“No Political Moderate” Loeffler Fails to Connect with Georgia Voters

Unable to win over moderate voters as promised, Loeffler has “pivoted to the party’s hard-right flank,” appearing with “a far-right militia group” and “joining forces with a right-wing conspiracy theorist”

ATLANTA — Unelected “political mega-donor” Senator Kelly Loeffler’s struggling campaign has failed to connect with Georgia voters across the state — so now the unelected senator has “pivoted to the party’s hard-right flank” as part of her desperate gamble to stay above water.

New reporting breaks down how Loeffler has resorted to “joining forces with a right-wing conspiracy theorist” and appearing with “a far-right militia group” as her campaign continues struggling to connect with the very voters she was appointed to win over. In fact, Loeffler’s approval is now underwater with Georgia voters by nearly 30 points, with less than a quarter of independent voters approving of the unelected senator as she also fails to consolidate the Republican base.

Now, with Loeffler trailing or tied with Democrats in head-to-head match-ups and forced to dump millions of her own money on Georgia’s airwaves in a desperate bid to stay above water, her campaign has continued lurching even farther to the right as her “her past positions” and “questions of conflicts of interest” like her stock trading scandal have “come back to haunt her.”

“Down in the polls and disliked by Georgia voters, Senator Kelly Loeffler has chosen to go as hard right as possible in her scorched earth campaign — even as her numbers with critical independent voters continue to drop,” said Alex Floyd, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia. “Loeffler may be able to buy a Senate appointment, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that she can’t buy Georgia voters’ support, no matter how hard she panders.”

Read more about Loeffler’s failed pandering to the “hard-right flank”: 

AJC: No political moderate, Loeffler channels Trump in Senate bid

• When U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler took to the makeshift stage at an upscale restaurant in Peachtree Corners, she might as well have channeled President Donald Trump.

• This sort of red-meat pro-Trump speech in the heart of one of Georgia’s most competitive territories wasn’t exactly how the state’s political class envisioned the race a few months ago.

• Instead, faced with a challenge from Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, Loeffler pivoted to the party’s hard-right flank, framing herself as Trump’s most ardent supporter and, more recently, a champion of his appointment for a vacant U.S. Supreme Court seat who declares herself “more conservative than Attila the Hun.”

• Quickly, some of her past positions threatened to come back to haunt her, as did questions of conflicts of interest.

• Perhaps the most serious involved a large number of stocks that she or her husband owned that were sold off shortly after she attended a senators-only coronavirus briefing Jan. 24.

NYT: How Kelly Loeffler Went From Atlanta Elite to Trump Loyalist

• It was impossible to know what Ms. Loeffler was thinking as she rolled up to a brewpub in Dalton, Ga., in late August for a campaign event and was greeted by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a fellow Republican who had just won a House primary after promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory and making offensive remarks about Black people, Jews and Muslims.

• A reporter asked Ms. Loeffler whether she supported Ms. Greene, and whether she denounced QAnon.

• “Marjorie is fighting to defeat socialism; that’s what I’m focused on,” Ms. Loeffler said, adding, “I just thank her for coming out.”

• It is a long way from hosting soirees at Descante to joining forces with a right-wing conspiracy theorist at a beer hall.

• Her appointment was widely interpreted as an effort to make the Georgia Republican Party more palatable to middle-class moderates, especially educated women in the Atlanta suburbs who have been abandoning the party in the Trump era.

• That was then. On Sept. 19, Ms. Loeffler posted on Twitter that she had just been in Ringgold, Ga., with Ms. Greene at a rally with “Patriotic Georgians.” 

• One photo she posted showed the two women in the presence of camouflage-wearing members of the Georgia III% Martyrs, a far-right militia group, one of whom was carrying a military-style rifle.

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