GA-Sen B: Kelly Loeffler (R) Tries To Blame China For Giving Trump COVID-19
United States Senator Kelly Loeffler directly blamed China for infecting President Donald Trump in a Friday morning tweet.
In the tweet, Loeffler said, “Remember: China gave this virus to our President @realDonaldTrump and First Lady @FLOTUS. WE MUST HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.”
For their part, China hasn't responded to Senator Loeffler's tweet. However, Chinese state media was critical of President Trump overnight for not wearing a mask and taking other precautions during the pandemic.
Loeffler's strategy to make the runoff has been to out-Trump Trump. She has openly feuded with members of the WNBA team she owns — the Atlanta Dream — over the Black Lives Matter movement. She has attacked the media at every turn for allegedly being out to get her. She is running ads in Georgia in which she claims to be “more conservative than Attila the Hun.”This tweet then is in keeping with that strategy. Why not suggest that China not only didn't do enough to limit the spread of the disease in the spring but also “gave this virus” to Trump? After all, if Trump's takeover and transformation of the Republican Party over the past five years has proven anything, it's that there is no “too far” when it comes to the President's most ardent backers. Nothing too outlandish, nothing too over-the-top. And as for facts? Well, those are for other people.
What Loeffler did with her Friday morning tweet is, of course, incredibly irresponsible. Hyperbolically floating the idea that China personally got Trump and the first lady sick with absolutely no proof isn't the sort of thing any of us should do — much less a sitting United States senator.
Rep. Doug Collins (R. GA) is using his daughter to hit back at Loeffler:
In a 30-second ad released Thursday, Jordan tells her story to try to bolster her father’s challenge to U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who won the support from several anti-abortion groups despite their initial concerns about her stance.Speaking directly to camera, Jordan delivers an emotional testimonial, before the ad fades to an image of the father-and-daughter duo bonding in a park:
“I don’t know Kelly Loeffler, but I know my dad. And her attacks, they’re just not true. Before I was born, my parents were told that I had spina bifida. They were told that I would never walk, and that they had an option. But they chose life. They chose me. Now I’ll get to stand up for my dad, because I know he’ll fight as hard for you as he always has for me.”
Meanwhile, over on Team Blue:
Democrat Raphael Warnock will report raising more than $12.8 million over the last three months of his campaign to oust U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a wild special election that will almost certainly stretch into next year.
Warnock, the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has collected more than $17 million from 500,000 separate contributions since entering the race this year.
It’s not immediately clear how much cash on hand the first-time candidate will report after the three-month period, which spans from July to August. In previous filings, he’s outraised both Loeffler, who is self-financing her campaign, and U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, her most formidable Republican rival.
Also:
A group of progressive organizations have called on Democrat Matt Lieberman to drop out of the “jungle primary” special Senate election in Georgia and rally support around Rev. Raphael Warnock, saying that Lieberman's “continued presence in this race poses a very real and potentially disastrous threat to Democrats’ chances of winning.”
“If there’s anything the last four years have taught us, it’s that elections have profound consequences and those who want to retain our democracy and make racial, social, and economic progress in this country have to think strategically about the fights we wage,” the groups write in a letter to Lieberman, published Friday. “We urge you, with everything we have, to do the right thing for our country, (and) end your race for U.S. Senate.”
The groups signing onto the letter include Democracy for America, who's CEO is ABC News contributor Yvette Simpson, and Justice Democrats, a group co-founded by “The Young Turks” founder and host Cenk Uygur in January 2017, which boasts Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as one of its candidate success stories.
Eight other groups are signatories to the letter, and together represent “tens of thousands of grassroots activists in Georgia and millions across the country.” They write that they wouldn't normally push for a Democrat to exit the race during a primary, but the stakes of this election are too high.
Meanwhile, over in the other Senate race, Jon Ossoff (D. GA) scored two major endorsements. First:
Georgia Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Jon Ossoff begins the month of October by picking up an endorsement from the Congressional Black Caucus in his race against Republican Senator David Perdue.
The powerful PAC’s goals include increasing the number of African Americans in the U.S. Congress, supporting non-Black candidates that champion the interests of African Americans, and promoting African American participation in the political process.
Ossoff previously worked for two members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the late Congressman John Lewis and Congressman Hank Johnson.
CBC PAC Executive Director Yolonda Addison issued the following statement on the endorsement of Ossoff.
