Loeffler said on Wednesday that if she and Georgia Republican Senator David Purdue won, they would “save the country.”
Loeffler and Purdue described their campaign against Warnock and Democratic candidate John Usov as a major battle between the United States and socialism, even though both of their opponents are capitalists. Loeffler’s attacks came after months of Republican infighting between Loeffler and Georgia Representative Doug Collins in the special election, allowing Warnock to run relatively unscathed so far.
At Wednesday’s campaign event in Marietta – her first run-off election – Loeffler went after Warnock to work in a church 25 years ago who invited the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to attend an event, and claimed that he currently holds an “ideological” Marxist even though he is a capitalist and Christian.
“What you need to know is in our societies,” she said. “He does not care about the things that we care about.”
Her campaign aired an ad this week wondering whether “this” America – which is showing a class of young students saying pledge allegiance – would still be America “if the radical left controls the Senate.” The ad then displays photos of the crowd, flashes banners saying “Stop Police Funding” and pastes a quote from a 2015 speech Warnock gave after a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, killed Michael Brown, in which he said some officers had “a gangster and a bullying mentality.”
Another Loeffler Warnock campaign advertisement for his honor attacked Reverend Jeremiah Wright in 2008, although five years earlier Wright gave an infamous sermon defined by three words – “God damn America.” The attack is a response to the 2008 presidential campaign, when then Democratic candidate Barack Obama gave a keynote speech on race relations in America after he was criticized for his association with Bright.
Warnock said Loeffler wants to divide Georgia, distracting her from her opposition to the Affordable Care and Healthcare Insurance Act that provides millions of people in the midst of a pandemic.
“If you don’t have an actual working-family agenda, I think you should distract working families,” Warnock said in Atlanta on Thursday. “I intend to continue to focus on making sure that every Georgian has access to affordable healthcare, that workers share some of the profits they make and are able to retire with dignity.”
He also defended his record. In response to a question about Wright, who has a history of anti-Semitic comments, Warnock said he had spent his “entire career facing intolerance, hatred and xenophobia, wherever it appeared and whatever the source.” In response to Loeffler’s TV advertisement that he was “hosting a rally” for Castro, Warnock said he had “nothing” to do with inviting the late Cuban tyrant to speak at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City in 1995, where he served as a young pastor.
Warnock reiterated during the campaign that he does not support halting police funding, and has “a deep respect” for law enforcement, but wants the country to enjoy “equal protection under the law.” America has been called “the greatest country on earth.”
Warnock defended himself preemptively from Loeffler’s attacks last week, broadcasting a joking advertisement saying his opponents would say he ate pizza with a fork, hating puppies and stepping on a crack in the sidewalk.
Democrats say Loeffler’s portrayal of Warnock misses the point.
“Loeffler is creating its alternate reality with these attacks,” JP Boersch, chairman of the Senate Majority PAC, a PAC super-organization allied with Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer, told CNN.
At the age of thirty-five, Warnock was chosen in 2005 to lead the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and has since taken on issues in Georgia such as reforming the Criminal Justice Law, expanding voter registration and Medicaid.
Meanwhile, Loeffler described the work ethic she learned on her family’s ranch in Illinois, becoming the first in her family to graduate from college and work for the Intercontinental Exchange, the commodity and financial exchange company.
She then married Geoffrey Spreacher, the president of the New York Stock Exchange and bought a joint ownership in the Atlanta Dream WNBA. At the end of 2019, Republican Governor Brian Kemp Loeffler appointed to fill the seat left by retired Senator Johnny Isaacson.
But the senator has been hit by attacks from the left and the right, particularly from Warnock and Collins, two of the many candidates who ran in the race in November to spend the remainder of Escason, which ends in 2022.
While Loeffler spent more than $ 20 million on her own race, Collins mocked her lifestyle on a private jet and accused her of taking advantage of the pandemic, citing the millions of dollars in stock transactions she and her husband made after attending a Senators-only briefing in January. . Loeffler said that she has never used confidential information to make a profit, that third-party advisors have bought and sold shares on her behalf, and will be stripped of the individual shares.
“She cheerfully accepts the endorsement of a candidate who trades in the hate-filled QAnon conspiracy theory,” Warnock said Thursday. “It’s a shame.”
This week, Loeffler and Purdue called on Georgia’s Republican Foreign Minister Brad Ravensberger to resign, saying his “mismanagement” and “lack of transparency” were “unacceptable”, as Trump had unfounded the presidential election results. Ravensburger replied that he would not do so and said it was “unlikely” that the illegal votes would provide a large enough margin to nullify the results. He suggested Loeffler and Perdue focus on their own races to make sure Republicans retain the Senate.
Democrats have not won a Senate seat in Georgia since 2000. But they hope that the state’s changing demographics and voter registration efforts led by former state minority Stacy Abrams and Joe Biden in the state – the state’s best for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 – could turn out. The state’s color is blue.
But the Republican Senate National Committee, along with the Perdue and Loeffler campaigns, have raised $ 32 million combined over the past six days, according to NRSC spokesperson Jesse Hunt, and will create a massive field program in Peach State.
“Senator Purdue and Loeffler, two incredible leaders of their state, the National Security Council and the entire Republican ecosystem, will work closely with their teams to protect our country from kidnapping by an out of control socialist group,” Hunt said.
This story is updated with Loeffler’s and Perdue calling for Raffensperger to resign and return.
Kyung Lah of CNN contributed to this report.
