VOTE.
One more time this year.
The bulk of races that have now been completed in this year’s midterm elections have displayed that many of the pundits’ predictions of a red wave crashed up against a strong blue wall of Black, Brown and young voters of all races.
Instead of a red wave that would sweep Republicans to power and neuter the decisions that can be made by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House, it was reduced only to a red trickle.
Democrats managed to hold on to the Senate on the backs of recent calls in Arizona for Mark Kelly and Nevada for Catherine Cortez Masto. John Fetterman winning his race over Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania also helped Team Blue’s cause big time. Dems also flipped Arizona’s governor seat from red to blue with Katie Hobbs prevailing in what has become as competitive a state as there is.
With the Senate all but decided, there is only one race that is still outstanding – and it brings us back once again to the political hotbed that is Georgia.
That means it is time for the WNBA community to once again get behind Senator Reverand Raphael Warnock.
Warnock first rose to prominence a couple of years ago at the height of the pandemic in 2020 – and it was WNBA players that first made the Reverend of Ebenezer Baptist Church a household name.
When Kelly Loeffler, the former co-owner of the Atlanta Dream, was appointed by Georgia governor Brian Kemp to a Senate seat that was vacated by former senator Johnny Isakson, she launched her time in politics by making comments that were incendiary towards the Black Lives Matter movement.
Black Lives Matter was tops on everyone’s mind in 2020 given the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police. The news sparked protests worldwide from Louisville to London.
WNBA players rallied from the confines of their Florida bubble with shirts that said “Vote Warnock” and he received a bump in polling and fundraising. His race with Loeffler went to a runoff as did the other Georgia senate race between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue.
Biden & Harris’ victory in the presidential race in that state was key to their election win. In the runoff, both Warnock and Ossoff came away with close wins.
Because of the Senate already having been called for Democrats, there are a few individuals who are attempting to insinuate that the Georgia runoff means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Warnock’s opponent in the race is former Georgia standout football player Herschel Walker. Given many of the things that have since come out about him, Walker has proven that he belongs nowhere near the United States Senate unless he is on a guided tour of the building – and not a tour in the January 6th sense either.
Georgia is an important state to many a WNBA player. Unfortunately, Stacey Abrams, who is part of the WNBPA’s Board of Advocates, lost her second gubernatorial bid against a Kemp who was actually stronger this time around.
Many a WNBA player played either their high school (Dearica Hamby), college (Lorela Cubaj) or professional (Angel McCoughtry) or professional ball in the state and Atlanta is, of course, a hub – if not the hub – of Black culture around the country.
Let us also remember that the WNBA is 80-90% Black women. As this election once again proved, Black women and men are the most reliable voters the Democratic Party has.
Those Democratic voters – particularly those in the metropolitan Atlanta – have to show up one more time for Warnock. Unlike the 2020 runoffs which occurred (ironically) on January 6 of 2021, this runoff takes place in a few weeks – on December 6th because of Georgia’s GOP not wanting to suffer more defeats as was the case in those runoffs.
It was only fitting that in the run-up to the November election that one of President Barack Obama’s rallies aimed at getting Georgia Democrats “fired up and ready to go” for Abrams and Warnock was at …
…Gateway Center Arena in College Park. That is the home venue for the Atlanta Dream.
Warnock did the WNBA a huge favor with his win over Loeffler which paved the way for Loeffler to sell the Dream to that ownership group out of New England that includes Renee Montgomery, Larry Gottesdiener and Suzanne Abair. The WNBA community needs to do one more favor for the Reverend by lifting him to one more win in one more runoff next month.
Early voting. Vote-by-mail. Absentee. Election Day. Augusta. Macon. Savannah. Athens. Columbus. Metro Atlanta.
Georgia. VOTE.
