CUMMING, Go. – With three days to go for round two to take control of the U.S. Senate, Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) – who has waged a brutal negative campaign against her Democratic challenger, Pastor Raphael Warnock – throws out the toughest and most personal attacks yet in this already heated race.
At a campaign stop Saturday morning in Cumming, a town in the conservative northern suburbs of Atlanta, Loeffler accused Warnock of being “involved in child abuse, domestic violence – he’s hiding, he’s not going to answer those questions.”
That phrase drew cheers from the crowd – and from one man, the famous Trump-era chorus reserved for the most hated political figures: “Shut him up!”
The senator then said that “Harvey Weinstein’s attorney” contributed to Warnock’s campaign. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” she added. Loeffler was probably referring to David Boies, the prominent attorney who previously represented Weinstein. Boies has donated to a PAC that supports Georgia Democrats, but not specifically to Warnock’s campaign, according to federal data.
In creating the explosive charges, Loeffler was referring to a few events that determined the GOP’s attempt to attack Warnock’s character.
One is an incident in March where the police were called after a dispute between Warnock and his wife while they were divorcing. Warnock’s ex-wife claimed his car ran over her foot; Recently released camera footage of the police body shows her telling agents that Warnock was a “great actor.” That line has been included in an attack ad blitz funded by Loeffler’s GOP allies that flooded Georgia’s airwaves ahead of the election.
Warnock has denied any wrongdoing and no charges have been filed after the incident. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported on Dec. 30 that, according to hours of body camera footage, Atlanta police officers had expressed doubts that Warnock injured his wife. Ouleye Warnock told me AJC that she felt the incident had no place in the senatorial elections.
The second is a 2002 incident at a Maryland summer camp run by the then Warnock Church in Baltimore, where he and a fellow church leader were arrested after interrupting a police investigation into allegations of abuse in the camp. Warnock said at the time that he forbade the police from talking to campers without the children’s lawyers present; Maryland police later blamed him for cooperating with the investigation, calling the arrest a “miscommunication.” Last week, the story surfaced again when a former camper claimed counselors punished him by forcing him to sleep outside and throw urine all over him.
Last week, after Loeffler said Warnock “needs to answer” to what happened, Warnock’s campaign told the AJC“No matter how many lies Senator Loeffler tells, the facts are the same: Reverend Warnock assisted the police with their investigation and they thanked him.”
Responding to Loeffler’s claims, a Warnock spokesman said the senator “lied about Reverend Warnock throughout her campaign and tried to divide Georgians.”
Georgians see through Kelly Loeffler’s unfair campaign and they know that during her year in the Senate, she spent a lot more time looking after herself than she did for them, the spokesman said.
For most of its two-month runoff campaign, the GOP has focused on portraying Warnock as a dangerous far-left radical by broadcasting excerpts from his earlier sermons. Many Democrats, including the candidates themselves, have called those ads racist in the way they play for certain tropes.
But many Republican voters in Georgia cannot think about the upcoming election without dwelling on the November 3 election. President Trump has fixated on Georgia, claiming without any evidence that the state’s election was fraudulent and hopelessly corrupt. That fantasy has taken root in the GOP base, and top leaders – including Trump – have urged Georgia voters to vote in the January 5 election, even if they think the whole system is rotten.
On Saturday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) joined Loeffler, who appeared at the rally shortly before his Senate office announced he would be leading a group of GOP senators to object to Biden’s victory when the Senate meets to review the results. of the electoral college. on January 6. In a joint statement, senators claimed that the 2020 election suffered from “unprecedented” voter fraud, but failed to provide any specific evidence of it, just as Trump’s legal team has failed to do in their series of failed attempts to to reverse the elections in court.
Speaking to the crowd at the back of a pickup truck, Cruz made unfounded allegations that the Democrats had stolen the 2020 election – and accused them of doing the same for the Georgia election.
‘Are they going to try to steal it? Yes, ”said Cruz. “But I’ll tell you what we’re going to do – we’re going to win by a margin big enough that no one steals Georgia.”