Clash between Republicans in Georgia Senate election focuses on loyalty to Trump
In the competition for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, the focus for two Republican lawmakers is on who has a closer relationship with President Donald Trump.
Georgia Rep. Doug Collins is tapping Trump loyalists to campaign for him in the last 20 days, in an effort to draw out more conservative voters that his campaign is branding the “Trump Defender Tour.”
Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler is also calling for backup from friends of the president and her fellow senators in the lead up to the Nov. 3 election.
The battle between the two Republicans has largely been about who would better support the agenda of Trump.
Trump has not endorsed anyone in the race. “They’re going to be in there fighting, fighting, fighting. Don’t anybody get out,” Trump said of Loeffler and Collins in an Atlanta speech at the end of September. “And the only thing I know for sure, they’re all going to vote for me.”
Collins plans to announce visits from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp and other Trump allies during a 60-city tour of the state.
Loeffler has the backing of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who appointed her to the seat after former Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson stepped down.
She campaigned in the state with Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Trump ally, and has also appeared at events with Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is expected to return to Georgia to campaign for her, Loeffler’s campaign said.
Collins’ campaign is emphasizing the congressman’s role as a member of Trump’s impeachment team during his Senate trial.
“While she’s sitting in her mansion writing checks to Mitt Romney, Doug was on the battlefield for the president. The people who are joining him are his fellow soldiers,” campaign spokesman Dan McLagan told McClatchy, referring to Collins’ defense of the president during his impeachment.
Loeffler, one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, donated to Romney, now a senator for Utah, when he was the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. Loeffler took office in January, filling an unexpected vacancy, before the Senate impeachment trial in which Trump was acquitted. She voted against removing Trump from office.
“Kelly Loeffler has a great relationship with President Trump, and he has praised her work to support his America First Agenda on multiple occasions,” Loeffler spokesman Stephen Lawson said. “Doug Collins is a failed career politician who is losing badly in the polls because he’s voted with liberals like Nancy Pelosi and Stacey Abrams hundreds of times to raise taxes, weaken the 2nd Amendment, and fund sanctuary cities, amnesty and common core.”
The barbs between the two candidates are reflective of the tenor of the race that has pitted Republicans against Republicans and Democrats against Democrats.
Candidates from both parties are appearing on a single ballot, and only the top two vote getters from either party will advance to a run-off election if none of the politicians receives a majority of support in the first round. Frontrunners in the race will debate on Oct. 19.
Early voting began Monday and will run until Oct. 30.
Collins’ campaign said he would also appear at events with former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, both of whom were sentenced to jail in connection with the federal investigation into Russian election meddling. Each pleaded guilty to lying but say they were treated unjustly.
Another former Trump campaign adviser who was a focus of the special counsel investigation, Carter Page, will also join Collins on the stump, his campaign said.
GEORGIA ON THE MAP
Georgia has become a closely watched state in 2020, partly because both of its U.S. Senate seats are on the ballot this year.
Polling also shows a tight margin between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the state which has 16 electoral votes. The Cook Political Report rates Georgia a toss-up for the presidential election.
Trump will visit Macon on Friday for a rally at the end of his first week on the road following a 10-day hiatus during which he was hospitalized after contracting the coronavirus.
His eldest son, Donald Trump, Jr., campaigned for him on Monday in Savannah and his elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, traveled Tuesday to Acworth.
Ivanka Trump appeared alongside Republican Sen. David Perdue, whose race is also rated a toss-up. But, like her father, she has not taken sides in the special election involving Loeffler and Collins.
Loeffler has the backing of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is up for reelection in Kentucky, and the McConnell-controlled National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Among other conservative groups like the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List —headed by Trump ally Marjorie Dannenfelser — Loeffler has the support of the Family Policy Alliance of Georgia, the political counterpart of the Christian ministry group Focus on the Family.
The alliance’s election guide put Loeffler in lockstep with Trump, listing them as “wildly successful” business people and marking Collins down as a lawyer and 15-year politician. It omits that he is a former pastor and veteran.
Loeffler has promoted the guide that asserts that she and Trump donate their salaries, have self-funded their political campaigns and have shown leadership on appointments to the courts.
Under “issue leadership” the guide says Collins, a member of the House who has no authority to vote on judicial confirmations, has “none.” It also highlights his lack of support from anti-abortion organizations.
Collins is running as an insurgent against much of the Republican establishment.
He is emphasizing his position as the highest ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee during the president’s impeachment battle. He was also a member of Trump’s impeachment team during the Senate trial, helping with White House messaging and serving as a top surrogate.
“I’m President Trump’s top defender against the sham impeachment,” Collins boasted in his first television ad last month. “And yes his preferred pick for the Senate.”
Collins was Trump’s first choice for the Senate seat when Isakson stepped down last year. But the president is not expected to support either Republican candidate until after the November special election.
Trump’s refusal to step in has allowed Loeffler and Collins to suggest in advertisements that they have his endorsement. A September commercial for Loeffler said she had a “100 percent Trump voting record” in narration that accompanied a picture with Trump taken on Air Force One.
In a new commercial that Collins released on Wednesday, he criticized Loeffler for stocks she says a financial adviser sold after a closed-door coronavirus briefing that senators attended earlier this year, while standing next to a pickup truck with a Trump-Pence bumper sticker.
The leading Democrat in the race, Raphael Warnock, an Atlanta-based pastor who has the support of former President Barack Obama, Fair Fight founder Stacey Abrams and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has sought to use the competition between Loeffler and Collins to boost his own election efforts.
In a recent statement, a Warnock spokesperson cast Loeffler as someone who cares more about “her all-out war with Doug Collins for Trump’s approval” than Georgians who have been hurt by the coronavirus.
Warnock is in the lead position in the race at 30 percent, according to a SurveyUSA poll released on Tuesday. Loeffler trailed him at 26 percent support, while Collins had 20 percent. No other candidate reached 10 percent. In the poll, Loeffler had 50 percent support among people who said they are voting for Trump to Collins’ 40 percent from the same group.
If one of the candidates does not win more than 50 percent of the vote in the special election it would mean a run-off contest in January.
In an acknowledgment of how contentious the fight between Loeffler and Collins has become, Trump told the audience during his Atlanta event that the two Republican lawmakers were removed from the list of politicians he was advised to acknowledge.
“Because they probably want to not mention them together,” he said as he made a prediction. “They’re going to end up liking each other, you watch.”
