Pastor and politician, Raphael Warnock is currently the junior Senator from Georgia. Warnock’s election came only after a special election between himself and the incumbent at the time, Kelly Loeffler. Not only was Warnock in a run-off election, but the senior Senator from the Peach State was also in a run-off with an incumbent candidate. Together, Warnock and his fellow Senator are the first Democrats elected to represent Georgia in over two decades. Warnock is the first black Democrat to be elected to the Senate in a one-Confederate state, and he is the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate representing Georgia.
| Celebrated Name: | Raphael Warnock |
| Real Name/Full Name: | Raphael Gamaliel Warnock |
| Gender: | Male |
| Age: | 52 |
| Birthdate: | July 23, 1969 |
| Birthplace: | Savannah, GA |
| Nationality: | American |
| Height: | 5 ft. 8 in. |
| Weight: | 150 lb. |
| Sexual Orientation: | Straight |
| Marital Status: | Divorced |
| Wife/Spouse | Ouleye Ndoye |
| Children/Kids: | Two – Chloe and Caleb |
| Dating/Girlfriend Name: | Unknown |
| Is Raphael Warnock Gay? | No |
| Highest Political Office: | United States Senator, Georgia |
| Profession: | Pastor and politician |
| Colleges Attended: | Morehouse College; Union Theological Seminary |
| Degrees: | Bachelor of Arts – Psychology; Master of Divinity, Master of Philosophy, PhD – Union Theological Seminary |
| Salary: | $174,000 it is unknown what Warnock’s pastoral salary entails |
| Net Worth in 2022: | $800,000 – $1.3 million |
Biography: Early Life and Family
Hailing from Savannah, GA, Raphael Warnock grew up in a highly religious home. Both his parents were Pentecostal preachers. The Warnock family lived in public housing (in an area known as Kayton Homes), and Raphael was one of twelve children.
Warnock was heavily influenced by Dr. Martin Luther King, so, when Warnock graduated from high school in 1987, he chose to attend Morehouse College, a historically black men’s college in Atlanta.
Prior to attending Morehouse, Warnock was active in the Upward Bound program. Warnock was able to enroll in some pre-college preparatory classes at Savannah State University.
At Morehouse, Warnock would pursue a degree in psychology. He would graduate from Morehouse classified as cum laude for his achievement in academics. He would eventually attend seminary at Union Theological Seminary, where he would work toward a PhD in theology.
Other programs that Warnock has been enrolled in include the Leadership Program (a program established by the Greater Baltimore Committee) as well as the Summer Leadership Institute of Harvard University. Warnock also successfully completed the Leadership Atlanta program.
The Associated Press published an article on Senator Warnock which offers a few extra details about the Georgia senator’s early life. In addition to their respective preaching duties, Raphael’s mother worked as a sharecropper; Raphael’s father, who was an Army veteran, made extra money by hauling old cars to a local salvage yard. Warnock has said that his father recruited him to assist him in work.
Warnock says that he was the first in his family to obtain a college degree. The senator shares that he did so by obtaining a Pell grant as well as a few student loans.
Personal Life
Warnock was married to Ouleye Ndoye from 2016 to 2020. The pair married in two different ceremonies, one private and the other public. Their public anniversary was February 14, 2016. The couple separated in November 2019.
Warnock and Ndoye have two children together, Chloe and Caleb. Little is known about the children; Warnock and Ndoye have kept them out of the public eye for most of their lives.
The Warnock and Ndoye divorce became heated, as many divorces do. Warnock came under scrutiny when Ndoye accused Warnock of running over her foot with his car. Allegedly, the couple were arguing about visited relatives. The incident escalated, and Warnock was attempting to leave the home. No charges were ever brought, although police did investigate the incident. No injuries were found in Ndoye’s foot. However, when Warnock was running for the Senate in 2020, video footage from a police interview regarding the allegations by Warnock’s soon-to-be ex-wife would be made public.
Senator Warnock has done a fantastic job of keeping his personal life very private. Little is known about his childhood; most sources share the same information from his biography with no elaboration on those details.
