Racist ex-senator launches group to make voting harder in Georgia

Weeks after losing her special election, former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) is back — hoping to suppress the vote, and maybe even get her seat back.

Loeffler, who says she’s considering another run in 2022, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday that she is launching a political group called Greater Georgia to help elect Republicans in future elections.

Loeffler, who was appointed to a vacant Senate seat in December 2019, lost a runoff in January to Democrat Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Warnock, the first Black person to represent Georgia in the Senate, will be up for reelection next November.

After saying a 2022 rematch against Warnock is “certainly on the table,” Loeffler said she is starting this new organization because she does not “know if any Republican can win if we don’t shore up what we’re doing around voter registration, engagement and election integrity.”

She plans to do this, she claimed, by trying to make the Georgia GOP “a bigger tent” and protecting “election integrity” by making it harder to vote.

The group’s website uses coded language to explain its voter suppression intent, talking about how voters must have “confidence in the process,” through “election transparency & uniformity.”

Loeffler endorsed Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, citing “real concerns” about how the election “was conducted” — despite a total lack of evidence of any widespread issues — though a day after losing her seat, she said she could not “in good conscience” help Donald Trump steal the election.

Though President Joe Biden carried Georgia in November, and Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) swept two runoffs last month, Republicans are already pushing to change state laws to prevent Democrats from ever winning again.

Loeffler’s claim that she will work to promote “big tent” GOP proposals hardly matches her record during her brief Senate tenure.

She boasted of voting with Trump 100% of the time and being “more conservative than Attila the Hun,” a brutal killer not known for his inclusive policies.

She pandered to white supremacists and made overtly racist attacks against Warnock. She ran ads featuring Trump using racist terminology to describe the coronavirus, took a selfie with a well-known former Ku Klux Klan leader, and railed against the Black Lives Matter movement.

She also attacked Warnock’s religious beliefs, even bashing him for quoting the Bible. “[Warnock’s] repeated use of the Bible & his pulpit to justify abortion-on-demand is sickening & wrong,” she tweeted in December.

Called out for the attacks, Loeffler accused Warnock of “playing the victim” while claiming not to have “a racist bone” in her body.

Even if Loeffler runs, she might not have a clear shot at her party’s nomination.

Republican ex-Sen. David Perdue, who lost the other Senate seat to Ossoff after allegations of insider trading, and ex-Rep. Doug Collins, who failed to make the runoff against Warnock and Loeffler, are both considering bids.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.