US: Kelly Loeffler launches $1M ad buy calling Dem opponent 'radical'

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., released two ads in a $1 million buy this week portraying her Democratic opponent Raphael Warnock as a “radical” ahead of one of the state’s two January runoffs. Warnock and Loeffler received 32% and 25% of the vote, respectively, in the Nov. 3 election in a race that also included Republican Rep. Doug Collins and several other candidates. To avoid a runoff, Senate candidates in the state must win an outright majority.

The ad goes on to allege that Warnock, who is pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, called police thugs, hosted a rally for former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and praised Marxism in writings.

But the Loeffler campaign hopes to undercut the Democratic candidate's image before the runoff election on January 5, one of two that are expected to determine which party controls the Senate.

Loeffler said on Wednesday that if she and Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue win, they will save the country.

Her campaign aired an ad this week questioning whether this America showing a classroom of young students saying the pledge of allegiance will still be America if the radical left controls the Senate. The ad then shows images of mobs, flashes signs saying defund the police and plasters a quote from a 2015 sermon Warnock gave after a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, killed Michael Brown, in which he said some officers have a gangster and thug mentality.

Warnock has also said that Loeffler wants to divide Georgia, and distract from her opposition to the Affordable Care Act and the health care insurance it provides millions of people in the middle of a pandemic.