In 2014, Warnock was arrested for protesting outside the Georgia capitol building; he was among several people protesting the state’s refusal – primarily among Republicans – to expand Medicaid. He was arrested again in 2017 at the United States Capitol Building for a similar protest. The 2017 protest was in regard to efforts by Congressional Republicans to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
Age, Height, and Weight
Raphael Warnock is 52 years of age. Best estimates have Senator Warnock at 5 feet 8 inches tall and 150 pounds.
Net Worth
Raphael Warnock is said to have a net worth of between $800,000 and $1.3 million. Unfortunately, very little information exists on how Warnock accumulated this worth.
Warnock has spent most of his professional life in the ministry. He has been an assistant pastor as well as the head pastor of churches, including the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (which was the same church at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached at the height of the Civil Rights movement). No information can be found on the head pastor’s salary; however, Glassdoor does list an assistant pastor’s salary at Ebenezer Baptist Church between $36,000 and $37,000 annually. Even if the head pastor’s salary is double that amount, this would only put Warnock’s pastor’s salary at around $70,000 – $80,000.
Warnock earns a $174,000 salary as a member of the United States Senate. He has spent one year in this position.
Career Outside of Politics
Warnock entered the ministry in the 1990s. His first church was the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York. Here, Warnock was a youth pastor; he would eventually become the church’s assistant pastor.
Warnock courted controversy even then. He was the youth pastor when the church invited Fidel Castro to visit in 1995; however, it is unclear whether Warnock had anything to do with that decision. Warnock’s campaign denied any part in the decision and would not confirm or deny whether Warnock attended Castro’s event. Warnock did refuse to hire workfare recipients in protest to then-New York Mayor Rudy Giulani’s program for welfare recipients.
Warnock would later move to Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore. Again, Warnock’s career met with controversy. This time, Warnock and an assistant pastor of Douglas Memorial were arrested and charged with obstructing a police investigation.
Police were looking into suspected child abuse charges at a summer camp Douglas Memorial Church ran. The charges stem from Warnock’s demanding that camp counselors have an attorney present when they spoke with police. The police report detailing Warnock’s arrest described him as “extremely uncooperative and disruptive.” Later, the charges would be dropped against Warnock, saying that there had be a miscommunication. Warnock said his cause for intervening had nothing to do with the police looking into abuse allegations, but that the juvenile counselors had legal representation during police interviews.
Warnock took his current position as the lead pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 2005. Many expected Warnock to step down from this position once he began running for the Georgia seat in the U.S. Senate, but Warnock addressed the concern in the pulpit. He told his congregation that he had no intention of leaving, although this was a controversial position according to his opponent, Kelly Loeffler, and other lawmakers. Loeffler even used snippets of sermons to allege that Warnock had used the pulpit to push a political agenda. Warnock says that the clips are taken out of context, and that it isn’t uncommon for African American preachers to discuss current events in the pulpit.
At Ebenezer, Warnock is only the fifth pastor in the history of the church. He is also the youngest to serve as the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Although Warnock says he does not use the pulpit to promote a political agenda, he has utilized his position in the church to speak out on certain situations. He worked unsuccessfully to garner a lesser punishment for Troy Davis; Davis would be executed in 2011.
Warnock hosted an “interfaith meeting” on climate change at Ebenezer Baptist Church in March 2019. Al Gore and William Barber II were in attendance.
Warnock made some controversial comments to his congregation upon the death of Fidel Castro; he asked the congregation to pray for the Cuban people, and then added that Castro’s legacy as a leader was “complex, kind of like America’s legacy is complex.”
Career in Politics
Raphael Warnock was invited to provide the benediction at a public prayer service held at the inauguration of Barack Obama.
Warnock ran against Kelly Loeffler for his current seat in the Senate. The election was very close, with Warnock barely edging 4 million more votes than Loeffler. A special election was held in January 2021, and Warnock won the seat by about 100,000 votes.
The initial election in Georgia was mired in controversy up and down the ticket, and Georgia has changed a great deal of its election procedures due to the controversy.
