Putting his senatorial campaign straight on the path of President Donald Trump’s push to subvert the election results in Georgia, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, senatorial candidate in the runoff election in January, asked his opponent, Senator Kelly Loeffler, to choose between defending the votes of Georgians and her support of Trump’s stream of unfounded claims of election fraud.
Warnock, who is the pastor of one of the most distinguished of American churches, Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has the mien of a minister of Jesus and of the newest heir to the pulpit of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He held a press conference on Wednesday on the voting issue.
Recognising a fundamental wrong, Warnock called on Loeffler to have the courage to break ranks with Trump and Republicans who have been attacking the outcome of the election in Georgia. It is wrong to have the politicians trying to pick their voters, said Warnock. His campaign is one of two Georgia runoff races that represent a path for Democratic control of the senate, tying the count at 50–50 with Kamala Harris wielding the power of the tie-breaking vote as president of the senate.
“Speak out and defend Georgians’ right to vote and their right to a voice in their democracy,” he called on Loeffler, who he said has been “strangely silent on the question of protecting the voices of everyday Georgians.”
Warnock was clearly taking on the role of defender of voting rights, noting that the same could not be said of his opponent and making it clear that in this election, voting rights are on the ballot. “Your vote is your voice, your voice is your human dignity. I am committed to protect your dignity as your senator from the great state of Georgia.”
He expressed outrage at the incursion into the Georgia count by South Carolina Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham “telling the secretary of state in Georgia to throw away the validly cast ballots of Georgia citizens”.
Promising to fight to protect voting rights as the fundamental idea that underpins democracy, he counted himself in to show why he is part of a great tradition of standing up for what is right and to take that banner to the polls.
‘We all must stand up to defend our democracy against any effort to undermine it. This is not a matter of politics, it is a matter of principle. It is a matter of moral leadership,” he said
Warnock, who has been driving efforts to get ordinary people to the polls and is a force behind the ‘Souls to the Polls’ programme, said he will fight to make sure every vote is counted and to accept the results.
“The four most powerful words in a democracy are, ‘the people have spoken,’ and the central covenant in our democracy is that legally cast ballots will be counted,” he said.
Making a case for his candidature, Warnock described a vision of a nation where people can have access to affordable health care, a liveable wage, a retirement with dignity and access to a quality education. “They may call that radical; I call it common sense,” he argued.
In response to criticism by Senator Marco Rubio about service that one can’t be Christian and serve in the military at the same time, Warnock clarified the framework of the philosophical terminology of the Gospels.
“The Gospel lesson says that you cannot serve God and mammon — a Biblical word for money — that a person cannot have two masters,” he said. “It is a spiritual lesson that is basic and foundational for people of faith.”
Warnock added that as a person of faith he has his ultimate allegiance to God and that what he commits to has to be built on a spiritual foundation and an order of priorities, so that he can live a moral life.
It was both a manner of highlighting and calling out what he said was the distortion of not only his message but the measure of scripture. “It is unfortunate and shameful,” he said.
The message, he said, was that “When you commit yourself to something larger than yourself, you become better at that whether it is serving in the military or serving in the US Senate.”
In political form that reminded of the stakes in this special election, Warnock then took the opportunity to criticise his opponent for putting her own financial interests — mammon, he pointed out — “above the interests of the people she was sent to the Senate to represent”.
Calling Loeffler’s actions irresponsible for making “claims of fraud for which she has no evidence,” he called out her demand on Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to resign because they do not like the outcome.
“The senator is undermining faith in our election system and she is sowing division by making claims of fraud for which she has no evidence,” he charged. “This undermines our process, it certainly does not do much to pull us together as a state or a nation at a time when we face big problems.”
That set the contrast with his opponent, “My ministry and my work has been about pulling people together,” he said.
In a Fox5-Atlanta/Insider Advantage poll, Warnock is narrowly edging Senator Loeffler, 49 per cent: 48 per cent, with 3 per cent left as undecided.
