Loeffler unleashes assault on Warnock in Georgia in race for Senate control

“What you need to know is that in our own communities he doesn’t care about the things that matter to us,” she said.

His campaign ran an ad this week asking if “this” America – showing a class of young students taking the pledge of allegiance – will still be America “if the radical left controls the Senate.” The ad then shows footage of crowds, flashes signs saying “defund the police” and inserts a quote from a 2015 sermon Warnock gave after a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, killed Michael Brown, in which he said some officers have a “gangster and thug mentality.”

Another Loeffler campaign ad attacks Warnock for honoring Pastor Jeremiah Wright in 2008, even though five years earlier Wright delivered a now infamous sermon defined by three words – “God damn America.” The attack is a callback to the 2008 presidential campaign, when then-Democratic candidate Barack Obama gave a crucial speech on race relations in America after being criticized for his association with Wright.

Warnock said Loeffler wanted to divide Georgia and deflect attention from his opposition to the Affordable Care Act and the health insurance it provides to millions of people amid a pandemic.

“If you don’t really have a program for working families, I guess you have to distract working families,” Warnock said in Atlanta on Thursday. “I intend to continue to ensure that every Georgian has access to affordable health care, that workers share some of the benefits they create and that they can retire with dignity.

He also defended his record. In response to a question regarding Wright, who has a history of anti-Semitic commentary, Warnock said he has spent “his entire career fighting bigotry, hatred, xenophobia, wherever and whatever they manifest themselves. be the source “. Responding to Loeffler’s television announcement that he “organized a rally” for Castro, Warnock said he “had nothing to do” in inviting the late Cuban despot to speak at the Baptist Church Abyssinian from New York in 1995, where he later served as a young pastor.

Warnock has reiterated throughout the campaign that he does not support dismantling the police, has “a deep respect” for law enforcement, but wants the country to enjoy “equal protection under the law. “. He called America “the greatest country in the world”.

Warnock defended himself preemptively from Loeffler’s attacks last week, running a joking ad that his opponents would say he ate pizza with a fork, hated puppies, and walked over a crack in the sidewalk.

Democrats say Loeffler’s portrayal of Warnock misses the mark.

“Loeffler is creating his own alternate reality with these attacks,” JB Poersch, chairman of the Senate Majority PAC, a Super PAC aligned with Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, told CNN.

At the age of 35, Warnock was chosen in 2005 to lead Ebenezer Baptist Church, and has since tackled issues in Georgia such as revamping the criminal justice code, expanding voter registration and Medicaid.

Meanwhile, Loeffler described the work ethic she learned on the family farm in Illinois, becoming the first in her family to graduate from college and work for the Intercontinental Exchange, the firm of commodity and financial exchange.

She then married Jeffrey Sprecher, the president of the New York Stock Exchange and bought a condominium in Atlanta Dream from the WNBA. At the end of 2019, Republican Governor Brian Kemp appointed Loeffler to fill the seat left by outgoing Senator Johnny Isakson.

But the Senator has been damaged by attacks from the left and the right, particularly from Warnock and Collins, two of the many candidates who ran against her in the November race to serve the remainder of Iskason’s term, which will run ends in 2022.

While Loeffler spent more than $ 20 million on his own race, Collins mocked his private jet lifestyle and accused him of profiting from the pandemic, pointing to the multi-million dollar stock trades that ‘she and her husband had performed after attending a senators’ briefing in January. . Loeffler said she never used confidential information to make a profit, that third-party advisers bought and sold shares on her behalf and divested individual shares.

“She happily accepts the approval of a candidate who tampers with the QAnon conspiracy theory that is teeming with hatred and fanaticism,” Warnock said Thursday. “It is shameful.”

Democrats have not won a Senate seat in Georgia since 2000. But they are optimistic that the state’s changing demographics, voter registration efforts led by former state minority Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden’s involvement in the state – the best for a Democrat presidential candidate since 1992 – could turn the state blue.

But the Republican National Senate Committee, along with the Perdue and Loeffler campaigns, have raised $ 32 million in the past six days, according to NRSC spokesman Jesse Hunt and will create a large field program in the state. by Peach.

“Senators Perdue and Loeffler are incredible leaders for their state and the NRSC, and the entire Republican ecosystem, will work closely with their teams to protect our country from hijacking by a group of out-of-control socialists,” Hunt said.