The Rev. Raphael Warnock is now Senator-elect Raphael Warnock. He is projected to defeat Sen. Kelly Loeffler in one of Georgia’s two runoff elections.

Warnock, the pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, will become Georgia’s first Black senator. He kicked off the runoff campaign with one of the more memorable and effective ads in recent election cycles, and then followed it up with another one using the same themes, just as effective.

In an historic election with consequences that will reverberate for years, Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are poised to flip two Republican-held Senate seats in Georgia and hand control of the chamber to Democrats for the first time since 2014.

With most votes tallied, Warnock held a small but insurmountable lead on his Republican opponent, Kelly Loeffler, and declared victory.

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15 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE

Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—Why the GOP Will Remain a Threat to Democracy, Even After Trump Is Gone.

Tuesday brings the 2020 election cycle to a close with twin U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia that will decide which party controls the chamber. In addition, there’s a runoff for a seat on Georgia’s five-member Public Service Commission. Note that due to the high volume of mail-in votes, we may not know the final outcome of these races tonight.

It’s very unusual to see a non-November election that is for all the marbles, but that’s what’s on tap on Tuesday in the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia. If Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock both manage to defeat their Republican opponents, the Democratic Party will have a Senate majority (thanks to Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote), and along with Joe Biden and a Democratic-controlled House, a governing trifecta.