“She is demeaning herself to these cruel personal attacks to divert attention from the fact that she is campaigning with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan,” said Ossoff. “We deserve more than that here in Georgia.”
Loeffler, who said he did not know who the former Klansman was when he took a photo with him and that he was later removed from the event, replied that Ossoff – who faces his Republican colleague Senator David Perdue – lacks credibility.
“Every Georgian knows that Jon Ossoff is a pathological liar. And he is a trust fund socialist who has never had a job, except through the Chinese Communist Party, ”said Loeffler, echoing Perdue’s belittled statement about Ossoff’s income.
Loeffler then turned his attention to his rival in the special election, Warnock, who was arrested in 2002 for allegedly obstructing a police investigation into allegations of child abuse in a Maryland camp that he ran. The charges were dropped, attributed to a “communication failure” and, reported The Baltimore Sun at the time, Warnock was not suspected of abuse and was later found useful to investigators. A former camper, now 30, told The Washington Free Beacon in a story published this week that he had urine thrown at him and was forced to sleep outdoors at one point.
Warnock is also being criticized for a domestic dispute involving his now ex-wife, who in March accused him of running over his foot with his car. Police at the time determined that her foot showed no signs of injury, and her lawyer told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she wanted privacy. On Wednesday, the Republican National Senatorial Committee released a TV ad that called Warnock a fake and featured images from the police body of the incident in which his ex-wife called Warnock “a great actor”.
Loeffler also referred to this incident when addressing Ossoff’s comments on it.
“If he’s going to bring up lies about who I’m campaigning with, I’m going to talk about the truth about who he’s campaigning with,” she said. “He is campaigning with Raphael Warnock, who has a past with child abuse and domestic violence, who celebrated Jeremiah Wright, Karl Marx, Fidel Castro, James Cone, Louis Farrakhan. He attacked our police, our military. He attacked Israel, small businesses and all Georgians. “
There is no evidence that Warnock “celebrated” Marx, Castro or Farrakhan, although Warnock wrote that “Marxist criticism has a lot to teach the black church”, Fidel spoke at a New York City church where Warnock was a young pastor in 1995 , and Warnock called the Farrakhan Nation of Islam “important to the development of black theology”.
Warnock and Ossoff’s campaigns denied that they were socialists, and Warnock had already called Loeffler’s attacks on him misleading. Warnock did not clearly denounce socialism and Marxism when Loeffler asked him to do so in his only debate last month, although he said he believes “in our free enterprise system”.