What an amazing yet humbling quote. If he doesn’t inspire you to help save our majority, I don’t know what will!
Welcome to my new diary series titled “Majority Savers”! I am using this diary as a preview of a series I expect to launch in mid June and run every Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday. The goal of this series is to highlight races that may make or break our current slender majorities in Congress. That means I will start more with incumbent Senators and House members until some primary elections are settled. If I have time, I will expand it to governors as well.
I have six ground rules behind the philosophy of this series. I’d ask you all to respect them as best you can, because these are taking me quite a long time to write. Here are my ground rules:
1) Focus more on endangered incumbents first. This hopefully avoids the nasty primary spats that could erupt if I highlight one challenger over another. Perhaps later once primaries wrap up I can highlight significant challengers that win their primary election.
2) Stay positive in tone. Yes, these incumbents or candidates may not be perfect, but with such slim majorities we need every Democratic Party member we can find. Highlight their record or why they are running. Try to drown out negativity as much as possible. “MORE and better Democrats!”
3) Include fundraising links, social media accounts, phone/text banking, link to candidate website, etc. to aid in activism.
4) Give the history of the state/district as best as possible so that there is more knowledge about why this race can make or break our majorities.
5) Take no requests from others for candidates to write about. It will be hard enough to spotlight this many candidates because the deep dive will take some time. Maybe I relax this rule closer to the midterm election.
6) Ignore the GOP candidates running against them when possible. We know they will be terrible, and I am sure commenters will fill in that information themselves.
The first candidate I am highlighting also happens to be my favorite member of Congress right now: Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock! Please go below the fold to read more about him!
It should be natural that my favorite Senator goes first!
Candidate Background
I do not intend to write his entire biography, which you can read here and here. But I will make some points that I feel helped shape him to be an amazing Senator.
- He grew up in the projects as the eleventh of twelve children in Savannah, Georgia. His dream was to follow in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which is why he chose to head into the ministry. His parents were both pastors at one time too.
- He got a taste of organizing and labor issues in the 1990s when he was a youth pastor opposing Rudy Giuliani and his “workfare” program. This and his upbringing in Savannah likely lead to him being so involved in economic issues and a living wage.
- Church politics can be nasty and cutthroat, and Warnock made it to the famous Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. This is significant because it is the same congregation that made Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famous. He was the youngest person ever selected senior pastor of that congregation, and he still holds that title today while in the Senate.
- He delivered the benediction during the public prayer service for Obama’s second inauguration. He also presided over legendary Rep. John Lewis’s funeral in 2020 when Lewis sadly passed away.
Rev. Warnock delivering a eulogy as a part of his role as senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Signature Issues
Sen. Warnock has a DW-Nominate score of -0.378, indicating that he is firmly on the liberal end of the political spectrum. In fact, he is more liberal than 67% of his Democratic Senate colleagues.
Health Care: Sen. Warnock was arrested on the Senate floor in 2017 for praying against the repeal of Obamacare. How ironic that he now stands on the same floor as a member of the Senate. Medicaid expansion and strengthening Obamacare are two of his core issues. He is a firm supporter of abortion rights, which shows that Christians can support social issues and follow the faith of Jesus Christ without being raging hypocrites.
Voting Rights: Given that Sen. Warnock comes from a voter suppression state with a legacy of Jim Crow, it is natural for him to be a champion of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act in the Senate. His commitment to having people vote can be shown by heading the New Georgia Project, which focuses on registering people to vote.
Warnock speaking during a session of the US Senate.
Elections History
Recent Elections —
2020 President: Joe Biden (D) 49.5%, TFG (R-inc) 49.3%
2021 Senate runoff: Raphael Warnock (D) 51.04%, Kelly Loeffler (R-inc) 48.96%
2022 Race Rating: Tossup
For a very long time after Reconstruction, Georgia was an integral part of the Solid South. Through violence, intimidation, and laws such as poll taxes and grandfather clauses, the white ruling class ruled Jim Crow era Georgia with an iron fist. Sometimes, counties had margins for Democratic candidates that would have made Stalin blush. We’re talking 95%+ of the vote!
