Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s new voter mobilization group launched digital ads on Monday to thank Republican supporters of a sweeping rewrite of elections legislation that’s facing mounting political and legal challenges.
The Greater Georgia ad, called “Thanks,” will target voters in the districts of about a dozen state legislators who championed the measure signed by Gov. Brian Kemp last week in a closed-door ceremony in his office. It will also run more broadly across the state.
“The goal here is to support strengthening election integrity and thank state leaders for passing it,” said Loeffler, a former financial executive. “They’ve stood up to a lot of attacks about what’s in the bill and what’s not in it. And election fairness and trust in our elections is at the heart of our democracy.”
The new law imposes ID requirements for mail-in votes, curbs the availability of drop boxes, allows state takeovers of local elections, and restricts outside groups from distributing food and drinks to waiting voters. It also limits in-person early voting to one week before most runoff elections.
Two separate lawsuits now target the vast rewrite of Georgia’s election rules, changes motivated by false claims about last year’s election results. State and federal elections officials have said repeatedly there’s no evidence of widespread fraud in those contests.
Republican supporters say the measure is needed to restore confidence in a battered election system, though they rarely acknowledge former President Donald Trump’s role in promoting the falsehoods that undermined faith in the system.
Loeffler narrowly lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock after a nine-week runoff campaign rocked by Trump’s repeated lies about a “rigged” election, and pointed to the hundreds of thousands of reliably Republican voters who cast ballots in November and then skipped the January runoffs.
“We know that when Georgians don’t have confidence in the integrity of our elections, they don’t turn out to vote. We saw that in January,” she said. “It’s not a partisan issue. It’s about making sure every Georgian knows their vote counts.”
She launched Greater Georgia in February with hopes the new organization would become the GOP answer to the powerful Fair Fight voting rights group that Stacey Abrams started days after her 2018 defeat in the race for governor. Loeffler, who is weighing a 2022 rematch against Warnock, cited the digital ads on Monday as an early example of the role it can play in Georgia politics.
“We can’t let Democrats have a monopoly on voter registration and advocacy and mobilization,” said Loeffler.
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