Raphael Warnock (winner) vs. Kelly Loeffler

Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock won in a special runoff election over Republican incumbent Senator Kelly Loeffler. Warnock won narrowly, with the final results being 50.8 to 49.2 percent, ensuring Democratic control of the Senate.

Warnock was the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the South. Having grown up in public housing with a mother who had been a sharecropper that picked cotton and tobacco, Warnock ran on a platform that he said would support the regular person. “I’ve been fighting for ordinary people because I know what it’s like to be an ordinary person,” Warnock said in a speech Jan. 3. 

Warnock’s opponent, Loeffler, faced backlash over the summer after speaking out against the Black Lives Matter movement. This, along with her heavily criticized response to the pandemic, is believed to have set Loeffler back in the race for the Senate. However, Loeffler has defended her response to COVID-19, during which she prioritized rebuilding the economy. “[I am] the only candidate qualified to help rebuild our economy and get past this pandemic,” Loeffler said.

The race between Warnock and Loeffler has been discussed more in mainstream media, due to the fact that both candidates have attacked the belief systems of their opponents. Loeffler has come under fire for her disapproval of the BLM movement, as well as her financial history in which she was said to have made a profit off of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like her fellow Republican Senator, Perdue, Loeffler has denied these accusations. Meanwhile, Loeffler has accused Warnock of being a radical marxist and tied his platform to aiming to defund the police, among other leftist policies. 

Both Warnock and political experts alike have stated that Warnock’s win as the first Black Senator in Georgia is representative of the state beginning to confront its history and improve diversity. “[Georgia] is more diverse, and it is more inclusive, and it readily embraces the future. And I am a product of that. Welcome to the new Georgia,” Warnock said to NPR Jan. 6.