Reverend Raphael Warnock will make history as Georgia’s first Black senator. Warnock defeated incumbent Senator Kelly Loeffler in the Senate runoff election.
What We Know:
- Warnock will serve as the 11th African American U.S. Senator and was the first in his state of Georgia. Additionally, he is one of the only Black senators from a southern, formerly confederate state. Warnock will also be the first Georgia Democrat elected to the Senate in 20 years.
- According to CBS News, exit polls show Warnock got his strongest support from Black voters and young voters. The new Senator also received a higher percentage of the Black vote (92%) than the 88% received by President-elect Joe Biden in November.
- Warnock grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and became senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in 2005, becoming the youngest pastor in that leadership role at the church. The church is also where Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr once preached.
- In a crucial race to flip the Senate, Warnock won due to the outstanding support from Black voters in the Atlanta metro area, running on a platform inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, and a high turnout from voters in the suburbs.
“I am an iteration and an example of the American dream,” Warnock said in a CNN interview for New Day, adding that he’s “deeply honored” from the levels of support he’s received from voters in Georgia.
- Warnock’s father, the late Rev. Jonathan Warnock, lived through the Jim Crow South and served during World War II. In his victory message, Warnock tells the story of how his father, dressed in his military fatigues, was asked to give up his seat on a bus to a White teenager. Warnock’s mother, Rev. Verlene Warnock, worked picking cotton and tobacco in the 1950s.
- “I stand before you as a man who knows that the improbable journey that led me to this place in this historic moment in America could only happen here,” he added.
Warnock’s win, along with that of Jon Ossoff, is crucial in Democrats’ efforts to gain the U.S. Senate majority.
