MIDWAY — With the historic Dorchester Academy as a backdrop, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock delivered his reasons for re-election to a crowd of more than 200 people Thursday evening.
Warnock won a January 2021 runoff for a special election to fill out the remainder of the late Johnny Isakson’s seat. Isakson, citing his health, resigned from office in December 2019 and passed away in 2021.
But the seat is now up for its full six-year term, and Warnock, a Savannah native who is also the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the same pulpit Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once held, is in a tight race with former football star Herschel Walker.
“I’m not in love with politics,” Warnock said during the rally. “I’m in love with change.”
Warnock touted his backing of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Warnock said the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law recently, invests in green energy and green energy jobs and contains two provisions he is proud of — a cap on the costs of prescription medications for senior citizens and a cap on the price of insulin for those on Medicare.
Warnock also called for an expansion of Medicaid, saying not doing so hurts the working poor the most.
While reiterating his pro-choice stance — “there’s no room in a hospital room for a patient, a doctor and the U.S. government,” he quipped — Warnock also said the maternal mortality rate, especially for Black women, is a problem. He said he has worked with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) to address that issue.
Warnock said he isn’t afraid to reach across the aisle, pointing out he has worked with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on I-14.
“I work with Republicans all the time,” he said. “I will work with anybody if it helps me help Georgians. I work for you.”
Warnock said he was grateful for the law enforcement officers who keep people safe.
“That’s why I sponsored Invest to Protect for small police departments,” he said. “I’m just getting started.”
Expressing concern about what he called “an extreme activist” Supreme Court that has begun its fall term, Warnock also said he was proud to cast the deciding vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the nation’s highest court. Jackson is the first Black female to sit on the Supreme Court, and at Vice President Kamala Harris’ urging, he wrote a letter to his daughter Chloe about the event.
Warnock recalled he Facetimed his daughter to tell her “in the long history of our country, she’s the first Supreme Court justice who looks like you,” and read the letter to her but her reaction, he acknowledged, was rather muted.
“She asked if she could go outside and play,” he said wryly. “She was 5 years old.”
Inflation remains at a near 40-year high, having shot past 8% in recent months. For August 2022, the rise is 8.3% over August 2021, and it was at 9.1% in June. It had been as low as 0.1% in May 2020, according to usinflatoncalculator. com. Gasoline prices, which went down every day for nearly 100 days, have now risen by more than 30 cents a gallon in the last few weeks. Many economists now predict a recession is looming and may be coming soon.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had topped 36,000, is at around 29,200 now. Plus, the labor market has tapered off, with only 263,000 new jobs added. Unemployment fell to 3.5%, but the labor force participation rate also slipped. Unemployment in the U.S. was at 3.7% for 2019.
“I’ve been very focused on making sure we build an economy that serves the people of Georgia well,” Warnock said of the Inflation Reduction Act. “It’s the reason why I did cap the costs of drugs for seniors, I capped the cost of insulin, and finally, Medicare has the ability to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. I was early in calling for the suspension of the federal gas tax so Georgians can feel some relief, and I remain focused on them.”
Most polls show Warnock, a Democrat, with a 3-4-point lead over Walker, the former University of Georgia and professional football standout who easily won the Republican nomination. Three pollsters had Walker in the lead at the end of August and beginning of September, but four polls in the last two weeks had Warnock ahead.
With the U.S. Senate split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, and several seats up for election this year considered as tossups, Georgia’s result is anxiously awaited by members of both parties as it could tip the balance of power within the Senate. Currently, Vice President Harris, a Democrat, holds the tie-breaker if senators cast votes along party lines on measures before them.
Without what was seen as a serious threat, Warnock received more than 702,000 in May’s general primary. Walker, in a much more contested Republican primary, received more than 803,000 votes. Turnout for the Democrat races, though, may have been lower without any competition for the top candidates on the ballot.
In Liberty County, Warnock received 4,653 votes in the May primary, and Walker had 2,312.
“Liberty County is blue,” state Rep. Al Williams (D-Midway) told the crowd, “and is going to stay blue.”
Warnock pulled in nearly 2.29 million votes in the January 2021 special election runoff to beat Kelly Loeffler, who had 2.195 million votes. He was the leading vote-getter in the November 2020 election for the seat, a race that had 20 candidates. Georgia’s rules stipulate a candidate must receive a simple majority of the votes, and not just the most votes, to win a seat, prompting the runoff.
Voter registration for the November 8 general election ended October 11. Early voting begins October 17.
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