Raphael Warnock

Abstract This chapter recounts how Raphael Warnock won a runoff election in January 2021 to become Georgia’s first African American US senator and how the 2020 election cycle culminating with the 2021 Senate runoffs demonstrates that Georgia has become a competitive state. As the chapter shows, if the trends identified in this chapter continue, Democratic strength will increase during the decade: coupled with support for Stacey Abrams, who came within 55,000 votes of the governorship in 2018, Warnock’s victory, suggests that other Black candidates will follow him to the victory stand. Though statewide wins for Democrats depend in part on the degree to which recent successes were driven by distasted for Donald Trump. But, as the chapter concludes, Warnock and Abrams’s results show that the penalty that Black candidates previously paid no longer need apply in Georgia. Abrams led the Democratic ticket in 2018 with 48.8 percent of the vote. A second African American, Otha Thornton, who ran for state school superintendent, received 47 percent of the vote, clustered with several other Democrats competing for positions that attract little attention. When he runs for a full term in 2022, Warnock will likely share the spotlight and perhaps be eclipsed by Stacey Abrams making a second bid for governor.