Loeffler’s wealth, Trump loyalty face scrutiny in Georgia
ATLANTA » In the fight to retain her U.S. Senate seat, Republican Kelly Loeffler has boasted she is “more conservative than Attila the Hun” and has a “100% Trump voting record.” She has backed the president’s baseless allegations of voting fraud and rallied with a far-right candidate who expressed support for a conspiracy theory that sees Democrats as part of a Satanic child sex ring.
It’s not the type of campaign that supporters expected from the superrich former finance executive. Before she entered politics in 2019, Loeffler ran in Atlanta’s elite circles and didn’t appear fired up by ultraconservative zeal. Her appointment to the Senate by Gov. Brian Kemp in December last year was widely seen as a way for the Georgia GOP to appeal to moderate suburban women.
So as she heads into a runoff election on Jan. 5 against Democrat Raphael Warnock, Loeffler, 50, faces lingering questions about her political identity and her alignment with President Donald Trump. With Democrat Joe Biden in the White House, would she be the pro-Trump firebrand who slammed Black Lives Matter and claimed Democrats want to overturn the country’s way of life? Or would she heed the plea for bipartisanship made in a farewell speech by her predecessor, retired Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson?
Loeffler has no political experience other than her year in the Senate, and her campaign has not focused on detailed policy proposals that might offer clues about a future approach. For critics, that leaves her background to parse.
For years, Loeffler was a deep-pocketed donor to mainstream Republicans. She and her husband, Jeff Sprecher, hobnobbed with Mitt Romney and contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to support his presidential campaign in 2012, when he was the party’s nominee. She has also helped Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Democrat Chris Dodd.
Loeffler also has shown some inclination toward bipartisan comity. As coowner of the Atlanta Dream, a WNBA team, she posed with Democrat Stacey Abrams on the court when Abrams was running for governor of Georgia in 2018.
In one of her first public appearances after being appointed senator, Loeffler followed Isakson’s example and attended a ceremony on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached and Warnock is now pastor. Isakson regularly went to Ebenezer on the holiday.
Critics say Loeffler took a hard- right turn once she drew a challenge from staunch Trump ally and fellow Republican Doug Collins. Collins, a member of the U. S. House, attacked her for donating to Romney and appearing with Abrams. On the other side of the coin, Loeffler’s campaign accused Collins of voting with Abrams more than 300 times when they were in the state legislature together.
Loeffler soon went out of her way to hype her conservative credentials — most notably campaigning with Marjorie Taylor Greene even after the GOP nominee for Congress in northern Georgia made racists remarks and embraced the online conspiracy fiction QAnon in a video. QAnon supporters believe Trump is waging a secret campaign against enemies in the “deep state” and a child sex trafficking ring they say is linked to Democrats.
Loeffler’s moves have not won over some of her targeted voters.
“She’s not genuine, and if she’s elected, I fully believe she will be another Romney moderate Republican, that she will revert back to her true self,” said Debbie Dooley, a national tea party organizer in Georgia. Dooley said she was not going to vote for Loeffler, but would cast a ballot for Georgia’s other Republican senator in a runoff, David Perdue.
Loeffler’s campaign did not make her available for an interview and did not respond to questions sent by email. She has insisted, however, that she is a lifelong conservative, and since her appointment she has railed against socialism, abortion and gun restrictions.
In July, amid protests following the killing of George Floyd, she sent a letter to the commissioner of the WNBA objecting to the league’s plans to honor the Black Lives Matter movement, saying it “promoted violence and destruction across the country.” Players on her team — many of whom are Black — responded by wearing “Vote Warnock” T-shirts. Loeffler doubled down on her criticism, saying the protest was “more proof that the out-ofcontrol cancel culture wants to shut out anyone who disagrees with them.”