One race pits Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler against Democrat Raphael Warnock. The other Republican president, David Perdue, is against Democrat Jon Ossoff.
There are currently so many advertisements in Georgia – according to Kantar Media / CMAG data, almost $ 10 million in advertising spending was discussed between November 10 and the election day on January 5 – that it is impossible for us to judge everyone. of them.
But let’s look at some of the ads that appear most in the battle between Loeffler and Warnock.
Warnock’s comments on Ferguson
An advertisement from Loeffler’s campaign claims that “Raphael Warnock mentioned policemen and gangsters.” An advertisement for a Republican Super PAC, American Crossroads, makes a similar claim, saying that Warnock police officers ‘compared’ to thugs and gangsters.
Facts first: Both ads omit important context: Warnock criticized abusive police practices in Ferguson, Missouri, and did not talk about police officers in general, in the 2015 comments that the ads appeared to be.
Warnock is the senior pastor in Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. In a sermon in March 2015 in which he discussed power, poverty and race, he urged congregation members to read a report from the Justice Department on policing in Ferguson, which was released earlier this week. The report said Ferguson police and the municipal court system regularly violated the constitutional rights of black residents, in part through a penal system of fines for minor offenses.
Warnock said the federal report “talks about the use of police force and police violence to crush the poor.” He continued minutes later, “In Ferguson: the police force appears in a kind of gangster and thug mentality.”
Warnock continued, “You know, you can wear all kinds of colors and be a thug. You can sometimes wear the colors of the state and behave like a thug. People get these transgressions and then they don’t show up in court. , because they have to go to work, try to earn a dollar out of 15 cents, and that’s just a minor grievous offense, and then they tackle interest and fees on top of that, with the threat of imprisonment. ‘
Earlier in the sermon, Warnock made similar remarks about police abuse when he spoke about how civil rights icon CT Vivian was assaulted by local sheriff Jim Clark in 1965 in Selma, Alabama. Warnock calls Clark “a ruffian dressed in the uniform of the state, the embodiment of mob violence authorized by the state power.”
Warn and discourage the police
The same U.S. Crossroads ad seeks to link Warnock to the “defund the police” movement.
The narrator of the ad says: ‘The national radical police officers are flocking to Georgia to support Warnock. He is supported by extremists against the police because he is one of them. ‘
The ad does not explicitly say that Warnock wants to disregard the police, but it does at least indicate that he does.
Facts first: It is true that Warnock is supported by progressive groups who are campaigning for the detonation of the police, but Warnock himself has consistently opposed the idea; he rather called for reform of policing. It is also misleading to point out that the groups that support Warnock are re-emerging in the state: the groups mentioned in the ad were active in Georgia politics even before he his candidacy announced in January.
Warnock has been clear for months that he has no support for defusing the police. As FactCheck.org noted in November, for example, he said in a radio interview in June: “Well, I do not believe we should defend the police. I believe we should finance law enforcement responsibly. We “We must re-introduce the police and re-introduce the relationship between law enforcement and communities. We must definitely demilitarize the police so that we can rebuild trust between the police and the community.”
In lower case, the U.S. Crossroads ad quoted three thriving organizations – Democracy for America, MoveOn and the Working Families Party – as proof of its claim that supporters of police dismantling ‘flock to Georgia to support Warnock’. All three entities have indeed
expressed support for All three indeed support Warnock and Ossoff, while supporting the police along with other changes, and all three have out-of-state volunteers who support the Democrats in various ways.
But the language in the ad, about national supporters of the police ‘dumping’ support ‘on Warnock to Georgia, suggests that these are progressive groups of outsiders who suddenly showed up in the state out of ideological affiliation with Warnock over the issue of policing . It is not true.
“Democracy for America has not ‘flowed’ to Georgia to support Rev. Raphael Warnock, we have been in the state for years,” Charles Chamberlain, the group’s chairman, said in an email. 30 142 members in Georgia and, except that we are one of Revs. Warnock’s former supporters have also given us support to numerous elected leaders in the state over our 16-year history, including the endorsement of Stacey Abrams on Day One of her 2018 government campaign. . ”
Chamberlain added: “Rev. Raphael Warnock was extremely clear that he wanted to reform and propose policing again, not to take it out. Period. End of story.”
