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Warnock says Democrats are doing ‘barely enough’ in the South. He wants more.
“Anger” isn’t a strong enough term for what Sen. Raphael Warnock said he’s seeing as he campaigns across four states in five days, mostly for Democratic Senate candidates in the South.
On Saturday, the tour brought Warnock to South Carolina to stump for Annie Andrews, the state’s Democratic Senate nominee. Flanked by Andrews and Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., he gave his signature sermon-style remarks to a crowd that included many of the state’s faith and Democratic leaders.
“The nation is just beginning to pay attention and wake up to what is happening in the South,” Warnock said. “In Mississippi … here in South Carolina … in North Carolina, there is a kind of righteous fury on the ground. The people of our country are saying enough is enough.”
With a conviction that reminded listeners that Warnock doubles as the senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the senator offered a solution.
“It’s time to turn the page. And it’s clear to me that the road to getting that done runs right through the South,” Warnock said. “As goes the South, so goes the nation.”
Warnock’s belief in the South’s untapped political potential comes from his own record. He won five elections in less than three years, repeatedly overcoming doubts that a Bible Belt Senate seat could flip to Democrats and stay that way. With the right political environment and enough investment, he argued, Southern Democrats can win races that look like long shots. He is pressing his party, including its Senate leadership, to act on that.
Over the past week, Warnock voted early in Georgia and joined Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor and Democratic nominee for governor, on the trail in Atlanta. He rallied Black men in Columbia and Charleston for Andrews, and he attended canvass launches in North Carolina for former Gov. Roy Cooper, the state’s Democratic Senate nominee.
But Mississippi’s Senate race seems to be most on Warnock’s mind. Without being asked, he brought up his support for Scott Colom, a district attorney trying to become the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Mississippi since 1982.
“I think when people hear ‘Mississippi,’ they make certain assumptions about what’s possible, but they made those assumptions about Georgia,” Warnock said. “I think very often we lose by the margin of our disengagement.”
Warnock has hosted four fundraisers for Colom and helped raise more than $500,000 for him, his campaign told MS NOW. The campaign said that is more than any other senator has raised for a candidate. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., attended at least one of the fundraisers.
That hasn’t spared Schumer from Warnock’s prodding. Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with Schumer, has praised Colom but has yet to make a significant investment in the race.
“We could do a lot better,” Warnock said. “I’m glad that the nation is finally waking up a little bit, paying attention to what’s happening in the South. But I think that, to the degree that Democrats do just enough in the South, or barely enough, that we miss a real opportunity to do something transformational for the whole country.”
“I’m having that conversation with my colleagues all the time,” he added.
Warnock’s ambitions run up against political reality, though. Democrats are still weighed down by an unpopular national brand, and they raise significantly less money than Republicans. Asked whether it’s fair to expect the party to spend on races a Democrat hasn’t won in decades, Warnock began with a concession.
“There’s no question that they have more money than we do. They always do. And if these policies persist, they always will,” he began. “Democrats’ ceiling in the Senate is 52 seats. That’s unsustainable. Over time, we have to expand the map. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can strengthen and shore up our candidates in places where people feel like we’re more likely to win, and at the same time provide the kinds of resources that are needed to expand the map.”
Warnock argued that the “righteous fury” he keeps encountering can power those wins. He explained what he means by the phrase before heading from a Charleston fundraiser to Mother Emanuel AME Church, where a white supremacist killed nine Black worshipers in 2015.
“I think that this election is so much bigger than your typical election season, and the issues that confront our country are so much bigger than the puny language of partisan politics. That’s a kind of vocabulary that does not capture the moral moment,” Warnock said.
He pointed to outrage over a range of issues, from declining healthcare coverage rates to rising grocery costs to corruption “at the highest levels of government.”
“It’s the difference between right and wrong,” he said, “and I think people feel it on both sides of the aisle, which is why a state like South Carolina is at the center of this debate, and we can do something that seemed unimaginable not long ago in the Senate.”
Fifty-seven percent of eligible Black voters live in the South. The states where Warnock has spent the most time this week have among the highest shares of Black voters in the country. Warnock is also the senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, and he is seen as uniquely equipped to turn those voters out. That effort was on display Saturday, when he rallied supporters in predominantly Black North Charleston and Florence, South Carolina.
But Warnock said Democrats can’t rely only on turning out more of their most loyal voters. The party, he argued, must build a “multi-racial coalition” that crosses party lines. He said it should draw on outrage over what he called “cruel” Trump administration policies that target the most vulnerable.
That includes voters like Barbara Bates, 80, a lifelong Republican until recently, who came to hear Warnock and Andrews on Saturday. Bates voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but was turned off by “the way he’s so nasty to people.” She left the presidential line blank in 2020 and voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. Soon after, she was formally expelled from her local Republican party.
Bates isn’t ready to call herself a Democrat, but she shares Warnock’s diagnosis.
“Like he said, Washington’s sick, and we need somebody to help fix it, and we just need more people that are willing to stand up to Trump,” Bates said.
Bates said Warnock’s faith could make him an especially valuable messenger in Bible Belt states like South Carolina, where nearly 80% of residents identify as Christian.
“The Republicans — to a certain extent the Christian nationalists have taken over,” she said. “They’re running people away from the church, not to the church. People like Senator Warnock will be able to maybe let them think about where they really want to be and what Christianity really is.”
Warnock is betting that more voters like Bates can be persuaded to back Southern Democrats like Andrews. He’s also counting on polls showing public disapproval of the administration’s handling of issues including the war with Iran and immigration enforcement.
“What is different about this moment is that we have an administration that is wearing their bigotry on their sleeve,” Warnock said. “The cruelty that we’re seeing unleashed, not only against Black people, but against people of color, against people who are perceived to be other — the cruelty is baked into the cake. It’s their electoral strategy.”
Warnock’s midterm travel this month has also taken him to New Hampshire and Nevada. Those two states and South Carolina have traditionally held some of the earliest contests on the Democratic presidential primary calendar. Asked about that, Warnock demurred.
“If you look at New Hampshire, South Carolina; those are places where we also have Senate candidates, or we need to win,” he said.
Pressed on whether he is at least considering a presidential run, Warnock wouldn’t do what his fellow Georgia Democrat, Sen. Jon Ossoff, has done: throw cold water on the idea.
“I am someone who’s always had a deep sense of calling. I’m a pastor who didn’t imagine that I’d be in the Senate, and my prayer has remained the same,” Warnock said. “How can I offer my resources, gifts, opportunities to serve in the best way at each moment?”
Whatever Warnock decides, he is up for re-election in 2028, and his next move will likely involve harnessing that “righteous fury.”
“I would like to see us channel that righteous fury, that sense of we’re better than this into a larger and nobler conversation,” he said. “We really are better than this, and I think we need leaders who can remind us of that.”
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