Lights out for GOP in Georgia

The last Senate seat of the midterm election will belong to a Democrat as voters in Georgia Tuesday broke the string of close elections there by handing Republicans a landslide defeat.

After polls closed at 7 p.m., the race between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker quickly turned into a rout.

Walker made a number of potentially fatal mistakes on the campaign trail but the GOP managed to keep things together for Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the general election.

Despite the lopsided result, Georgia appears destined to remain a hotly contested battleground in the next presidential race and beyond.

Georgia’s third Senate runoff election in the last two years, after Warnock and another Democrat, Sen. Jon Ossoff, flipped control of the chamber with their dual wins in January 2021.

Even with control of the Senate already secured, the stakes are high as Democrats seek to win a majority outright instead of the current 50-50 split and power-sharing agreement.

With a runoff victory, Democrats won’t have to rely on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote and will have real control of key committees.

This is Warnock’s fourth election in two years.

In 2020, he ran against appointed GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler to finish former Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term.

That race also went to a runoff that Warnock won in January 2021. Warnock and Ossoff’s victories in those elections gave Democrats control of the Senate.