Georgia Senate election: Democrat Ossoff beats Perdue in crucial runoff race

Georgia Democrat’s win clinches his party the Senate majority through 2022

Democrat Jon Ossoff has defeated incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue in their hotly contested Senate runoff, according to the <i>Associated Press</i>.

While Mr Ossoff’s victory clinches the majority for Senate Democrats through 2022, the AP’s race call came as an afterthought on Wednesday as throngs of pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol while Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s victory in November’s presidential election.

The Georgia Democrat’s win is yet another sign of a major political shift in the longtime Republican stronghold, coming nearly two months after Mr Biden took the Peach State in November. Some Republican officials already were pointing blame at one man.

“Look, Republicans won both of these races in November. If they fall short today, it's for one reason only: President Trump's decision to relentlessly promote nutty conspiracy theories about the Georgia election system,’ Michael Steel, a former aide to then-Speaker John Boehner told The Independent on Tuesday night. He wasn’t alone.

In the race’s final days, Mr Ossoff framed a vote for him as Mr Biden’s last best chance to enact big parts of his ambitious legislative agenda.

“Mitch McConnell will try to do to Joe and Kamala [Harris] exactly what he did to President Obama. But we have too much good work to do,” the senator-elect said Monday at a campaign rally in Atlanta that was headlined by Mr Biden, also referring to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

He called Mr Perdue and the other GOP incumbent on the ballot, Kelly Leoffler, the “Bonnie and Clyde” of US politics, referring to corruption scandals.

Read more: Who controls the US Senate and can Georgia flip it?

Read more: When will we know Georgia Senate runoff election results?

“But we have bigger and better things to talk about than David and Kelly,” he said dismissively, vowing he would work with the incoming Biden team to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, deal with hard-hit hospitals in the state and build new medical facilities.

“Health care is a human right,” Mr Ossoff said, “and we will make it so in the United States of America.”

Despite Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House, it will be difficult for them to pass major legislation – unless the majority changes the Senate’s rules to pass bills with a simple majority rather than first clearing a 60-vote threshold.

That does not appear likely to happen as long as Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the chamber’s most moderate Democrat, remains in office.

Mr Manchin has stated his public opposition to nixing the filibuster multiple times over the last several months.

“I commit to you tonight, and I commit to all of your viewers and everyone else that’s watching – I want to allay those fears, I want to rest those fears for you right now because when they talk about whether it be packing the courts, or ending the filibuster, I will not vote to do that,” Mr Manchin said in an interview with Fox News in November, shortly after the 2020 general election.

“I will not vote to pack the courts … and I will not vote to end the filibuster.”

With Mr Ossoff’s victory, the Senate is now knotted at 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris casting tiebreaker votes.

That gives Democrats a knife’s-edge majority, mastery of what does and does not receive a vote, and the all-important committee gavels. But it leaves them unable to repeal the filibuster – and, in turn, add more seats to the Supreme Court – without Mr Manchin’s support.

At a rally in Georgia earlier this week, Mr Biden called both Mr Ossoff and the other Democratic candidate, Raphael Warnock, “talented” and “decent”, an apparent knock on Donald Trump and the two GOP incumbents.

“I took an oath to the US Constitution, and as president I don’t believe your US senators will work for me. They’ll work for the people for Georgia,” Mr Biden said. "I’m not asking your senators to be loyal to me, but to be loyal to you and the US Constitution, period.

“If you vote for John and the reverend (Warnock), that’s what you’ll get,” he added. “They won’t put a president or the party first, they’ll put you first."

The race was forecast by multiple polls as a dead heat in the final days.

Early results suggested Mr Ossoff was out-performing Mr Biden’s vote tallies from his November win in key counties that had been Democratic strongholds.

Democratic Party officials had aimed for just that: big turnouts in places like Atlanta and Macon to offset expected big wins for the GOP candidates in the states’ deeply red northern and southern regions.