One of the costliest and most bitter Senate contests ended Tuesday with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeating Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
The Georgia race, which cost a total of $380 million, didn’t change which party controls the Senate in the next Congress, but it underscored how deeply and evenly divided the country is in 2023.
For months the race was a story of major contrasts because Warnock, a Baptist preacher, and Walker, a former NFL star, were opposites in experience, political beliefs, and speaking styles.
A high turnout breaks the fatigue
For the past two years, voters in the Peach State have been asked to participate in a marathon of contests — the 2020 presidential election, two separate 2021 Senate runoff contests and the 2022 midterms.
Another runoff came after Warnock and Walker failed to reach the required 50% threshold in November, dragging the 2022 election cycle into overtime.
But if months of rallies, national attention, and negative ads tired Georgians, there was no sign of voter fatigue in terms of showing up at the polls.
Georgia’s secretary of state’s office said Tuesday that about 3.3 million people voted either by absentee ballot, in person during early voting or on Election Day.
Trump is missing in action
Donald Trump may have campaigned for longtime friend Herschel Walker to enter the Georgia Senate race in the year leading up to the race, but the former president was largely absent in the final stretch.
Trump did not join Walker on the campaign trail for any in-person events, as other high-profile Republicans have done, but he held a “tele-rally” for the former football star Monday night and posted it on his social media site, Truth Social.
Republicans are divided on the former president’s campaign effectiveness after a disappointing midterm.
A month ago, several Trump-backed candidates who ran defying the 2020 election lost key states like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The Warnock campaign, however, didn’t like to draw attention to Trump’s online event for Walker on Dec. 6, displaying the headline “tele-rally” and showing a photo of the two Republicans hugging each other.
Georgia made history
Warnock’s victory made him the first black senator in Georgia history to be elected to a six-year term.
The Atlanta minister, who pastors the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. presided, already in the history books as the state’s first black senator after defeating Republican Kelly Loeffler in the 2021 runoff.
But that was to finish the term of Sen. Johnny Isaacson, who resigned in 2019.
By the way, Warnock is only the 11th black senator in US history.
Manchin-Cinema ‘Insurance Policy’
The Georgia runoff means nothing in terms of which party controls the Senate.
But speaking to progressive activists, giving Warnock a full six-year term was important for two reasons. The obvious one was to keep Walker out of office, they said.
Another thing, however, was ensuring that Sens. Joe Mnuchin of West Virginia and Kirsten Sinema of Arizona — two more conservative-leaning members of the Democratic caucus — had less power.
Brandon Tucker, senior director of policy and government affairs with Color of Change PAC, a national racial justice group, said black voters in particular were intrigued by how the two Democrats stood against many progressive policy goals.
He said, “This is an important insurance policy today.