Fight Over Warnock’s Senate Record Comes Down to Electric Vehicles

The groundbreaking ceremony in October for the Hyundai electric vehicle plant under construction outside Savannah should have been a moment for bipartisan bonhomie, with the Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, and a Democratic senator, Raphael Warnock, both shoveling dirt to begin the largest economic development project in the state’s history.

In this hyperpartisan moment in a bright purple state, however, the triumph has been marred by a multipronged, acrimonious debate. Are federal climate legislation and state economic incentives to be given the credit? What did the federal electric-vehicle taxes do to help or hinder the project’s success? Above all, how should the brief Senate record of Mr. Warnock play in voters’ calculations ahead of his runoff election on Tuesday against Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee?

The senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Mr. Warnock has only two years experience in the elective office. Democrats claim he has a lot to show for it. They concede that he does not have a lot of flash but the hard work and demonstrated skills of a legislative professional.

His achievements were modest but important: funding science for historically Black colleges/universities, access to grants for Georgia transit agencies, funding to replace aging intersections on the highway-rail and funding for programs to improve maternal healthcare.

His greatest accomplishment may have been his constant push for a $15 per-month out of pocket limit on insulin costs. This cap was passed for Medicare beneficiaries in the Inflation Reduction Act. signed by President Biden in AugustRepublicans blocked the legislation for private insurance holders.

It is clear that Mr. Warnock missed the hardest where he swung: This is something he longed to. expand health insurance access for the working poorGeorgia and other Republican-led States that refuse to expand Medicaid under Affordable Care Act. Low-income workers can get tax credits to help them buy private insurance policies. made it through the House under Mr. Biden’s Build Back Better bill but died in the Senate.

Also, Mr. Warnock was the torch bearer voting rights legislation that fell to a filibusterIn the Senate. Democratic leaders promoted him as the passionate heir to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was once a preacher from the same Ebenezer pulpit. Mr. Warnock was allowed ample floor time. his case in the loftiest of termsHis vulnerable position in 2022 was supposed to make his appeals more urgent.

However, he was unable convince two Democratic senators, Senator Joe Manchin III (West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona), to change filibuster regulations to allow expanded access to polls to pass with a simple majority.

One of Mr. Warnock’s earliest campaign ads this year featured him allowing: “A magician? I’m not. Did I really think that I could fix Washington after just one year in the Senate? Of course not.”

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has put it differently in his daily floor speeches in the run-up to the runoff: “Two years of one-party Democrat control in Washington have been a disaster for working families in Georgia,” he said Monday.

Mr. Warnock’s opponent, Mr. Walker, has no record in elective office or government service,And beyond his Heisman Trophy, his national championship season at the University of Georgia, and his lengthy professional football career, his business and philanthropic record is spotty, marked by exaggerations and falsehoods.

In Georgia, the fight over Mr. Warnock’s achievements might be best captured at the site of the Hyundai plant, which, by 2025, should employ as many as 8,100 Georgians directly and another 1,000 at ancillary suppliers.

He was able to get a shovel for the groundbreaking but not a slot as a speaker. Even though he could claim to have achieved success, his political rivals are unwilling to give him any credit for the project. It was secured by state officials, they claim, in spite of Washington.

This seems excessive. The Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act included large incentives for the production and purchases of electric vehiclesand their components in combating climate change. Mr. Warnock supported the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which allocates billions of dollars, including almost $20 million for Georgia. charging stations to make electric vehicles more practical.

(Mr. Warnock is not just another climate vote: He first introduced the Growing Climate Solutions Act of 2021In contrast to Republicans, who have been blocking global warming action for decades,, demonstrated an early commitment to the matter.

This year’s far-reaching legislation on semiconductor manufacturing and scienceWarnock also supported the company early, as a result of a Hyundai subsidiary, Kia’s inability to import semiconductors from abroad. About $2 billion of the new law’s $52 billion in manufacturing incentives will be set aside to help existing plants like Kia’s avoid future supply-chain bottlenecks.

“From securing strong federal funding to boost U.S. microchip manufacturing to championing investments in expanding E.V. charging infrastructure in Georgia, Reverend Warnock has a proven track record of working alongside Georgia automakers,” said Michael J. Brewer, a campaign spokesperson.

But it is also true that Korean officials openly complained at October’s groundbreaking about the details of the tax incentives that Mr. Warnock had ultimately voted for in the Inflation Reduction Act. These credits can be as high as $7,500 for consumers who purchase electric cars or trucks made in North America. However, they do not apply to vehicles imported from Asia.

