Democrats were able to grasp control of the U.S. Senate with a win from a hard-fought Nevada race, which has now reshaped the upcoming runoff in Georgia between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.
On Saturday, several national news outlets reported Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s defeat of Republican Adam Laxalt. The victory ensures Democrats retain 50 seats in the closely divided chamber, with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote.
The win lowers the stakes of Georgia’s runoff between rivals Warnock and Herschel. The runoff will now determine whether Democrats will have a two-seat cushion in the Senate.
Warnock ran slightly ahead of Walker in Tuesday’s vote but was forced into a runoff because he didn’t meet the 50 percent threshold required to win outright.
President Biden has low approval ratings in Georgia and polls indicate some Republicans are willing to look past Walker’s controversial actions to vote for GOP control of the chamber.
Walker’s win no longer is needed to see who controls the Senate. Now voters can go back to being worried about his personal issues and gives them less of a reason to vote in a post-Thanksgiving overtime race.
”Republicans’ main argument for electing Herschel Walker just went up in smoke,” said Sarafina Chitika, a Warnock campaign spokeswoman.
“The Georgia runoff is still huge in importance for Republicans. At 50-50, it’s possible to peel off Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin for the most leftist Democrat legislation,” said Scott Johnson, a veteran GOP activist, of the two moderate Senate Democrats. “A Democratic victory in Georgia takes that out of possibility.”
Democrats kept their hold on the Senate after tens of thousands of mail-in ballots in Arizona and Nevada were accounted for. On Friday, national outlets called the race in Arizona for Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly. Nevada’s call came the following day, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Georgia has experience with the role that Nevada played on Saturday. In 2021, victories by Warnock and Democrat Jon Ossoff over two GOP incumbents led Democrats to grasp control of the chamber and allowed Biden to pursue a more aggressive agenda.
The party’s hold of the Senate in the midterm also gives the President more leeway to press his agenda before a closely divided Congress as well as avoids a scenario where Republicans could block the president’s judicial appointments and stymie his legislative proposals.
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