Former Trump campaign chairman and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told his podcast viewers that Republicans should take Tuesday night’s losses to heart, saying: “The midterms start tonight, and the warning signs are flashing.” He observed that “Democrats just flipped two Georgia commissioners,” marking “their first statewide wins in 30 years.”
Far-right influencer Mike Cernovich (who spawned the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory) tweeted: “Ted Cruz and Mark Levin are walking Trump into impeachments and then prison. 2026 will be a blood bath.” MAGA podcaster Jack Posobiec likewise warned that “2026 will be worse if we don’t course-correct.”
No, both federal level senators from Georgia are currently Democrats. Warnock and Ossoff. Those are statewide elections. Bannon is either omitting facts or mental.
They are statewide elections, Warnock and Ossoff, but they are federal seats, not state government seats.
I can see how it isn’t clear to non-USians, but each state has its own house, senate, and “supreme” or highest court that it elects representatives for at the state level, as well as the federal equivalents you are familiar with.
For example, Warnock and Ossoff, as you rightly pointed out, are federal senators elected statewide in Georgia, to represent Georgia at the federal level in DC. But there are also Georgia state senators who represent various areas of the state in Atlanta at the Georgia State Assembly.
EVERY state has this duplication of representatives for the judicial and legislative branches, and even the executive (governor = state president, if you like) though the names for the state equivalents can vary from the federal.
The way to spot the difference is that the reps will have either US or state in front of their titles, US being federal, and sometimes you have to look closely for it, but it’s always there. Also, there are zero state elected “commissioners” at the federal level, which is another clue: when you hear “commissioner” it’s either state level or a leader specific to a govt agency at any level.
Edited to add: The commissioners mentioned in the article are not state senators, they are representatives on the state’s Public Service Commission, which controls public utilities in the state of Georgia.
A commissioner in Georgia can also be county government, which is another level of possible duplication under the state level (the variation is even wider when you get down to county and city level).
To flip these seats is actually really significant, because local power structures are real, and can be much harder to ever change than even their more visible counterparts at the state and federal level.