When LBJ pushed through Civil Rights legislation, this image of Georgia started to change. Republicans started winning the electoral votes (1964) and getting elected to seats in Congress. That includes the man who did some of the worst damage to America in Newt Gingrich (1976). The Senate seats started becoming competitive in the 1980s, and the final transition to a Republican redoubt happened in the 2002 midterms when they defeated Sen. Max Cleland and Gov. Roy Barnes.
Georgia looked uncompetitive for a long time. Obama never contested the state in either of his wins for President. Hillary Clinton never took Georgia seriously, but in 2016 she matched the Obama 2008 margin without trying. Georgia drew intense interest when Stacey Abrams narrowly lost her 2018 governor election to Kemp. Results and demographics showed that competing in Georgia for 2020 was feasible.
The next part was historic. Biden narrowly won Georgia over TFG in a mild shock. Both Republican Senators were forced into runoffs. What happened next became probably the most watched and historic Senate elections in recent memory. The impossible happened, and the Deep South elected a liberal Jewish Senator AND a liberal Black Senator on January 5. We didn’t get to enjoy the victory because of what happened the next day on 1/6.
Warnock and Loeffler debate one another during the now famous 2021 runoff election.
Georgia has a PVI of R+3, which means it tends to vote three points right of the median vote spread. While the state is trending rapidly our way and diversifying, the legacy of Jim Crow still puts us behind the eight ball, as Gov. Kemp and the state legislature have passed numerous voter suppression bills. Senator Warnock will have a huge fight no matter who he faces in November, with a possible runoff in January once more.
Political Tour of the State
Here's where races are won for us in the state of Georgia.
- Gwinnett County/Cobb County/northern Fulton County: There is a mixture of Never Trump Republicans and increasingly diverse voters that live in these areas. These areas in the era of Trump rapidly shifted left and tossed out the incumbent GOP members of Congress for Reps. Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bordeaux. Sen. Warnock will have to get all of the diverse voters out AND appeal to enough Never Trump Republicans in order to ensure his victory.
- City of Atlanta and the inner suburbs: These areas need to turn out like gangbusters for Warnock to win, just like they did in 2020-21. These areas are the prime targets of the voter suppression legislation — especially considering the replacement of elections officials with GOP rubber stamps.
- Black Belt/Macon/Savannah/Augusta: Again, we need turnout to be insanely high in these smaller cities and rural areas in order to put Warnock over the hump. Traditionally, turnout has been poor in these areas but hopefully 2020-21 changed that.
Here’s where we need to keep the margins down, or we will lose Georgia.
- Cherokee and Forsyth Counties: These are the white flight exurbs of the Atlanta metro area, and the counties have tons of MAGA supporters. Even these counties are slowly diversifying, but they will remain a rich source of GOP votes for decades to come. If turnout is very high here in November, it is likely a bad sign for us.
- Northern Georgia: One sneaky reason why Warnock and Ossoff won was that the only place where turnout fizzled between November and January two years ago was rural northern Georgia. Whether it was sour grapes from the Senate primary or the loss of TFG, these areas did not turn out as robustly as other areas in the state. Again, very high turnout in these areas would be a bad sign on election night.
Activism — Help How You Can!
In Quarter 1, Sen. Warnock raised a record setting $13.6 MILLION dollar haul. It was a record for the first quarter of an election year. He now has $25.6 million on hand, which is a very comfortable place to be for him. I almost feel guilty linking to his ActBlue page, but do know that the right wing slime machine will run in overtime to attack him with the Senate on the line. I recommend less than $10 if donating is your way of activism — I have a $10 recurring monthly donation myself but only because he is my favorite Senator.
DONATE TO SEN. WARNOCK HERE
If social media is more your thing, you can follow him on Twitter. He has about 1M followers, and he could always use more of them.
You can also follow him on Facebook at reverendwarnock
You can follow him on Instagram at raphaelwarnock
Finally, you can choose to visit his campaign site, warnockforgeorgia.com, which is probably the best way you can volunteer for his campaign at this time!
Thank you for reading! I hope that you enjoyed this diary on Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock! I enjoyed writing about him.
Please give me some feedback on this series so that I can be ready with the full series in mid June! That doesn’t mean give me candidates to write about, because I already have a list of about 80 candidates to write about. What I need is feedback on what information to include or not include with each diary. What worked here? What needs to improve?
Different question: Should I wait until June to start this series? Or should I post more diaries on this series every Tuesday and Friday?
Thanks,
bilboteach
