Raphael Warnock
Raphael Gamaliel Warnock is an American politician and Baptist pastor serving as the junior United States senator from Georgia, a seat he has held since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Warnock has been the senior pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church since 2005.
Warnock was the senior pastor of Douglas Memorial Community Church from 2001 to 2005. He came to prominence in Georgia politics as a leading activist in the campaign to expand Medicaid in the state under the Affordable Care Act. He was the Democratic nominee in the 2020 United States Senate special election in Georgia, defeating incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler in a runoff election.
Warnock and Jon Ossoff are the first Democrats elected to the U.S. Senate from Georgia since Zell Miller in 2000. Their elections were critical in securing a 50–50 Senate majority for Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote. Warnock was a reliable supporter of Joe Biden's legislative efforts during his presidency. He was reelected to a full term in 2022, defeating Republican nominee Herschel Walker.
Warnock is the first African American to represent Georgia in the Senate, the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from a Southern state, and the second black U.S. Senator directly elected from a Southern state, after Tim Scott.
Early life and education
Warnock was born in Savannah, Georgia, on July 23, 1969. He grew up in public housing as the eleventh of twelve children born to Verlene and Jonathan Warnock, both Pentecostal pastors. His father served in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he learned automobile mechanics and welding, and subsequently opened a small car restoration business where he restored junked cars for resale. His mother picked cotton and tobacco in the summers in Waycross, Georgia, as a teenager and became a pastor.Warnock graduated from Sol C. Johnson High School in 1987, and having wanted to follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr., attended Morehouse College, from which he graduated cum laude in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. He credits his participation in the Upward Bound program for making him college-ready, as he was able to enroll in early college courses through Savannah State University. He then earned Master of Divinity, Master of Philosophy, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Union Theological Seminary, a school affiliated with Columbia University.
Religious work
Warnock began his ministry as an intern and licentiate at the Sixth Avenue Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, under the civil rights movement leader John Thomas Porter. In the 1990s, he served as youth pastor and then assistant pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York. While Warnock was pastor at Abyssinian, the church declined to hire workfare recipients as part of organized opposition to then-mayor Rudy Giuliani's workfare program. The church also hosted Fidel Castro on October 22, 1995, while Warnock was youth pastor. There is no evidence Warnock was involved in that decision. During the 2020–21 United States Senate special election in Georgia, his campaign refused to say whether Warnock attended the event.In January 2001, Warnock was elected senior pastor of Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore, Maryland. He and an assistant minister were arrested and charged with obstructing a 2002 police investigation into suspected child abuse at a summer camp run by the church. The police report called Warnock "extremely uncooperative and disruptive". Warnock had demanded that the counselors have lawyers present when being interviewed by police. The charges were later dropped with the deputy state's attorney's acknowledgment that it had been a "miscommunication", adding that Warnock had aided the investigation and that prosecution would be a waste of resources. Warnock said he was merely asserting that lawyers should be present during the interviews and that he had intervened to ensure that an adult was present while a juvenile suspect was being questioned. Warnock stepped down as the church's senior pastor in 2005.
On Father's Day 2005, Warnock was named senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr.'s former congregation; he is the fifth and the youngest person to serve as Ebenezer's senior pastor since its founding. He has continued in the post while serving in the Senate.
As pastor, Warnock advocated for clemency for Troy Davis, who was executed in 2011. In 2013, he delivered the benediction at the public prayer service at the second inauguration of Barack Obama. After Fidel Castro died in 2016, Warnock told his church to pray for the Cuban people, calling Castro's legacy "complex, kind of like America's legacy is complex". In March 2019, Warnock hosted an interfaith meeting on climate change at his church, featuring Al Gore and William Barber II. He presided at Representative John Lewis's funeral at Ebenezer Church in July 2020.
On Easter Sunday 2021, Warnock's Twitter account tweeted, "The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are a Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves." Some conservative Christians and political commentators criticized the tweet, including Benjamin Watson, Allie Beth Stuckey, and Jenna Ellis, who called it "heretical". The tweet was deleted that afternoon, with a spokesperson for Warnock saying, "the tweet was posted by staff and was not approved" but declining to say whether it reflected Warnock's beliefs.
