Written By: Janakiram Rajaraman
Edited By: Michael Shalonov
The Hill
With incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and challenger Herschel Walker deadlocked into a fight for the Georgia US Senate seat, there are many components to be considered regarding what could happen to the political plane field depending on who wins. Since neither candidate has secured a sizeable majority of the vote, the two candidates will once again go head to head in a special runoff election later this week, as per Georgia’s election laws. A runoff election is nothing but a second election to determine the victor between electoral candidates if neither candidate was considered the victor in the first race. The exact electoral conditions needed to trigger a runoff election depend on individual state election laws (Quinn 3). The current incumbent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, had previously won a special runoff election in 2020 against incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Johny Isaakson. Loeffler only served from 2020 to 2021, after being defeated by current Sen. Warnock in a runoff election. It will definitely be interesting to see how Sen. Warnock performs in his second runoff election in a span of two years.
There are a few subjects of consideration that need to be looked into when considering the impacts of 2022’s Georgia runoff, which is scheduled to take place on December 6th. In addition to affecting the makeup of the Senate, the Georgia runoffs will also in a way, function as a response to recent issues, like candidate Herschel Walker’s controversies. Each of these considerations has to be looked into independently.
When looking at the current election results of the Senate, Democrats currently have secured 48 seats, excluding two independent candidates that regularly caucus with Democrats, which are Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Angus King (I-ME). A big pickup in this midterm election was the pickup of a Pennsylvania seat, with Democratic nominee John Fetterman beating out Trump-backed Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz, in a battle for retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat. Including the independent candidates, Democrats currently have secured the Senate majority, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote in the case of a 50-50 deadlock. However, the Democratic caucus still has roadblocks in the form of moderate Democrat senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Krysten Sinema (D-AZ). Because of their relatively centrist stance on economic and climate issues, Democrats found it hard to negotiate partisan deals over the last two years. In April, Sen. Manchin voted against President Biden’s infrastructure plan tax hike, which raised the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, arguing that it should be set at 25% as some sort of a balancing act (Perrett 11). Both Senators Manchin and Sinema also opposed doing away with the filibuster in the Senate, which can only be broken with 60 votes in the chamber. The runoff victory could also help Democrats inch closer to getting rid of the filibuster to pass legislation, although bills passed without the filibuster are likely to be partisan in nature. It will also make the votes of the moderate Democratic senators less important since Democrats will not need one of their votes for a simple majority if they win the Georgia runoffs.
Given these stakes, it seems puzzling why Republicans picked former running back Herschel Walker, who has been plagued with many scandals of his own. Herschel Walker has tried to portray himself as a candidate that backs traditional family values, mainly when it comes to abortion issues and his anti-abortion rights stance. However, he has been accused of using threats of violence by multiple former partners. In addition to these scandals, Walker has also had a firearm confiscated by police, on the advice of his therapist out of fear that he would harm another ex-wife (Bushard 3). These issues, coupled with his allegedly paying for an abortion more than a decade ago disrupt his projection of a family man, which is what he is banking on to sway Republican voters (Bushard 5). The abortion scandal also goes against the increasingly anti-abortion stance that the Republican party seems to be taking in recent years. In addition to these issues, Walker’s own son has condemned his father’s actions and has even accused him of hurting his mother and Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman (Bushard 6). Add to the mix former president Donald Trump’s backing of Walker, and Walker’s campaign seems like a fool’s errand. Former President Barack Obama’s support of incumbent senator Warnock may help seal the deal for Democrats. If Republicans are not careful, as Sen. Warnock said, Democrats just might end up sending the former NFL running back “running back to Texas”(Allison 12).
[The views expressed in this article are those of the author and the author alone; they do not necessarily represent the views of all members of the RULR Editorial Board and Rutgers University]
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