ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia voters will decide the last Senate race in the country on Tuesday. They will choose between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican football legend Herschel Walker. This comes after a four-week runoff blitz that has brought a lot of outside money into a fight that is becoming more personal.
This year’s runoff is less important than the two in 2021 when Democrats took control of the Senate after wins by Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff. Depending on how Tuesday’s vote goes, Democrats will either have a clear 51-49 majority in the Senate or a 50-50 tie that Vice President Kamala Harris can break.
The runoff ends a bitter fight between Warnock, the state’s first Black senator and the senior minister of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, and Walker, a former University of Georgia football star and political novice who ran his campaign like former President Donald Trump.
If Warnock wins, Georgia will still be a key battleground state for the 2024 presidential election. A win for Walker, on the other hand, could mean that Democratic gains in the state might not be as big as they seem, especially since Republicans won every other statewide election in Georgia last month.
In that election, Warnock was ahead of Walker by about 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million total votes. However, he didn’t get a majority, so the election went to a second round. About 1.9 million votes have already been sent in by mail or during early voting. This gives Democrats an advantage since their voters are more likely to vote this way. Most of the time, Republicans do better on Election Day voting, where the margins decide who wins.
Last month, Walker, who is 60 years old, was more than 200,000 votes behind the Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp. Walker’s campaign was hampered by a lot of negative talk about his past, rambling speeches, and a number of damaging allegations, such as the claim that he paid for the abortions of two ex-girlfriends, which Walker has denied.
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Warnock, who won a special election in 2021 to finish out the rest of Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term, sounded confident during a busy day of campaigning on Monday. He thought that he had convinced enough voters, including independents and moderate Republicans who supported Kemp, that he deserves a full term.
The 53-year-old senator said, “They’ve seen that I’ll work with anyone who helps me do good work for the people of Georgia.” “I think they will figure this out. They know that this race is about skills and morals.”
Walker campaigned Monday with his wife, Julie. Instead of his usual campaign speech and full-throated attacks on Warnock, Walker met with supporters and thanked them.
He told people at a winery in Ellijay, “I love you all, and we’re going to win this election.” He compared it to the championships he won as an athlete. “I love taking first place.
According to their most recent federal filings, Warnock’s campaign has spent about $170 million on the election, which is a lot more than Walker’s campaign, which has spent about $60 million. But committees from the Democratic and Republican parties and other political action committees have spent even more.
The senator’s position as senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church gives him a boost as he tries to get people from both parties to work together. And starting in the last few weeks before the general election on Nov. 8, Warnock added stinging attacks on Walker. He used the troubled past of the football star to say that Walker, who was new to politics, was “not ready” and “not fit” for high office.
Walker, who got the GOP nomination by relying on his fame as an athlete, has tried to show that Warnock is just a yes-man for President Joe Biden. Walker has sometimes made the attack very personal, accusing Warnock of having his “back bent” and “being on his knees, begging” at the White House. This is a harsh accusation for a black challenger to make about a black senator’s relationship with a white president.
Walker is a businessman who has made a lot of money, but he has lied about his charitable work and business achievements. For example, he said that his company employed hundreds of people and made tens of millions of dollars in sales every year, but records show that he only had eight employees and made an average of about $1.5 million a year. He has said that he was a police officer and that he went to college, but neither of those things is true.
Walker was also forced to admit during the campaign that he had three children out of wedlock that he had never talked about in public before. This went against his years-long criticism of absentee fathers and his calls for Black men in particular to be involved in the lives of their children.
His ex-wife has talked about violent things he did, like how he once put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. Walker has never denied these facts, and in 2008, he wrote a book about his violent tendencies and said that they were caused by his mental illness.
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Warnock has fought back by pointing out what he has done in the Senate. For example, he is proud of a rule he sponsored that caps the cost of insulin for Medicare patients, but he also reminds voters that Republicans blocked his larger plan to cap these costs for all insulin-dependent patients. He praised deals on infrastructure and health care for mothers that he made with Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. He talked about these Republicans more than he did Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, or other Democrats in Washington.
After the general election, Biden, who has had trouble getting people to like him, said he would help Warnock in any way he could, even if it meant not going to Georgia. Instead of campaigning with the president in the days before the runoff election, Warnock chose to work with former President Barack Obama.
Walker, on the other hand, had Trump’s support, but they didn’t campaign together until the last day of the campaign. On Monday, they held a conference call with supporters, according to a Republican National Committee spokesperson.
Walker’s run for Senate is the last chance for the GOP to flip a seat this year. All of these Trump supporters, Dr. Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona, Adam Laxalt of Nevada, and Don Bolduc of New Hampshire, have already lost close Senate races that Republicans once thought would help them get a majority.
Walker has done a lot to set himself apart from Trump. Trump has spent the last two years falsely claiming that his loss in Georgia and nationally was due to fraud. This is despite the fact that many federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers, and even his own attorney general have all said there is no proof of the fraud he claims happened.
In October, at Walker’s one and only debate with Warnock, he was asked if he would accept the results even if he lost. He gave a one-word answer: “Yes.”
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