By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 29, 2022 – Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who defeated his Republican challenger Herschel Walker in Georgia’s high stakes Senate runoff election on Tuesday, December 6, 2022, was among the thousands who enjoyed the annual Boxing Day Junkanoo Parade in downtown Nassau on Monday, December 26.
In a photo posted by Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper on his Team Cooper Facebook page, Senator Warnock is pictured at Junkanoo Parade with the Deputy Prime Minister as well as Prime Minister Philip E. Davis; His Excellency Cornelius A. Smith, Governor General of The Bahamas; Mrs. Usha Pitts, US Charge d’Affaires in Nassau; and Mario K. Bowleg, Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture, which organized the parade.
Warnock’s victory in the senatorial showdown in Georgia gave Democrats a “two-seat majority in the chamber — with less of a need for the negotiated power-sharing agreement or Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote,” as Fox News reported on December 7.
“Specifically, the 51-49 Senate means that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer won’t have to work out a power-sharing agreement with Republican leader Mitch McConnell. The two parties had to do that two years ago and also in 2001, the last time the Senate was evenly split,” Fox News noted.
It Fox News article added: “In early 2021, confirmations of new President Joe Biden’s nominees were stalled for several weeks while Schumer and McConnell worked out an agreement on how to split committees and move legislation on the Senate floor. Using the little leverage he had, McConnell threatened not to finalize a deal until Democrats promised that they wouldn’t try to kill the legislative filibuster that forces a 60-vote threshold. The Republican leader finally relented after two Democratic senators — West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema — made it clear they would not support such a move on the filibuster.”
Since 2005, Rev. Warnock has been the Senior Pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was once the Senior Pastor. Previously, he was the Senior Pastor of Douglas Memorial Community Church until 2005.
Rev. Warnock came to prominence in Georgia politics as a leading activist in the campaign to expand Medicaid in the state under the Affordable Care Act.
On January 30, 2020, he announced his candidacy in Georgia’s 2020 United States Senate special election, seeking to unseat incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler. No candidate received a majority of the vote on election day, so Rev. Warnock faced Loeffler again in a January 5, 2021, runoff election, which he won by more than 93,000 votes.[ With Rev. Warnock’s win and Jon Ossoff’s victory in the concurrent regularly-scheduled election, the Democratic Party won control of the Senate for the first time.
Rev. Warnock is the first African American to represent Georgia in the Senate, and the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate in a Southern state.
NOTE: Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is the source for the background information on Senator
Warnock.
