The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
GOP Senate
‘Division’
The latest evidence of this Republican approach was on display over the past week when Loeffler, the co-owner of a WNBA franchise, objected to the league’s plans to honor the Black Lives Matter movement and called for teams to put an American flag on all apparel instead.
The fallout was swift: The WNBA’s player association urged the league to force her to sell the Atlanta Dream. Democrats — including one of her opponents in November’s special election, the Rev. Raphael Warnock — assailed her comments. And the team rebuked her in a joint statement that pointedly urged WNBA fans to “vote in November.”
The criticism wasn’t just from across the aisle. Collins — who is also competing against Loeffler in the special election, a free-forall involving 21 candidates — called the senator’s move a “desperate attempt to find relevancy with the Georgia Republican voters,” and he questioned why she hadn’t opposed earlier WNBA initiatives, such as a promotion that benefited Planned Parenthood, the women’s health organization.
For Loeffler, though, there was a potential political payoff. For Republicans, the special election hinges on winning over the conservative base and avowed supporters of President Donald Trump.
The statewide tour Loeffler kicked off shortly after she unveiled her WNBA stance generated intense media attention, garnered her appearances on national cable TV shows and drew sizable crowds at recent stops.
At one of those appearances, last week in Woodstock, she tried to draw a line between the Black Lives Matter movement and the shooting death of 8-year-old Secoriea Turner near the site of a burned-down Wendy’s in Atlanta where Rayshard Brooks was killed during a confrontation with police.
“When you don’t stand up for the murder of an 8-yearold girl in an autonomous zone by a lawless mob, and they don’t defend that little 8-year-old girl, you understand there’s something else at play here,” Loeffler said. “It’s division. It’s not about bringing people together.”
Democrats called the remarks tone deaf and predicted her stance would backfire. Warnock, the leading Democratic challenger to Loeffler, said she was “giving in to the narrow impulses of tribalism and bigotry and accusing me of being on the wrong side of history.”
‘Way beyond’
Collins opened his own front. For weeks, he’s made Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard a staple of his campaign stump speech. The prosecutor, he tells audiences, has bungled the decision to charge two Atlanta police officers in Brooks’ death.
The congressman escalated his efforts with a letter to U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr urging him to open an investigation into Howard’s “egregious abuse of power” and accused the district attorney of being driven by political reasons. (Howard, who has denied the accusations, faces an August runoff against a challenger to retain his post for a seventh term.)
“I ask that you engage any and all Department of Justice resources you consider appropriate to ensure that these officers are treated fairly under the law, and are not subject to abrogation of their right to be treated fairly under the law simply because they are law enforcement officers,” Collins wrote.
Perdue, meanwhile, has forcefully criticized Bottoms for not taking active steps to crack down on violence at demonstrations that have turned chaotic.
And he’s tried to paint his Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, as a supporter of the “defund” initiative, seizing on a radio remark where he suggested that extra funding for police departments should be “on the line” if they don’t follow national standards.
Perdue’s first round of TV ads, which began running statewide last week, seek passage of a stalled Republican-backed measure to overhaul policing policies and warns that Ossoff is out to “destroy the American dream for our children and our grandchildren”
“Do we need police reform? Absolutely. But is defunding the police the answer? Absolutely not,” Perdue said in the ads. “Real police reform will make all of our neighborhoods safer and ensure justice for all. We need to put politics aside and get this done.”
Ossoff has repeatedly said he doesn’t support the “defund” effort and tied his approach to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who backs conditioning federal aid to police based on whether they meet “basic standards of decency, honorableness” and competency.
Republicans are likely to step up the message as November nears. In a teleconference Friday, Donald Trump Jr. said his father’s campaign would continue his vocal criticism of the demonstrations and his public warnings about the threats from Democrats to law enforcement agencies.
“The one thing that everyone in 2020 agrees on is what happened to George Floyd shouldn’t have happened,” Trump Jr. said, referring to Floyd’s widely seen death while in custody of Minneapolis police that triggered the protests.
“This isn’t just about racism. It’s gone way beyond that,” Trump Jr. said. “I’m not sure that looting and burning down the inner cities honors the death of George Floyd.”
Georgia Democrats responded with an eye roll. State Sen. Nikema Williams, who chairs the Democratic Party of Georgia, accused Republicans of trying to push a law-and-order message rather than seeking ways to address systemic racism.
“They’re trying to distract us from moving forward,” Williams said. “Rather than taking steps to make the changes happen, they’re trying to divide us further. It’s a big distraction, and it’s not working.”