Georgia’s Senate race goes to a December runoff

Georgia’s U.S. Senate race is heading to a runoff, with neither major candidate on track to win a majority of votes.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP nominee Herschel Walker will face off again on Tuesday, Dec. 6, with the Senate majority potentially on the line for a second straight election cycle in the historically conservative bastion. Warnock was slightly ahead, with 49 percent of the vote, but Georgia law requires a runoff if no candidate clears 50 percent.

A runoff jump starts a four-week blitz here, likely drawing millions more in campaign spending to a state that’s weathered five years of non-stop, history-making elections. It would also extend a deeply negative campaign filled with TV ads attacking both candidates’ personal lives. Walker has tried to cast Warnock as a rubber-stamp for President Joe Biden’s agenda, while Warnock has painted Walker, a first-time candidate with a controversial personal history, as unqualified for office.

It could be an eerie repeat of the 2021 runoffs, when Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) defeated their Republican opponents to deliver full Democratic control in Washington and a 50-50 Senate. But the level of money and attention Georgia might draw will hinge on whether other Senate Democrats hang on in tight races in Arizona and Nevada, which would force the balance of power to be decided back in Georgia.

“Groups and donors will spend money on Georgia regardless because it’s an important Senate seat, but it’s orders of magnitude larger if control of the Senate is at play,” said one Democratic strategist involved in the Georgia race.

The logistics of the 2022 runoff will look different than 2021, after the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature passed a law last year that significantly changed the rules. Most notably, they shortened the runoff period from nine weeks to four weeks. But it also restricted early voting during the runoff and essentially eliminated the ability to register new voters during that period, which Democrats had used to great effect in 2021.

The race has been dominated by the allegations that Walker, who has said he favors banning abortion without exceptions, paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. Walker has denied the claim, and Republicans have largely rallied behind him, but it sparked criticism — including from one of his adult children, Christian Walker — that he was an absent father.

Warnock, meanwhile, faced claims that he improperly used campaign funds to cover legal expenses for an unrelated matter.

In a sign of the state’s increasing importance in congressional races, high-profile Democrats and Republicans flocked to Georgia in the closing stretch of the campaign, including former President Barack Obama and Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

Both candidates raised hefty sums of cash, with Warnock taking in more than $26 million in the third quarter of 2022 and Walker raising $12 million during that same period. Warnock both outraised and outspent Walker.

Warnock, Georgia’s first Black senator, was a political newcomer in 2020 and remains a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the late Martin Luther King Jr.’s former congregation, where he’s preached since 2005.

Walker, a former NFL running back and Heisman Trophy winner, was an early supporter of Donald Trump and won the former president’s endorsement early in the race. Trump had encouraged Walker to run for the seat, and Walker later received Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s first nonincumbent endorsement of the 2022 cycle.

The outcome of next month’s runoff could have implications beyond control of the Senate. If Walker wins, it would help reverse Democrats’ recent gains in Georgia, which has long been a GOP stronghold. A Warnock victory could help solidify Georgia’s status as a battleground for several elections to come.