Britney Whaley, senior political strategist for the Working Families Party, said in an email that local activists began building the Georgia Working Families Party in 2017 to support Stacey Abrams’ successful bid for the Democratic gubernatorial primary support’.
Warnock and Fidel Castro
An advertisement for the Loeffler campaign claims that Warnock “offered a rally to the communist dictator Fidel Castro”.
Facts first: This is misleading at best; there is no evidence that Castnos personally presented. In 1995, Castro spoke and was applauded at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, where Warnock, then in his mid-20s, was a youth minister. There is no evidence that Warnock played a role in the decision to invite Castro to speak; PolitiFact noticed that Warnock was not at the scene when Castro was introduced.
Warnock said during a debate with Loeffler in December about Castro: “I never met him, I never invited him. He has nothing to do with me.”
Loeffler and shares
An advertisement for a Democratic Super PAC, Georgia Honor, attacks Loeffler over a series of shares in January and February.
The ad claims that Loeffler was aware in advance of the dangers of the coronavirus because she received an information session from the private government on January 24, but ‘protects her stock portfolio’ rather than protecting the public – ‘up to $ 3 million shares’ sold. but to tell Americans that “everything was fine.”
A graph in the style of a newspaper headline says, “Investigate for ‘insider trading.'”
Facts first: While Loeffler was investigated, the ad omits important context by not mentioning the outcome of the investigations. The Ethics Committee of the Department of Justice and the Senate concluded their investigations without filing any complaints or alleging misconduct in any other way.
In May, CNN reported that the Department of Justice ended its investigation into Loeffler’s dealings and the negotiation of two other senators who had significant deals before the pandemic-related crash. The Senate Ethics Committee said in a letter to Loeffler in June that he found no evidence that her actions violated federal law, Senate rules or its standards.
It is not clear that Loeffler played a role in the decision to sell the shares.
His say that all the sales were made by third-party investment advisers managing her portfolio without her involvement, and that she did not even know about the transactions after they were completed.
“I have no involvement in these decisions. I have no discussions with them about this,” she said.
said on CNBC in March.
According to Loeffler’s federal disclosures, she and her husband Jeffrey Sprecher sold between $ 1.28 million and $ 3.1 million in shares between Jan. 24, the day both senators were informed of the virus by health officials, and at 14 February. During that time, she also bought shares for between $ 450,000 and $ 1 million (including shares in Citrix, a teleconferencing software company).
Loeffler’s Comments
The same Georgia Honor ad seeks to suggest a break between Loeffler’s share sales in January and February and her public comments on the pandemic.
After the narrator of the ad said ‘she told us everything was fine’, the ad was cut into a clip from Loeffler saying: ‘The good news is that the consumer is strong, the economy is strong.’
Facts first:
This composition is misleading. Loeffler did not express the quote about the economy immediately after the January 24 briefing or at the same time with the January and February sales criticizing the ad. The clip is rather from a video she mailed on Twitter on March 10 – more than three weeks into the decline in pandemic-related stocks. Loeffler said in the tweet that she was commenting after a meeting with President, Vice President and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Loeffler’s claim about the economy was certainly debatable. But the ad could give the impression that Loeffler is making the economy public while dumping his shares privately before the stock market crashes. That’s not really what happened.
Warnock’s campaign itself mentions another remark by Loeffler from 28 February
tweet, as proof that she reduced the pandemic while dumping shares. She tweeted: “Democrats have dangerously and deliberately deceived the American people on #Coronavirus readiness. Here’s the truth: @realDonaldTrump & his government are doing an excellent job of keeping Americans healthy and safe.”
You can argue about the importance of this quote. Regardless, however, that was not the quote the Super PAC used in the ad.
CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Hyeyoon Alyssa Choi and Tara Subramaniam contributed to this article.
