ATLANTA (Reuters) -Democrat Raphael Warnock won re-election to the U.S. Senate in a hard-fought Georgia runoff on Tuesday, strengthening his party’s razor-thin majority as he fought off a challenge by Republican former football star Herschel Walker.
Democrats now are on track for a 51-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate, which will make it slightly easier to advance Biden’s nominees for judicial and administrative posts.
Much legislation will still require Republican support. But, with an extra vote to spare, Democrats may not now always need the cooperation of centrist senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who were frequently at odds with their party as Democrats tried to advance Biden’s ambitious legislative agenda over the past two years.
They will, however, face a more formidable roadblock in the U.S. House of Representatives, after Republicans won a narrow majority on Nov. 8, though they fell short of the “red wave” that some in the party had forecast.
Warnock, who like Walker is Black, is pastor of the historic Atlanta church where assassinated civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. preached. It is his second runoff victory in two years, after he won the seat in January 2021.
Venkayla Haynes, 28, said Warnock’s win was especially meaningful after months of organizing get-out-the-vote efforts for both the general election and then the runoff.
“I’m very happy, I’m very excited that we won and that Black people have a candidate who represents the community and the issues they care about,” said Haynes as she danced at Warnock’s victory party.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne; Additional reporting by Jason Lange, Costas Pitas, Eric Beech and Doina Chiacu; writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)
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