ATLANTA — Taking the stage to jubilant cheers of "six more years!" Tuesday night, Sen. Raphael Warnock set forth a buoyant vision for a changing Georgia.
Projected to win reelection over Herschel Walker handily, the Democratic incumbent intoned: "I am Georgia!"
In this, he said, he meant he is a "an example and an iteration of its history, of its pain and its promise, the brutality and the possibility."
Georgia is ever growing, its demographics are changing and, with Warnock's victory, it has proven to be one of the few states that can swing between electing both Republicans and Democrats in major races. It is for this Georgia that Warnock laid out a promise - "Whether you voted for me or not, every single day I am going to keep working for you."
Absorbing the energy and spirit of the room, Warnock drew on the kinds of religious and socially egalitarian themes he preaches as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
"I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves, and for our children. Voting is faith put into action," he said. "And Georgia - you have been praying with your lips and your legs. With your hands and your feet. Your heads and your hearts. You have put in the hard work and here we are, standing together."
Warnock became the Peach State's first Black senator when he was elected in the special runoff last year, and he becomes its first Black senator elected to a full term.
"The people once again rose up in a multiracial, multireligious coalition of the conscience," he said. "You endured the rain, you endured the long lines, and you voted - and you did it because you believe, as I do, that democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. This notion that each of us has within us a spark of the divine, that we were created in imago Dei - in the image of God."
"And if you're not given to that kind of religious language, that's fine," he added with a laugh. "Our tent is big."
Georgia will now have two Democratic senators for at least four years, something not seen in the state in more than three decades.
"Georgia did an amazing thing in 2021. It sent its first African American senator and its first Jewish senator to the United States Senate in one fell swoop," Warnock said Tuesday night. "And you have done it again! Thank you Georgia!"
Outlining a platform in which he promised to "stand up for workers, stand up for women, stand up for our children" and spoke directly to parents, students, farmers and others, telling them, "I see you," Warnock articulated a collective destiny in which to drape his victory.
"After a hard-fought campaign - or should I say campaigns - it is my honor to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy: The people have spoken," he said.