The Reverend Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, has forced a runoff with Georgia Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, set for January 5. Loeffler was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp in December 2019 to replace Johnny Isakson, so even if she wins the right to serve out his term in January, she’ll have to run again in 2022.

There were an astonishing 20 candidates in the “jungle” election, and Georgia law requires a 50% majority to win. In Loeffler’s race, six Republicans split 2.4 million votes, of which Loeffler won almost 1.3 million. Collectively, the eight Democrat candidates garnered well over 2.3 million votes, of which 1.6 million went to Warnock. Another 110,000 went to the other six candidates. There was a nearly identical split in the three-way race with Senator David Perdue (R), Democrat John Ossoff, and Libertarian Shane Hazel. In short, don’t think for a minute that the Republicans’ flawless runoff history in Georgia means Loeffler or Perdue have this in the bag. Far from it.

That said, let’s look at the man New York leftist Chuck Schumer is hoping can give Democrats a 50-50 Senate with a tie-breaking Vice President Kamala Harris to pitch things their way.

Warnock is currently pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. If that church sounds familiar, it’s because that’s where Martin Luther King Jr. served as co-pastor with his father in the 1960s. But Warnock is no MLK.

Whereas King articulated a dream of an America where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” Warnock is of a different school of thought. He is an anti-Semitic hater of Israel and has compared Palestinian rioters and terrorists with the American Civil Rights Movement. According to The Daily Wire, he “reportedly served as a youth pastor at a church that hosted and celebrated Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in 1995.” He was arrested in 2002 for obstructing an investigation of alleged child abuse at a Baltimore church where he was serving. The investigator said, “I’ve never encountered resistance like that at all.”

After police and race became a drummed-up Democrat talking point a few years ago, Warnock called police “bullies,” “thugs,” and “gangsters.” While he swears he doesn’t support the “defund the police” movement, his campaign senior adviser does.

Socialism? Don’t knock it, he says. “I’m so sick and tired of all of these folk talking about ‘socialistic medicine,’” he said in a 2009 sermon. “And I really get upset when I hear Christians in the midst of this debate, talking about socialism. They ought to go back and read Acts Chapter Two, where the Bible says that the church had all things in common.” The church, not the state, reverend.

The reverend has no respect for supporters of Donald Trump, either. Prior to the 2016 election, he declared, “If it is true that a man who has dominated the news and poisoned the discussion for months needs to repent, then it is doubly true that a nation that can produce such a man and make his vitriol go viral needs to repent. No matter what happens next month, more than a third of the nation that would go along with this is reason to be afraid. America needs to repent for its worship of whiteness, on full display this season.”

Or the military. “Nobody can serve God and the military,” he once proclaimed. The Peach State has the fifth-largest active-duty military contingent in the nation.

Warnock’s spiritual mentors also provide some serious red flags. According to The Washington Free Beacon, “Warnock has praised his religious mentor, Dr. James Hal Cone, as a ‘poignant and powerful voice’ of high ‘spiritual magnitude.’ Cone, however, was a controversial theologian who argued that white Christians are ‘satanic’ and advocated for the ‘destruction of everything white’ in society.” Cone is considered the “father of black theology” for being the author of A Black Theology of Liberation. So-called “liberation theology” is Marxist and often, as in Cone’s case, racist. Warnock isn’t responsible for Cone’s views, of course, but, as National Review’s Ryan Mills put it, “Black liberation theology is the pond Warnock has been swimming in for decades.”

To top it off, Warnock is a big fan of the “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright, who longtime Patriot Post readers will recognize as the radical, anti-Semitic leftist who pastored Barack Obama and mentored him as a Marxist hater. Warnock even specifically defended Wright’s infamous “God d—n America” “sermon” that made Obama squirm and deny knowledge in 2008. “You ought to go back and see if you can find and read, as I have, the entire sermon. It was a very fine sermon,” Warnock said in 2014. “And Jeremiah Wright was right when he said the attack on him was in a real sense an attack on the black church. The message of Jeremiah Wright was that public policy has consequences.”

So do public comments defending racist radicals. We’re guessing a majority of Peach State voters will agree that all of this sordid history is disqualifying for Warnock, but with all the electoral shenanigans, media obfuscation, and outside money pouring in, we’re not taking anything to the bank just yet. If you actually live in Georgia, go vote on January 5.

(Updated.)

.@ReverendWarnock — fixed your new ad for you. #gapol #gasen pic.twitter.com/kWkhotZKid

— Kelly Loeffler (@KLoeffler) November 17, 2020