Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s campaign said the Georgia senator “had no idea” she took a picture with a former Ku Klux Klan leader and neo-Nazi National Alliance figure.
During a campaign event this weekend, Loeffler took a photograph with Chester Doles, who spent decades in the KKK and the National Alliance, according to the Associated Press. Loeffler is in the middle of campaigning against the Rev. Raphael Warnock for one of Georgia’s runoff Senate races. The two races in Georgia will determine which party controls the Senate during the first years of President-elect Joe Biden’s administration.
The photo quickly gained attention on social media, and Loeffler was criticized for taking the picture with him.
“This is who @KLoeffler is proudly appealing to,” a progressive Jewish group tweeted.
ALERT: Kelly Loeffler just posed for a photo with Chester Doles, a former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA.
In 1993, Doles nearly beat a Black man to death.
In 2017, he marched in Charlottesville.
This is who @KLoeffler is proudly appealing to. pic.twitter.com/4YZcvL05rf
— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) December 13, 2020
In 1993, Doles was arrested after a black man was beaten in Maryland. He was later arrested in Georgia on weapons violation charges. Doles is also associated with the Hammerskins, a racist skinhead gang, and marched with them during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Doles told the Associated Press he has since “publicly renounced racism on several occasions” and that he has attended a “redemption service,” saying that he stood “in front of an all-black congregation and told my story and renounced all racism and asked for God’s forgiveness.”
Loeffler’s campaign said the senator did not know who Doles was when she posed for a picture with him.
“Kelly had no idea who that was, and if she had, she would have kicked him out immediately because we condemn in the most vociferous terms everything that he stands for,” campaign spokesman Stephen Lawson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Warnock said he was not convinced that his opponent failed to recognize the former KKK leader.
“While Kelly Loeffler runs a campaign based on dividing and misleading Georgians, she is once again trying to distance herself from someone who is a known white supremacist and former KKK leader who nearly beat a black man to death,” campaign spokesman Michael Brewer told the Washington Post. “There’s no acceptable explanation for it happening once, let alone a second time.”
Loeffler is not the first candidate from Georgia to face criticism for a photograph with Doles. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who won her race to represent Georgia in the House of Representatives in November, posed in a photo with Doles during her campaign in May. Unlike Loeffler, Greene’s campaign did not condemn Doles, instead calling questions about the photo “silly and the same type of sleazy attacks the Fake News Media levels against President Trump.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Loeffler’s campaign for further comment.
