By Nia-Malika Henderson
The voters in a red state that Trump won by 17 points just two years ago, flatly rejected Senator Darline Graham, Trump’s handpicked replacement for her late brother. In Georgia, Bottoms, recalled her great-great-grandmother, Betsy Peak, who was born in 1845 and buried in a cemetery filled with unmarked graves in Crawfordville, also the hometown of a former Georgia governor and Confederate leader. James Talarico also won easily.
In a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump, South Carolina voted to send Democrat Annie Andrews to the Senate. She had joylessly muddled her way through a campaign for a job she barely seemed to want and certainly didn’t deserve. Follow US midterm election results LIVE here Anderson isn’t the only victor. There is Keisha Lance Bottoms, who will become the first Black woman Governor in the nation’s history, after beating health executive Rick Jackson by eight points in Georgia. There is Senator Jon Ossoff, a protege of the late Congressman John Lewis, who cruised to victory. And there is Gina Hinojosa, who will become the first Hispanic Governor of Texas, beating three-term Governor Greg Abbott by seven points. “You have shown the nation that in an era of partisan divides, of vitriol and name calling, in a politics dominated by billionaires, special interests, and insiders in Washington, that we will not bow down. We will not back down. And we will chart our own course. “So, yes, Crawfordville produced the Confederacy’s vice president, but tonight it also produced your next governor. Tonight should remind us all that no matter what community we come from, Georgia is not defined by one moment in time or by one person.”
“South Carolina—you have shown the nation what’s possible,” she said. “I don’t know what dreams Betsy Peak had for her children or for her grandchildren or the generations that she would never meet, but I know I am standing on shoulders made of steel,” Lance Bottoms said.
