Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Rev. Raphael Warnock will face off in their first, and possibly only, one-on-one debate Sunday night at the Atlanta Press Club. Warnock finished with 32% of the vote in the November election, while Loeffler won about 26%, moving them both to the Jan. 5th runoff.
With a 21-person field leading up to the November contest, Loeffler largely focused her fire on fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, while Warnock was free to run positive bio ads and introduce himself to Georgians during his first run for political office.
That dynamic changed immediately once the Loeffler-Warnock match was set. Loeffler has ripped Warnock for his past statements at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he is senior pastor, while Warnock has painted Loeffler as a self-dealing billionaire, as a former CEO whose husband’s company owns the New York Stock Exchange, among other global assets.
Expect those themes and more in the Sunday debate, which starts at 7 p.m. EST. As one of two races that will decide control of the U.S. Senate, global interest in the race sky-high.
So look for it to air everywhere from Georgia Public Broadcasting to CNN, Fox News, and C-SPAN.
Here’s what else to watch for:
1. The Georgia Elections. Loeffler was with President Donald Trump in Valdosta Saturday night as he insisted he won Georgia’s election and spun wild stories about ballots in Atlanta “coming out of ceilings and coming out of leather bags.”
She was also was among the first to demand the resignation of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for unspecified “failures” leading up to Election Day, as President Donald Trump railed against the election results in Georgia, which Joe Biden won by about 12,000 votes.
Will Loeffler acknowledge Biden as the president-elect? Does she have confidence in the process for her own election in January? She hasn’t said so directly, and is sure to be pressed for those answers Sunday night.
2. Attacks. Loeffler and Warnock have not come face-to-face during the runoff portion of the election, but they have attacked each other with relentless broadsides in ads and through surrogates.
Loeffler has worked to paint Warnock as an unacceptable radical socialist. She’s tagged him as anti-military, anti-police, and “anti-Israel” for passages pulled from decades of past sermons.
Warnock has gone after Loeffler, too. He’s said Loeffler “sits down for interviews with known white supremacists and accepts the endorsement of a candidate who traffics in the QAnon conspiracy theory,” namely Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene. He’s also accused Loeffler of “dumping stock” and “profiting off the (COVID) pandemic.”
All of these themes are sure to surface as both candidates make their case to Georgia voters.
3. COVID-19. Friday marked a grim record in Georgia, with the state’s highest-ever single daily report of positive COVID-19 cases.
With public health officials warning the worst is yet to come, look for Warnock to talk about expanding federal unemployment insurance as the pandemic drags on and to call for Congress to push relief out to small businesses and local governments.
Loeffler’s message will likely track her latest campaign ad, which highlights her Senate work for Georgians during COVID-19, as well as a $1 million donation of her own money to Albany’s Phoebe Putney Health System as the Southwest Georgia hospital group struggled during the worst of the Coronavirus in the Spring.
4. Not David Perdue. Two hours before Loeffler and Warnock face off, Democrat Jon Ossoff will have the stage to himself. He’ll be joined only by an empty podium at the Atlanta Press Club, since Sen. David Perdue declined the Press Club’s invitation to the debate.
Perdue’s decision not to show up means that there will likely be no runoff debate between the two at all. Perdue’s staff has said the senator wants to use his time focusing on meeting with Georgia voters instead.
Ossoff and Perdue debated two times in the general election, when Libertarian Shane Hazel was also included.
Perdue is not just missing the debate, he’s also missing what would have been pointed questions about a barrage of recent reports about his stock trades during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as his call, like Loeffler’s, for Raffensperger to step down.
Perdue has also not publicly acknowledged Biden as the president-elect. Even so, the senator was nearly drown out in Valdosta Saturday night with chants from the crowd yelling at him, “Fight for Trump!”
Ossoff tweeted Saturday, “I’ll be debating tomorrow. David Perdue will be pleading the fifth.”
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