Political activism
Warnock came to prominence in Georgia politics as a leader in the campaign to expand Medicaid in the state. In 2013, he wrote an editorial for the Atlanta Journal Constitution that criticized Governor Nathan Deal for not supporting an integrated prom at the Wilcox County High School. In March 2014, Warnock led a sit-in at the Georgia State Capitol to press state legislators to accept the expansion of Medicaid offered by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He and other leaders were arrested during the protest. Warnock also actively campaigned for Georgia Democrats to increase outreach to low-income communities. In 2015, Warnock considered running in the 2016 election for the United States Senate seat held by Johnny Isakson as a member of the Democratic Party. He opted not to run.From June 2017 to January 2020, Warnock chaired the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan organization founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams and focused on increasing voter registration. The New Georgia Project and its affiliate the New Georgia Project Action Fund secretly campaigned for Abrams in her 2018 gubernatorial campaign in Georgia and for other Democratic political campaigns in the state. It also illegally campaigned for an unsuccessful MARTA referendum in Gwinnett County. In 2025, it admitted to 16 violations of state campaign finance laws related to its illegal partisan activities and was ordered to pay $300,000 by the Georgia State Ethics Commission, the largest fine for campaign finance violations in state history. The New Georgia Project raised and spent millions of dollars in its partisan efforts and failed to disclose its activities or properly register as an independent political committee.
Warnock supports expanding the Affordable Care Act and has called for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. He also supports increasing COVID-19-relief funding. A proponent of abortion rights and gay marriage, he has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood. He opposes the concealed carry of firearms, saying that religious leaders do not want guns in places of worship. Warnock has long opposed the death penalty.
United States Senator
Elections
2020–21 Special
In January 2020, Warnock decided to run in the 2020 special election for the United States Senate seat held by Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed after Johnny Isakson's resignation. Stacey Abrams encouraged him to run and coordinated his support from Democratic leadership. He was endorsed by Democratic senators Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jeff Merkley, Chris Murphy, Bernie Sanders, Brian Schatz, and Elizabeth Warren; the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; Stacey Abrams; and former presidents Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter. Several players of the Atlanta Dream, a WNBA team Loeffler co-owned at the time, wore shirts endorsing Warnock in response to controversial comments Loeffler made about the Black Lives Matter movement.The closing argument of Warnock's campaign focused on the $2,000 stimulus payments that he and Ossoff promised to approve if they were elected and thus gave Democrats a U.S. Senate majority.
In the January 5 runoff election, Warnock narrowly defeated Loeffler with 51.04% of the vote. With this victory, he became the first African American to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate, the first black Democratic U.S. senator representing a Southern state, and the first black Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate by a former state of the Confederacy. Warnock and Ossoff are the first Democrats elected to the U.S. Senate from Georgia since Zell Miller in 2000. On January 7, Loeffler conceded. The election result was certified on January 19.
2022
On January 27, 2021, Warnock announced that he would seek reelection to a full term in 2022.Since no candidate received a majority of the vote in the general election on November 8, 2022, Warnock faced Walker in a runoff election on December 6, and won, 51.4% to 48.6%. He became the first Georgia Democrat to win reelection to the Senate since Sam Nunn in 1990 and the first Deep South Democrat to win reelection to the Senate since Mary Landrieu of Louisiana in 2008.
Tenure
On January 20, 2021, Warnock was sworn into the United States Senate in the 117th Congress by Vice President Kamala Harris alongside newly elected Senator Jon Ossoff and former California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Warnock was escorted by Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.On February 13, 2021, Warnock voted to convict former president Donald Trump of inciting the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
On March 5, 2021, Warnock and 29 other Democratic and independent senators co-sponsored an amendment to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
On March 17, 2021, he delivered his first speech on the Senate floor, in support of the passage of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
In January 2022, when Johnny Isakson, a former U.S. senator from Georgia, died, Warnock introduced a Senate resolution to honor Isakson, which was enacted with bipartisan support. Warnock called Isakson "a patriot, a public servant" who "knew how to show up for people".
In October 2022, a bill by Warnock and Senator Jon Ossoff was enacted into law, naming a United States Post Office building in Atlanta, Georgia after John Lewis, who was a U.S. representative for Atlanta until his death in 2020.
In September 2023, Warnock was the only Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee to vote against the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation Banking Act, which provides a safe harbor for legal state-level marijuana dispensaries and growers to access federally regulated banks.