AP Photo/Brynn Anderson
- Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia were both sworn into office on Wednesday.
- Warnock and Ossoff were both sworn into office by Vice President Kamala Harris.
- Their wins give Democrats control of the Senate for the first time since 2015.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia were both sworn into office on Wednesday, a landmark achievement that gives Democrats their first Senate majority since 2015 and paves the way for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to advance their legislative agenda.
Warnock and Ossoff, the first Black and Jewish senators to represent Georgia, respectively, were sworn into office by Harris, who just hours earlier became the first Black, Indian-American, and female vice president in US history.
In winning their races, Warnock and Ossoff defeated Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, a stunning blow to the Georgia GOP, which for years possessed an iron-like grip over statewide elections.
With the Senate evenly divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, Harris, who now presides over the very chamber that she served in for four years, will have a pivotal tiebreaking tie that gives Democrats unified control of the federal government for the first time since 2011.
Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, Harris’s successor in the Senate, was also sworn into office on Wednesday, becoming the state’s first-ever Latino senator.
For Warnock and Ossoff, their long road to the Senate involved reshaping conventional wisdom of how Democrats could compete in a fast-growing, but still conservative-dominated Deep South state.
Warnock, the 51-year-old Black pastor of the famed Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once led, engaged with Black voters of faith, suburban voters, and rural voters that many in the party had long failed to activate.
Ossoff, who at 33 years old is the first-ever millennial senator, followed a similar electoral path, campaigning with Warnock as a joint ticket as they crisscrossed territory that was formerly part of the Democratic coalition but had shifted to the GOP over the past 20 years.
Read more: How full Democratic control of Washington DC could transform real estate
The electoral breakthroughs for Democrats, in a state where the GOP has held the Governor's Mansion since 2003 and control of both Senate seats since 2005, had been a long time coming.
After disappointing Senate and gubernatorial campaigns over most of the past 18 years, Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, came within 55,000 votes, or 1.4%, of winning the race over now-GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.
This past November, Biden became the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the state since Bill Clinton's 1992 victory.
In a November special election, Warnock emerged as the top vote-getter, with Loeffler coming in second place, in a multicandidate primary that included members of all parties, but no candidate received at least 50% of the vote.
While Perdue won more votes than Ossoff in their separate Senate race, Ossoff held Perdue below 50%.
In accordance with Georgia law, the winner of any statewide election must earn at least 50% of the vote, so both contests headed to dual January 2021 runoffs.
Democrats, fresh off of Biden's presidential win, continued to organize and focus on turning out early voters, while state Republicans like Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger spent weeks fighting against internal party divisions and President Donald Trump's debunked claims that he won the state in the presidential election.
It made all the difference.
Warnock and Ossoff, sons of a state that was once part of the Confederacy and that served as a center of the Civil Rights Movement, are now the newest members of the Senate.