The Democratic candidate for Senate in Georgia, during a debate Sunday night, sidestepped questions about his comments on Marxism and his willingness to pursue “court packing.”
Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler asked her challenger, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, about his past writings about Marxism and the redistribution of income and called on him to “renounce socialism and Marxism.”
Warnock began his answer by saying he believed in the “free enterprise system” and mentioned that his father was a small business owner.
“During the Great Recession, you know what I was doing? I was leading my church to build a community center, where among other things we had a financial literacy center that taught people how to repair their credit, create a 700 credit score community, how to create a business, how to buy a home, how to participate in our free enterprise system,” he said.
Warnock then pivoted and raised allegations that Loeffler at the same time was creating an offshore tax shelter.
“Kelly Loeffler, on the other hand, was teaching the big banks how to hide their investments offshore in the Cayman Islands,” he continued.
“This is how she spent her career before she went to the Senate. This is what she’s been focused on now that she’s in the Senate,” he said. “She was only there three weeks, I’m not sure she was fully unpacked, when she started dumping millions of dollars of stock, trying to protect herself.”
Loeffler, who with her husband is worth more than $500 million, had been investigated for dumping a large holding of personal stocks after she received a confidential briefing in January about the coronavirus pandemic.
But the Senate Ethics Committee found no violations.
Loeffler, who was appointed to the Senate seat in December 2019 by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to fill the seat after Sen. Johnny Isakson resigned, called Warnock’s claims lies.
“Well, predictably, you’ve just heard more lies from radical liberal Raphael Warnock, who wants to distract from his own words, calling police officers gangsters, thugs, bullies, and a threat to our children, saying that you can’t serve God in the military, for his attacks on Israel,” she said.
Warnock also dodged a question from one of the moderators about whether he would support expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court.
“I’m really not focused on it and I think that too often the politics in Washington has been about the politicians,” he said.
He then attacked Loeffler, saying she would vote to get rid of the Affordable Care Act in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
“If Kelly Loeffler has her away, 1.8 million Georgians with pre-existing conditions, that means people with hypertension, people who have diabetes, folks who’ve had a stroke, cancer, people who are recovering from COVID would not be able to get health care,” he said.
In response, Loeffler said her opponent was trying to distract from the matter that he would pack the high court “with radical justices that would legislate from the bench to fundamentally override the Constitution and our laws in this country.”
Loeffler and Warnock will face off in a runoff election on Jan. 5 to determine who wins the Senate seat.
The state’s other Senate seat is also up for grabs in the runoff, in a race pitting incumbent Republican David Perdue versus Democrat Jon Ossoff.
The Georgia races have drawn the nation’s attention as they will determine which party controls the Senate next year.
Republicans now hold a 50-48 margin, but if Ossoff and Warnock win, the chamber would be split 50-50, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be in a position to break any ties.