My1sttoday: Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff have defeated the incumbent GOP candidate Sen. David Perdue.
The runoff was one of two in the Peach State that determines which party will control the Senate – and how effectively President-elect Joe Biden will be able to advance his legislative agenda – beginning Jan. 20. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) faced an equally competitive race which she lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock on Tuesday.
 Jon Ossoff
Democratic Party
|
50.3% | 2,225,715 |
|---|---|---|
 David Perdue
Republican Party
|
49.7% | 2,198,640 |
Now Democrats has won the two Georgia senate sits, they will effectively gain a majority in the upper chamber, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote, Sen. Schumer will become the Senate majority leader.
Ossoff, the 33-year-old chief executive of a London-based documentary film company, first rose to national political prominence during his 2017 campaign for a suburban-Atlanta House seat in a special election.
He ultimately lost that race to Rep. Karen Handel (R-Ga.). But the election, which became the most expensive House race in U.S. history, helped springboard Ossoff into his Senate bid against Perdue, a former corporate executive who is among the wealthiest members of the upper chamber.
Perdue’s loss adds to Republicans’ troubles in a state that has been a Republican stronghold for years, coming on the heels of Biden’s victory over Trump there in November. Ossoff’s win, meanwhile, is the latest sign of Georgia’s transformation into a political battleground that Democrats have (in decades) turned Blue.