'This is a historic moment,' Warnock says
Warnock called his projected victory a "historic moment," saying he "can't wait" to be in the upper chamber of Congress "to represent the concerns of ordinary people."
"I'm deeply honored that the people of Georgia decided to place their faith in me and have decided to send me to represent their interests in Washington, D.C.," Warnock told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview Wednesday on "Good Morning America."
"Certainly, this is a historic moment and I'm just deeply grateful to be a vessel in a moment in which we're facing such large problems in our country," he added, "and I can't wait to get to the U.S. Senate to represent the concerns of ordinary people."
Warnock, a senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the former pulpit of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is the first Black senator Georgia has elected and only the 11th Black senator elected in U.S. history.
"Georgia is in such an incredible place when you think about the arc of our history, we are sending an African-American pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church where Martin Luther King Jr. served," he said. "This is the reversal of the old southern strategy that sought to divide people. In this moment we've got to bring people together in order to do the hard work and I look forward to doing that."
When asked about his top priority for this year in the Senate, Warnock said -- as he has throughout his campaign -- that the country needs to get the coronavirus pandemic under control.
"Like so many Americans, as we witnessed the incredible death toll over 350,000 Americans lost lives, lost livelihoods, we need a national strategy that takes this virus seriously, that gets the vaccine distributed safely and efficiently," he said. "We've got to re-open our economy, get our kids safely back to school and we got to make sure that people know that they will have their health care, particularly in the middle of a pandemic."
-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan