Warnock promised to work for all Georgians, whether they voted for him or not, citing his personal experience with the American dream. His mother, he said, used to choose “someone else’s cotton” when he was a teenager.

«The other day, because it concerns the United States, the hands of 82 years who used to choose someone else’s cotton picked their youngest son to be a United States senator, ”he said. “Tonight, we demonstrate with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible.”

In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America”, he described his victory as a “reversal of the old southern strategy that sought to divide people,” Warnock told ABC “Good Morning America.”