“Jon Ossoff is committed to ensuring that every Georgian has access to health care, that our economy works for everyone and that we are able to root out corruption,” Addison said. “Congressional Black Caucus PAC is proud to endorse him for the U.S. Senate in Georgia. We look forward to welcoming him in the Senate so that he can vote to ensure every American has health care, pass a new Civil Rights Act and Voting Right Act, and put working families and small businesses first.”
The largest national teachers' union endorsed Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia's Senate race on Friday, saying he would help ensure a fully funded public education system that will “level the playing field for all children across Georgia.”Ossoff, running against incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue in November, also received the endorsement of Georgia's state teachers' union.The national organization, the National Education Association, represents some 3 million members across the country.
The president of the state organization, Lisa Morgan, said, “We look forward to working with Jon Ossoff to fully fund public education and address the inequities currently experienced by our rural, low-income, and minority students. As educators, we are committed to the success of every child, and we know that the recovery from the current pandemic will require all of us working toward this goal.”
With Biden pulling ahead in Georgia, the GOP is getting nervous and making it harder to vote:
In Georgia the secretary of state’s office certifies candidate eligibility, oversees voter registration and creates ballots, but leaves electoral administration to the state’s 159 counties—more than any state except Texas. The state maintains voter rolls, which many complain it does too rigidly, rejecting registrations, for instance, because, in the judgment of an election official, an applicant’s signature fails to precisely match a signature already on file. But counties choose and staff polling places, set electoral budgets and tabulate results.
Georgia was one of just nine states wholly subject to the “pre-clearance” requirement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—meaning it had to seek federal approval for any changes to its voting practices—imposed on jurisdictions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices. Since the Supreme Court invalidated that requirement in a ruling in 2013, Georgia’s counties have closed hundreds of polling places; between 2012 and 2018, only Texas and Arizona closed more.
According to data-crunching by Georgia Public Broadcasting News, more than 10% of Georgia’s polling places in the June 9th primary had to remain open past official closing time to accommodate voters (anyone in line when polls officially close can still vote). Two-thirds of them were in majority-minority precincts. Many black Georgians have grown accustomed to waiting hours to vote. Wanda Mosley, Georgia’s senior coordinator for Black Voters Matter, visited a precinct in a wealthy suburb north of Atlanta on June 9th. “When we pulled up,” she explained, “I thought we were in the wrong place. There were no lines. That’s not something I’m used to seeing.”
Georgia's most populous county has launched an expansive early voting effort, hoping to push hundreds of thousands of voters to cast their ballots through the mail and in person by the end of October.
At a press conference Thursday, officials also unveiled one of two mobile voting buses that will show up at multiple locations across the 70-mile-long county and can accommodate up to eight voters at once. The county also unveiled a new voting app that has information on early voting and drop boxes, plus a new advertising campaign designed to encourage residents to vote early.
Fulton elections director Rick Barron said the goal is to have a vast majority of the votes this fall cast before Election Day.
“Our target is to get 80% of the voters to use absentee-by-mail and early voting to make Election Day run smooth,” he said.
After several high-profile problems in various Fulton polling places during the June 9 primary, the county has taken a number of steps to improve the voting experience for November, including training and retraining thousands of poll workers, placing technicians at every polling site and the new mobile voting buses that can help cut down on lines.
There will be 30 early voting sites, including the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park and the Benson Senior Center that will each have 50 voting machines, and State Farm Arena, which will have 300 machines during the 19-day early voting period that begins Oct. 12.
Deadline to register to vote in Georgia is October 5th. Here’s the info:
You can request an absentee ballot online at ballotrequest.sos.ga.gov.
The U.S. Postal Service suggests people mail their ballots at least seven days before the deadline. Voters can also turn in their completed ballots by 7 p.m. on Election Day at their county election office or at approved drop boxes located across the state.
Many counties are maintaining drop boxes for voters to deposit absentee ballots up until 7 p.m. Nov. 3. Check with your local elections office to confirm your county’s drop box location.
The public can verify their voter registration status, check their absentee ballot status, find their polling location, and get other important voting information at www.mvp.sos.ga.gov.
Click here to register to vote.
Click here to sign up to be a poll worker in Georgia.
Let’s keep up the momentum to flip Georgia Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Warnock, Ossoff, Biden and their fellow Georgia Democrats campaigns:
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