GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler says voters should reject her leading opponent for the Georgia Senate seat she holds for guilt by association — with his former legal clients.
Polls generally show Loeffler in second place behind Republican Rep. Doug Collins in the Nov. 3 all-party Georgia Senate primary to fill out the remaining years of former Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term. Isakson stepped down at the end of 2019 due to health reasons, and Georgia’s Republican governor appointed Loeffler, a wealthy Atlanta-based businesswoman, to the seat.
Loeffler and Collins are members of a multiparty field of 21 candidates. Should the person in first place fail to secure 50% of the vote on Nov. 3, it’ll come down to a run-off contest between the first pair on Jan. 5.
With Collins ahead in the polls, Loeffler is dissecting Collins’s legal career in a most unflattering way.
Loeffler this month pushed a television ad portraying Collins as a lawyer who marketed himself to objectionable potential clients, including those charged with sex and other serious crimes. The narrator accuses the former top House Judiciary Republican, who defended President Trump during impeachment, of assisting “violent criminals and even gang members get out of jail — some struck again.”
Loeffler also paraded endorsements from Georgia sheriffs critical of Collins for making a “career out of putting the interests of criminals before the safety of Georgia’s families.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s political action committee, the Senate Leadership Fund, which backs Loeffler, has amplified the message.
Collins, elected to the House in 2012 after six years as a state representative, served in Iraq as an Air Force lieutenant colonel chaplain. His Senate campaign trashed the Loeffler spot about his legal work, saying the featured defendants were judge-assigned because they couldn’t afford counsel. And three of the four were represented by his then-law partner at Collins and Csider.
Consultants and former elected officials doubt the effectiveness of Loeffler’s strategy in targeting Collins’s pre-congressional legal clients. After all, everybody’s entitled to a defense under the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment.
And anyway, bringing up legal matters gives Collins an opening to dredge up a Department of Justice probe, since closed, into potential violations of insider trading laws by Loeffler.
Chris DeRose, a Republican, described Loeffler’s attacks as “not only desperate and unfair, but hypocritical.”
“Loeffler was represented by attorneys when she was the subject of an investigation, and they helped her resolve the matter with no charges filed. Why shouldn’t her constituents, particularly the poor, have the same constitutional right of counsel?” the former prosecutor and defense attorney told the Washington Examiner.
Two-term Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler, a Democrat, agreed Loeffler’s argument wasn’t compelling.
“Whenever a prosecutor or defense lawyer wades into the political pool, the opponent will seek to mischaracterize the legal work of the candidate. The concept is to confuse the candidate with the defendant’s crimes. It is silly and a distraction from the actual issues at hand,” the Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP partner said.
Three months out from the Nov. 3 primary, the tactics reflect the increasingly acrimonious nature of the race between fellow Republicans Loeffler and Collins.
Collins has swiped at Loeffler, the wife of New York Stock Exchange owner and chairman Jeffrey Sprecher, for being a “pretend farmer.” And he’s latched onto collaborations between her Atlanta Dream WNBA team, Planned Parenthood, and Everytown for Gun Safety. But she’s held her own, mocking “D.C. Doug” for only playing “a conservative on TV.” She’s touted her work in Congress, for example, against Big Tech. She’s also chided WNBA players taking part in Black Lives Matter protests on their respective courts.
Collins has released his own ad, in which the narrator rips Loeffler over allegations she dumped $20 million in stock after a closed-door Senate COVID-19 briefing in January. Loeffler maintained she didn’t know about the sales because she doesn’t manage her portfolio. Even though the Justice Department closed its inquiry into her in May, Collins accuses her of wrongdoing.
“Kelly’s using high-priced lawyers to help her get away with it,” says a voice-over layered on images such as a Monopoly “get out of jail free” card. “You can’t trust Kelly Loeffler.”
Though most of the Georgia polls conducted so far this cycle have a partisan bent, Spry Strategies found Collins leading the pack last week with 29% support. He was followed by Democrat Matt Lieberman (the son of former Connecticut Democratic and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman) with 23% and Loeffler with 19%. A Collins-commissioned Battleground Connect survey a week earlier reported the lawmaker with 26% of the vote, Loeffler with 17%, Lieberman with 15%, and Democrat Raphael Warnock (a pastor) with 10%.
A July Gravis Marketing study named Collins and Loeffler the winner when matched with either Lieberman or Warnock in a hypothetical run-off. That’s an improvement for Loeffler. Public Policy Polling research earlier that month had Warnock in front of her by 3 percentage points, 43% to 40%.
