Ossoff defeats Perdue in Georgia Senate runoff, giving Democrats control of chamber
Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff defeat GOP incumbents in Georgia runoffs putting Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress and influencing the scope of Biden’s agenda.
Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff defeated Republican David Perdue for a seat in the U.S. Senate, where he will join fellow newly elected Democrat Raphael Warnock and give their party control of the chamber.
The Associated Press declared both men had won their races. The two upset victories give Democrats control of both the Senate and the House for the first time in a decade.
Mr. Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, beat Mr. Perdue, who was first elected senator in 2014. Mr. Perdue’s term expired on Sunday. Mr. Warnock, the pastor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, defeated Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the AP projected earlier. Ms. Loeffler was appointed a year ago to fill the seat of GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson, who resigned for health reasons.
Messrs. Ossoff and Warnock, who will be sworn in within weeks, will be the first Democrats to represent Georgia in the Senate since 2005. The change of power in the Senate will hand Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration a Congress more willing to consider its agenda. That includes confirming Mr. Biden’s judicial nominees and cabinet appointees to seeking additional federal spending in response to the Covid-19 pandemic — items that were central to Messrs. Ossoff and Warnock’s campaigns.
Once the Georgia senators-elect are sworn in, Democrats and Republicans will each hold 50 seats in the Senate. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would cast tiebreaking votes.
With almost all the votes counted, the result was a historic win for Democrats — Mr. Warnock will become the first Black senator from Georgia — and a rebuke of President Trump, who was a central part of the Republican effort here.
In an address to the public early Wednesday, Mr. Warnock said his story was uniquely American, as the son of an 82-year-old woman who once picked “somebody else’s cotton” as a sharecropper, and as the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, “the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis.” “We proved with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible,” he said.
His opponent, Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, hasn’t conceded the race. The Associated Press declared Rev. Warnock the winner early Wednesday morning. By midmorning, Rev. Warnock led Ms. Loeffler by about 53,000 votes out of nearly 4.4 million counted, or a margin of 1.2 percentage points, the AP said. The margin was greater than the 0.5% of the vote necessary for a campaign to request a recount, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Georgia election officials estimated that a little more than 65,000 votes remain to be counted, and most of those were absentee ballots cast in Democratic strongholds.
Mr. Ossoff led Mr. Perdue by about 15,000 votes, or a margin of just under 0.4 percentage point, within the range for a recount. The Georgia Secretary of State’s office, which has been sharply criticized by Mr. Trump and his supporters after Mr. Trump lost the state in November, said voting went smoothly Tuesday.
The campaigns of Messrs. Ossoff and Perdue released dueling statements early Wednesday jockeying over the remaining Senate seat. Each campaign maintained that once all the results were counted, each candidate believed they would be declared the winner.
In a live stream posted at 8 a.m., Mr. Ossoff thanked the people of Georgia “for the confidence and trust that you have placed in me.” “Let’s unite now to beat this virus and rush economic relief to the people of our state and to the American people,” he said.
The Perdue campaign said the race was tight but, “We believe in the end, Sen. Perdue will be victorious.” Sen. Loeffler, who was appointed to her post last year, declared recently that she would come to Washington on Wednesday to vote in support of efforts by Mr. Trump to challenge the presidential election results, which showed him losing to Democrat Joe Biden. A spokesman for Ms. Loeffler didn’t respond Wednesday morning to a request for comment as to whether she still planned to do so.
Evangelical radio show host Erick Erickson tweeted Wednesday: “Given last night’s outcome, I don’t think it would be appropriate for @SenatorLoeffler to object to anything in the Senate today.” Mr. Perdue’s term expired Sunday; he isn’t eligible to object to the Electoral College vote count.
Both President-Elect Biden and Mr. Trump campaigned twice in Georgia in recent weeks during the runoff elections, which were required under state law for the two Senate races after no candidate won more than 50% of the vote. In his rallies, Mr. Trump spent much of his energy attacking the November election results and state GOP officials instead of bolstering Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler.
Mr. Trump tweeted Wednesday morning: “They just happened to find 50,000 ballots late last night. The USA is embarrassed by fools. Our Election Process is worse than that of third world countries!” As in the presidential election in November, many Democratic-leaning urban counties reported their results later in the night than rural, GOP-leaning counties. State election officials reported few problems.
A Georgia strategist closely involved in Republican Senate campaigns said Wednesday morning that “This runoff election ended up being about Trump and not about Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.” Mr. Trump’s constant complaints about the November results and his refusal to concede made it impossible for Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler to argue that they would be the last line of defense in the Senate, since they couldn’t acknowledge Mr. Trump had lost in November.
Asked if he expected Mr. Perdue would lose his race, the person said, “No doubt. Everything outstanding is going to go disproportionally into the Ossoff column.” Messrs. Warnock and Ossoff raised substantially more money than their opponents and spent the money with nonstop advertising and aggressive get-out-the-vote efforts. Mr. Warnock’s campaign focused on presenting a kindly image of their candidate, including numerous ads of the 51-year-old pastor walking a dog. Ms. Loeffler’s campaign, financed in part by millions of her own money, included many negative ads attacking Rev. Warnock as a radical. In one early ad, she compared herself to Attila the Hun as a way to win over conservatives.
Both Republican campaigns were heavily supported with money and resources by Republican groups seeking to have the GOP retain control of the Senate and keep Sen. Mitch McConnell as majority leader. With Rev. Warnock’s win, Democrats will have 49 seats in the Senate. The GOP will have 50, with Mr. Perdue’s seat in the balance. If the Democrats win the seat, incoming Vice President Kamala Harris, as senate president, will give Democrats control of the chamber. Democrats would then control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
While the fate of the balance of power in the Senate now rests on the Perdue-Ossoff result, Democrats achieved one significant accomplishment: They have demonstrated that Mr. Biden’s narrow win over Mr. Trump in Georgia in November wasn’t a fluke and that the state will become a battleground in future elections.
With Valerie Bauerlein and Joshua Jamerson
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