Raphael Warnock (1970-) was a Democratic US Senator from Georgia from 20 January 2021, succeeding Kelly Loeffler. Formerly the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church (the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr.), Warnock was Georgia's first African-American senator and the first Black Democratic Senator from the American South.
Biography[]
Raphael Gamaliel Warnock was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1970, and he grew up in public housing as the eleventh child of two Pentecostal pastors. He worked as a youth pastor and then as assistant pastor at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, as senior pastor at Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore, and then senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in 2005. In March 2014, he was arrested for protesting at the Georgia State Capitol to press for Medicaid expansion, and he also advocated for issues such as climate change and voter registration. In 2020, he ran for US Senate, challenging Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler. He defeated her in the 5 January 2021 runoff election with 50.4% of the vote to her 49.6%, claiming victory shortly after midnight on 6 January.