Baptism by Fire: Georgia Democratic Challenger Warnock Faces First TV Attack in Crucial US Senate Race
Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia unleashed her first full-scale TV attack ads on Democratic challenger the Rev. Raphael Warnock on Thursday, as the final battle for control of the U.S. Senate intensifies…
Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia unleashed her first full-scale TV attack ads on Democratic challenger the Rev. Raphael Warnock on Thursday, as the final battle for control of the U.S. Senate intensifies ahead of their January runoff.
Loeffler, who spent much of the year fighting fellow Republican Doug Collins for conservative votes in their 20-candidate Nov. 3 multiparty election, released two 30-second spots that accused the Democrat of celebrating “anti-American hatred,” praising “Marxism” and calling police thugs and gangsters.
“Saving the Senate is about saving America from that!” concludes one of the ads, in what the Loeffler campaign described as a statewide TV buy worth more than $1 million.
A spokesman for Warnock, who is a Black pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church where slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, called the ads misleading and said they showed Loeffler “resorting to the lowest of the low attacks to try and salvage her campaign.”
In anticipation of the Republican onslaught, Warnock, who has never held political office, previously launched a humorous online ad in which he warned he would likely face a surge in attack ads.
Republican strategists say Loeffler’s ads are only the first salvo in an expected all-out assault on Warnock that is likely to include outside groups such as the Senate Leadership Fund, a political action committee aligned with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
A Georgia Democratic Party official said Warnock entered the runoff campaign with strong positions in fundraising and polling and that robust resources would be available to launch a counterattack on Loeffler as a right-wing radical who has associated herself with extreme positions to curry favor with conservative voters.
SENATE CONTROL AT STAKE
The Warnock-Loeffler matchup is one of a pair of Jan. 5 Senate runoffs in Georgia that will determine whether Republicans or Democrats lead the U.S. Senate after Democratic President-elect Joe Biden takes office. In the other race, Republican Senator David Perdue faces Democrat Jon Ossoff.