What you need to know about the special election for US Senate in Georgia
Reuters
- Sen. Kelly Loeffler is running for a full term to the US Senate in a November 3 jungle special election, where candidates of all parties run on the same ballot.
- Her main opponents are Democrat Raphael Warnock and fellow Republican, Rep. Doug Collins.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler is running for a full term to the US Senate in a November 3 jungle special election.
The candidates
Loeffler, a wealthy businesswoman and political newcomer, was appointed to the seat by Gov. Brian Kemp to replace former Sen. Johnny Isakson, who resigned from office in December 2019 before the end of his term over his declining health.
Loeffler is competing in a November 3 jungle special election to elect a Senator to serve out the rest of Isakson's term until 2022.
In the election, candidates from all parties are competing on the same ballot. If no candidate earns over 50% of the vote, the special election will go to a January 5, 2021 runoff between the top two highest-performing candidates.
Kemp reportedly selected Loeffler for the position based on the level of personal wealth she could contribute to her own campaign (she and her husband, Intercontinental Exchange and New York Stock Exchange chairman Jeff Sprecher, are together worth an estimated $500 million), and her potential to win over suburban female voters.
On the Republican side, her main opponent is Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee who served as a staunch and impassioned defender of President Donald Trump during his impeachment hearings.
Collins, who represents a seat in rural Georgia, is seizing on Loeffler's various controversies to attack her as an out-of-touch multi-millionaire, and recently came after her for having an Andy Warhol print of Chinese communist Mao Zedong in her home.
Collins and Loeffler have also been battling to earn endorsements from various Trumpworld figures. Loeffler was recently endorsed by former acting Director of National Intelligence and US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grennell, while Collins picked up the endorsement of Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor who was later charged in the Mueller probe.
The Democratic field includes Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor Raphael Warnock, the frontrunner of the field who was backed early on by the DSCC, the Senate Democrats' campaign arm, educator and entrepreneur Matt Lieberman, and former State Senator Ed Tarver.
Loeffler's time in the Senate has been somewhat marked by controversy. Just a few months into her term, a number of news reports raised scrutiny around her stock trades, and whether they were influenced by information she gleaned in closed-door COVID-19 briefings.
Loeffler and her team consistently denied that there was any improper motive behind her trades, maintaining that her and Sprecher's trades were solely handled by third-party advisors, and she was never formally found to have engaged in any wrongdoing. In April, she announced that she and Sprecher would liquidate individual stock holdings and only invest in mutual and exchange-traded funds.
And in the aftermath of the protests against racism and police brutality in July, Loeffler became engaged in a public dispute with the WNBA team she co-owns, the Atlanta Dream, over their public support of the Black Lives Matter movement, doubling down on attacking the movement as anti-police and "Marxist" and accusing the team of trying to "cancel" her.
While Loeffler was considered
The stakes
In addition to winning back the White House, regaining control of the US Senate for the first time since 2015 is a top priority for Democrats and would be a major accomplishment towards either delivering on a future president Joe Biden's policy goals or thwarting President Donald Trump's second-term agenda.
Currently, the US Senate is made up of 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two independents that caucus with Democrats, winning that Democrats need to win back a net total of four seats to have a 51-seat majority (if Biden wins, his vice president would also serve as president of the Senate and would be a tie-breaker vote).
And now, the US Senate is gearing up for a high-stakes confirmation battle to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died at age 87 from pancreatic cancer on September 18. Within hours of her death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky pledged that Trump's nominee for the high court would receive a vote on the floor of the Senate, and Trump said the day after he would name a replacement "without delay."
Ginsburg's death threw a stick of dynamite into an already supercharged election shaped by a deadly pandemic that has so far claimed over 200,000 American lives, and a national reckoning around race after several high-profile deaths of Black Americans in encounters with police.
Trump and McConnell's posturing on the issue has excited conservatives enthusiastic about the possibility of Trump getting to appoint a third justice in his first term, but infuriated liberals who accused McConnell of blatant hypocrisy after he refused to hold confirmation proceedings for Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016.
McConnell's quest to confirm a new justice before the end of Trump's first term puts the chamber on a collision course with the reelection hopes of many vulnerable Republican Senators, including Loeffler, and played a significant role in accelerating Warnock's trajectory, giving a much better shot of breaking through.
Warnock was one of many Democrats to benefit from a windfall in campaign donations after Justice Ginsburg's death, and picked up a coveted endorsement from former President Barack Obama, who has also cut an ad for Warnock.
—Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) October 20, 2020
Georgia is also rapidly trending from red to purple, thanks to its fast-growing Atlanta metro area, presenting a prime opportunity for Democrats.
Not only are both presidential candidates investing in the state, but Democrats are making a play to unseat Sen. David Perdue in Georgia's other US Senate election, where Jon Ossoff is the Democratic nominee, and looking to flip the open seat in Georgia's 7th Congressional District in the Atlanta suburbs.
But while Warnock's stock in the race is rising, Democrats still risk the possibility of being locked out altogether from the field if Loeffler and Collins secure the top two spots.
The money race
Loeffler leads the rest of the field by a significant margin in fundraising thanks to her significant personal wealth, with Warnock in second place, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In total, Loeffler has brought in $24.7 million so far this cycle, with the bulk of her funding, $20 million, coming from personal loans she made to her own campaign, Federal Election Commission records show. She's spent $19 million, and has $5.5 million in cash on hand.
Warnock has raised $17.1 million, spent $10 million, and has $6.4 million in cash on hand, while Collins has raised $6 million, spent $3.6 million, and has $2.3 million in cash on hand.
In 2020's third fundraising quarter, Warnock was the top fundraiser, bringing in $12.9 million compared to $7.2 million for Loeffler ($5 million of which was self-funded) and a $2.4 haul for Collins, Roll Call reported.
What the polling says
Throughout the first part of 2020, most polls of the special election showed Loeffler leading the field, but the combination of Justice Ginsburg's death propelling a surge of momentum for Democratic Senate candidates nationwide and Obama's endorsement rapidly boosted Warnock's performance in the polls.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll of the race conducted October 13-19 found Warnock leading the jungle primary with 32% of the vote compared to 23% for Loeffler, 17% for Collins, and 7% for Lieberman among likely voters.
In hypothetical head-to-head matchup contests against both Loeffler and Collins, Warnock led by both by four points, 45% to 41%, among likely voters in the poll.
Another recent poll from Emerson College found Warnock and Collins leading the field with 27% support each among likely voters compared to 20% for Loeffler and 12% for Lieberman. In hypothetical head-to-head matchups, Warnock led Collins by one point, 48% to 47%, and led Loeffler by five points, 47% to 42%,
What some of the experts say
The Cook Political Report rates the special election as a "toss-up" while Inside Elections and Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics rate it as "leans Republican."
According to FiveThirtyEight's US Senate forecasting model, the race is a tossup, with the model giving Warnock a 53% chance of winning compared to 47% for one of the Republican candidates.