It’s go-time, with early voting in Georgia’s Senate runoff coming to an end in many counties Thursday, so count on Democrats to find inventive ways to get out the vote in often overlooked communities. Count on the state’s GOP to do the exact opposite. Black Voters Matter, a voter empowerment organization working to ensure exactly what its name suggests, is hosting a Collard Green Caucus Thursday to feed more than 9,000 families on top of the 10,000 plus families the organization has already fed in food donation events this holiday season. “This will bring the total to almost 20,000,” LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, tweeted. “We campaign, educate & take care of our folks needs.” Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who’s running in the runoff against Rev. Raphael Warnock, held a gun raffle.
The Georgia runoff is Jan. 5. Click here to request an absentee ballot.
Adventure Outdoors owner Jay Wallace bragged at a rally for Loeffler in the parking lot of his Smyrna store on Halloween that she is “the Second Amendment senator.” Wallace told the Rome News-Tribune, “She’s the real deal. Not only for the Second Amendment, I know for a fact that she’s been a customer for a while. She purchases a lot of firearms.”
To some, supporting the Second Amendment right to bear arms may be enough of a qualification for the U.S. Senate, but many Georgia voters have been craving more. Brown is targeting those voters with outreach efforts. “Right now, as we speak, I’m in Valdosta, Georgia, on the Black Voters Matter bus. We have been going around the state distributing groceries to thousands of families,” she told the digital media website Refinery 29. “We’re giving away toys, we’ve got ‘Soul Santa,’ we’ve got music. Part of what we’re doing is recognizing that the holiday season can be a difficult time, so we’re providing some relief to people and letting them know that we care about them more than their vote, we care about them as people and we know it’s an economically tough time for people.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has been even more devastating in already cash-strapped communities. The state has lost nine rural hospitals in the last 10 years, Sen. David Perdue’s Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff tweeted. While hospitals aren't yet rationing care as a result of the pandemic, they are having to make tough decisions about the time and resources they can utilize, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Thursday. “Patients who don’t get bathed each day or don’t get meals on time, because there’s not enough staff. Patients just out of surgery who need a nurse dedicated to watch only them, but instead have to share,” the newspaper reported. “Patients in pain from a broken bone who wait hours for sedation because there are no ER beds, while ER patients wait for the ICU beds their lives may depend on. These things are happening now.”
“Where's David Perdue been?” Ossoff asked in his tweet.
Loeffler and Perdue’s pandemic response has focused on lining their own pockets. Loeffler “benefited from stock transactions she made beginning on the same day she received a private briefing for senators early in the COVID-19 outbreak,” The Pointer Institute reported.
As of Perdue, the nonprofit detailed: “On Jan. 24 — the same day that Trump administration health officials privately briefed senators on the threat posed by the coronavirus — Perdue bought shares worth as much as $65,000 in DuPont de Nemours, which supplies personal protective equipment used to avoid exposure to the coronavirus.” He also invested up to $245,000 in Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company that produced a COVID-19 vaccine.
Ossoff made mention of the trading in a viral debate moment on Oct. 28 in Savannah. "Well, perhaps Senator Perdue would have been able to respond properly to the COVID-19 pandemic if you hadn’t been fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading," Ossoff said. "It’s not just that you’re a crook, senator. It’s that you’re attacking the health of the people that you represent. You did say COVID-19 was no deadlier than the flu. You did say there would be no significant uptick in cases. All the while, you were looking after your own assets and your own portfolio."
Let’s give GOP Leader Mitch McConnell the boot! Give $4 right now so McConnell can suffer the next six years in the minority.