By: Hank Bartholomew
There has been no shortage of headlines surrounding the midterms, but one of the most interesting may be the Georgia Senate Runoff. Since a smaller, Libertarian candidate has received over 2% of the vote, no one has been able to drag in the necessary 50%, and we’re heading to a runoff on December 6. Pitting republican nominee Herschel Walker against the incumbent Raphael Warnock, this race could have serious implications for the future. Here’s how it might break down.
In 2020, all eyes were on Georgia. Control of the Senate depended on whoever could control the state. The aforementioned Warnock upset Kelly Loeffler in another runoff, and the blues snagged control of the Senate. As a major surprise to most, Democrats have been able to maintain control in this year’s Senate elections, regardless of what happens with Georgia. But that’s not to say it’s unimportant. Prior to Warnock and his counterpart, Jon Ossoff, winning both of the state’s Senate seats, the last time Democrats got both of Georgia’s seats was in 1992, when Bill Clinton was president. But if Democrats grab Georgia again, it may symbolize a shift towards an even stronger swing state. With what looks to be a fierce presidential battle on the horizon, both parties would no doubt be happy for the peach state’s reassurance.
Then there’s Walker.
The former football star has probably had the most controversy-ridden campaign since his endorser, former president Donald J. Trump. He has been accused of encouraging and paying for two women to get abortions, despite his own harsh stance against any abortion rights.
He falsely claimed that he was a law enforcement officer by holding up an honorary deputy’s badge. Then he upped the ante and mentioned that he has multiple personalities (don’t worry, he’s seeing a therapist who believes demonic possession is the cause of mental illness and says he can cure someone based on what color crayon his patient selects).
So the question here is if Republicans will throw their support behind Walker again for one last major push, or ease off, thinking that they already won’t have control of the Senate and that they might save some face by not pushing for a candidate who thinks that climate change isn’t worth fighting because “since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we’ve got to clean that back up, while they’re messing ours up.”
Finally, Democrats may actually need Georgia. They currently have fifty of the one hundred Senate seats, meaning that with democratic vice president Kamala Harris’s ability to break a tie, they have the majority. But having the majority and getting legislation passed aren’t one and the same. Virginia senator Joe Manchin failed to provide the one vote Democrats needed on multiple occasions during the first two years of Biden’s presidency, saying rather mysteriously that he didn’t want to encourage partisan divides. So if Manchin decides that everybody needs to go to compromise corner, the Dems might want that extra vote.
There’s no telling what this runoff will result in. For all we know, we might be hearing a speech about China’s bad air on the floor of the U.S. Senate pretty soon.
