ATLANTA — The gravity of the Rev. Raphael Warnock’s U.S. Senate win in Georgia cannot be overstated.

A Savannah-native, Warnock is the state’s first Black senator and only the 11th in American history. The senior Baptist preacher who holds the pulpit at Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic church in Atlanta — where he will continue to give sermons — is now taking his teachings to the halls of Congress.

Georgia solidified its spot on the political map by backing President Joe Biden on Election Day and followed suit by sending two Democratic Senators to Washington, D.C., not long after, in two hotly contested runoffs. 

The first-time political candidate defeated billionaire Republican Kelly Loeffler in the Jan. 5 runoff after a competitive and expensive sprint following the general election. Warnock’s campaign highlighted his longtime advocacy for expanded health care access and voting rights in a state where both are highly debated.

His swearing-in came not long after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump extremists and mere hours after Joe Biden was inaugurated — the weight of the moment in history not lost on the newest senator.

“I cannot adequately express what an honor it is to represent the people of Georgia in the United States Senate. The campaign was one in which I got a chance to highlight the issues that I’ve been working on for years,” Warnock said in an interview with CNHI. “… But now, the opportunity to actually put those priorities into legislation is the honor of my life.”

Warnock has gone to bat early, tackling issues he pledged to address. This week, he and Jon Ossoff, his fellow senator and campaign companion, signed onto legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. He’s been in talks with agriculture leaders on how to best support small and minority farmers. He advocated for $2,000 COVID stimulus checks for hurting Americans — although Biden has proposed up to $1,400.

Bitter national election battles took center stage in the Peach State during the general election and not long after the passing of civil rights icon and voting rights titan Congressman John Lewis.

Georgia Republican legislators are already eyeing restrictions to mail-in voting after Democrats capitalized on expended use of the voting method sparked by the pandemic.

Warnock told CNHI he is working on legislation called “For the People Act,” which he said, would “make it easier to vote in Georgia and other places and not harder.”

“Unfortunately, the folks on the other side of the aisle in the Georgia State Legislature wasted no time in their efforts to change the rules around voting,” he said. “Some legislators seem to think that if they don’t like the results and they don’t like what the people decide to do, that they’re going to change the rules. It’s undemocratic and it will be met by my office with every effort to defend voting rights.”

Warnock’s win — along with Ossoff — put Democrats in an ideal political position in Congress: the party now holds the House of Representatives, the White House and a narrow edge in the Senate. With a 50-50 split between the two parties in the upper chamber, Vice President Kamala Harris will have the tie-breaking vote on consequential legislation.

Warnock told CNHI that while still fragile, the majority hold means Democrats “can get something done.”

“It’s not going to be easy, it’s a slim majority,” he said. “But at least a lot of the things that we couldn’t even get to the floor, under the previous Congress, they will get a hearing.”

But Congress has, once again, been thrown into the impeachment process. Donald Trump became the first president in history to be impeached by the House twice — this time a charge of “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the Jan. 6 riots.

But the Baptist preacher said “the tragic, death-dealing eruption” displayed at the Capitol “did not emerge in that moment.”

“What we saw was extremists on Jan. 6 who clearly don’t believe in our system of democracy,” he said. “This is not who we are. We have to stand up and resist.”

The Senate is set to hold its impeachment trial in the coming weeks.

“The one thing you swear to do when you become a member of this body is to defend the Constitution,” Warnock said. “So I intend to do what I said I would do — with my right hand in the air and my other hand on the Bible — I intend to defend the Constitution. I will sit as an impartial juror, listen to all of the evidence and then I will render a decision.”