Officials from Hyundai had already announced the construction of the plant in MayIt was well before the Inflation Reduction Act was enacted. during a visit by Mr. Biden to South Korea, signaling that the company shared the president’s climate goal that half of all cars sold by 2030 would be electric. Hyundai officials met with the White House over a year and half ago to seek assurances regarding electric-vehicle regulations. Mr. Warnock’s team has pressed Hyundai’s case.

However, Savannah was chosen because of its location. tax incentives and other dealsOfficials from Hyundai stated that the Governor Kemp had offered it. And the final “Buy America” requirement was not a factor in Hyundai’s committing to a plant on American soil. It was, in fact, a sore spot.

“Korean companies are now at risk of being disadvantaged by the EV credits of this act,” Cho Tae-yong, the Korean ambassador to the United States, said at the groundbreaking.

Cody Hall, an adviser to Mr. Kemp, pointed to complaints from the Korean government and the chairman of Hyundai to argue that in an evenly divided Senate, Mr. Warnock could have forced a broadening of the consumer tax credit to include imported vehicles, at least until new domestic plants like Hyundai’s, in Bryan County, could be built.

“When he had leverage, and when he could have forced key changes to benefit a Georgia company, he chose not to,” Mr. Hall said. “But he came down for the photo op anyway.”

Any hit to Hyundai’s profitability puts its Georgia investment at risk, Mr. Hall argued. “Them saying this bill was problematic for their bottom line raises the question of whether Warnock should have used his leverage to level the playing field,” he said.

It’s more complicated than that.

Mr. Warnock, in consultation with Hyundai, pressed for a wider consumer incentive. But the issue became “take it or leave it” for Mr. Manchin, who was just as happy to have no electric-vehicle consumer credit in the final Inflation Reduction Act. Even domestic-only credit was attacked by congressional Republicans, who claimed that Democrats were using taxpayer money to buy luxury cars for their elitist constituents while working Americans struggled.

Hyundai will still be eligible for many federal incentives during construction of the Georgia plant. The $7,500 tax credit applies to commercial and used vehicles. This credit has far fewer restrictions regarding where, how much, and where their components are from. Dealers can use the tax credit to purchase imported electric cars to lease to consumers, thanks to the provision for commercial vehicles.

The law also provides $10 billion in manufacturing credits to help build new plants or renovate existing ones to produce electric vehicles. Additionally, there are $30 billion tax credits for battery and component tax credits. This will all benefit Hyundai.

“It’s just an implausible assertion that the senator doesn’t get credit for one of the top priorities that he’s been driving in Washington, boosting U.S. clean energy and autos manufacturing,” Ali A. Zaidi, the White House climate adviser, said in an interview Thursday night.

Georgian companies are also benefiting. SK Battery America plans to hire 3,000 workers for its E.V. by the end of next. Commerce, Ga. (northern Atlanta) will have a new battery plant to meet demand. On Thursday, Mr. Warnock declared that a Belgian firm had been formed. Solvay Specialty PolymersThe company would construct a new factory for electric-vehicle batteries in Augusta, Ga.

And in the northwest Georgia district of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who called the Inflation Reduction Act an “energy disaster,” Qcells, a solar panel manufacturer, said it was adding $171 million and 500 additional jobs to its Dalton plant.

“We will always look at the history of our industry in two eras,” before the Inflation Reduction Act and after, Scott Moskowitz, the head of market strategy and public affairs for Qcells North America, wrote on the company’s website.

But with many Republicans still downplaying or denying climate change, and much of the party denouncing any climate legislation as the “Green New Deal,” it is not clear whether any of this will help Mr. Warnock on Tuesday. Mr. Walker has mocked his opponent’s embrace of climate legislation as folly, with a much-quoted riff on the United States cleaning its air, only to have China send its “bad air” America’s way.

The same goes for other Warnock accomplishments.

In the early 2021s, Mr. Warnock advocated for the Black farmers to receive billions of dollar in the $1.9 trillion Covid relief legislation, also known as The American Rescue Plan. But, the bill was soon abandoned due to legal threats from white farmers alleging discrimination.

He was also an advocate of student debt forgiveness. Mr. Biden finally announced his loan forgiveness action. Mr. Warnock was the only legislator to claim credit, in particular for the amnesty granted to recipients of Pell Grants. But the president’s executive action has taken bipartisan heat and is now on court-ordered hold, pending a review announced Thursday by the Supreme Court. This is something that Mr. Warnock did not make central to his re-election campaign.

All of that has some of Mr. Warnock’s Democratic colleagues looking forward, not backward. “It is not what he has done,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, “but what he can do in the future.”

Carl HulseContributed reporting