Elizabeth Applebaum, 24’

Since Joe Biden was elected to office, Democratic volunteers have been pouring all of their time into the campaigns of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock -- candidates for two runoff Senate elections in Georgia. All this work was rewarded after the runoff elections in Georgia on January 5th, when both candidates won. 

Both Ossoff and Warnock were very unlikely candidates. Neither of them has ever held elected office before: Jon Ossoff is a former investigative journalist and national security aide in Congress, and he ran a very close campaign for a Congress seat in Georgia in 2017; Raphael Warnock has been the reverend at Martin Luther King Jr.’s church for 15 years, and he has helped register voters through his church. Furthermore, they ran in a state that, although it flipped blue this year, had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 28 years. They also had not appointed a Democratic senator in 20 years.

The turnout for the Democratic candidates was very impressive in the runoff election. The New York Times reported that Reverend Warnock won his race by 2 points, and Ossoff won by 1.2 points. In the presidential election, however, Biden only won the state by 0.24 points. This means that not only was Democratic turnout very strong, but it was also a huge increase from the presidential election. This is partly because of President Trump’s false claims that his election was stolen which led to Republicans not wanting to vote or not wanting to vote for candidates who associated themselves with Trump, which the Republicans did. 

This blue wave in Georgia is largely credited to Stacey Abrams. She is a former state legislator from Georgia who ran against Brian Kemp for governor of Georgia in 2018. Kemp was Georgia’s Secretary of State at the time, so he had the ability to increase voter suppression tactics in the state. This led him to win the race for governor, although Stacey Abrams turned out millions of Democratic voters, and she would have won without the suppression efforts. After this tragic loss, Abrams put all her time and effort into creating the New Georgia Project and Fair Fight, which are organizations that help increase voter turnout with people who are considered “unlikely” to vote, have not voted in a while, or may not have the resources they need to vote. The work of Stacey Abrams, her organizations, and volunteers all around the country, led to the Senate victory. From the beginning of her gubernatorial race, Stacey Abrams believed that Georgia was a swing state, but politicians were often skeptical of that idea. The triple win for Georgia Democrats of the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the South, the first Jewish Senator from Georgia, and the election of Joe Biden confirms her belief and will most likely lead to fierce competition in Georgia in the future.

All in all, this is a huge accomplishment for Democrats, as they have not had control of the Senate since 2008. However, the news came on the day that Trump incited a giant mob in the Capitol, so it was hard to comprehend such exciting news for Democrats on such an awful day for the country. In the end, though, the control of the Senate is a massive step forward for Democrats and for all the plans Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to enact as soon as they can.