Georgia Democrat on eve of runoff election: Loeffler can soon ‘call me Senator’ Warnock

Rev. Raphael Warnock, one of the two Democratic challengers in Georgia’s pivotal special Senate race, made his final appeal to Peach State voters Monday at a drive-in rally in Atlanta with fellow candidate Jon Ossoff and President-elect Joe Biden.

Georgia has become the focal point and last question mark of this election cycle, with Biden eking out President Trump on his way to winning the presidency and Warnock and Ossoff forcing a runoff election on Tuesday against GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively.

If both Warnock and Ossoff win, Democrats will pick up a razor-thin margin in the Senate. Otherwise, Republicans will retain control of the chamber, seriously hindering Biden’s ability to effectively pass substantive legislation during his first months in office.

“If you’ve already voted, your job is not done,” Warnock, who is the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church — where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached — said at the rally.

“Your job is not done until you call everybody in your circle, everybody you know until you call your family members and your friends. And you tell them to vote.”

“Tell them that the preacher said a vote is a kind of prayer for the kind of world we want to live in, and our prayers are stronger when we pray together,” the reverend continued. “Are you ready to win this election?”

The apparent blue surge in Georgia has been powered by voting rights activists like Stacey Abrams who have worked for years to increase Black voter turnout.

Abrams and company were successful, with Georgians setting early and by-mail state voting records amid the pandemic.

Specifically, young Black Georgians made up 20 percent of the state’s votes in the general election, with 90 percent of them voting for Biden, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

Youth voters and voters of color alike could prove to be the difference maker in what has been an extremely tight runoff race. Warnock, Loeffler, Ossoff and Perdue all failed to garner 50 percent of the vote on Nov. 3 — forcing Tuesday’s runoff elections.

Polls still show the candidates in dead heats: RealClearPolitics polling averages show Warnock leading Loeffler by 1.8 percentage points and Ossoff with a 0.8 percent advantage over Perdue.

Warnock also took a dig at Loeffler’s negative messaging against him, saying that the freshman senator has called him “everything but a child of God.”

“But that’s alright,” Warnock told the energetic crowd.

“My mother down in Savannah, Georgia, she said it’s not what they call you, it’s what you answer by, and in a few days she can call me Senator Raphael Warnock.”