I like where’s going with this:
A few days before she showed up at the state capitol on March 2 to qualify to run in a special election this year, Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s stock portfolio was very active.
Records showed she and her husband Jeff Sprecher, whose company owns the New York Stock Exchange, sold stock valued between $1.3 million and $3.1 million before the coronavirus pandemic tanked the market.
In the same period, records show Sen. David Perdue purchased stock valued at between $63,000 and $245,000 in Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company working to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
At the time, Perdue and Loeffler said they hired managers to run their stock portfolios, and kept them in the dark about it.
"I’m only informed of my transactions after they occur, several weeks," Loeffler told Fox Business on March 23.. "So those transactions on my behalf were a mixture of buys and sells, routine for my portfolio."
“I have had an outside professional that manages my personal finances and I’m not involved in the day to day,” Perdue said.
Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff says even that much knowledge is too much for members of Congress. He’s running against Perdue for one of the two senate seats up for grabs this year.
Ossoff wants Congress to pass a bill requiring a blind trust for the stock portfolios of federal officeholders -- from members of Congress, to ambassadors, to the president.
"(Perdue) has promised to stop trading individual stocks. But that’s not good enough. He has refused to give up control of his portfolio. He should meet the Isakson standard," Ossoff told 11Alive News Monday.
Johnny Isakson was the US Senator that Loeffler replaced in January 2020. As chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, Isakson reportedly put almost all of his stock in a blind trust – even though no law required it.
If he wins, Ossoff would become another millionaire in the US Senate, though with a fraction of Perdue and Loeffler's wealth. In a disclosure two months ago, Ossoff said his net worth is between $2.2 and 7.4 million – with stocks and mutual funds valued between $1 million and 2.4 million.
"On day one, I’ll place my stock portfolio in blind trust," Ossoff said.
Ossoff is running on an anti-corruption platform and even launched an making cracking down on corruption his top priority:
This is a great topic to hit Perdue on because Ossoff wants to paint Perdue as someone who thinks he’s above the law. Meanwhile, Perdue and his fellow corrupt colleague, U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler (R. GA), are trying to stoke fear as lawn and order candidates:
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler slammed the “mob rule” at an Atlanta site where a Black man was killed in a struggle with police. Her top GOP rival, Doug Collins, sharply criticized how local prosecutors handled the shooting death that triggered those protests.
And U.S. Sen. David Perdue, also up for election in November, blasted how Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for an “unacceptable” response to a recent spate of violence in the city.
The three Republican U.S. Senate candidates have echoed President Donald Trump’s attempt to energize the party’s conservative base with promises of law-and-order to boost their standing as a series of recent polls show a tightening race in Georgia.
“It’s about what’s right and wrong,” Collins, a four-term congressman, said in an interview. “This is a civil discourse about American values of rule of law. Are we supporting our police officers and our communities? Because that’s what we’ve got to do.”
The three have vigorously pushed a pro-law enforcement message as they try to link their Democratic opponents with the “defund police” push – a nebulous movement that calls for less funding, or the outright abolishment, of law enforcement agencies.
Meanwhile, in the other Georgia Senate race, Rev. Raphael Warnock (D. GA) has racked up a ton of endorsements from his (hopefully) soon-to-be colleagues:
Twenty-five Democratic senators lent their muscle to the race for one of the two open Senate seats in Georgia by endorsing Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is widely seen as the Democrats' best chance in the special November election to flip the seat. The seat was vacated by Johnny Isakson at the end of 2019 and is currently held by controversial Trump ally Senator Kelly Loeffler.
The majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus endorsed Warnock, and the senators themselves range in ideology from more moderate to progressive and are from both Democratic- and Republican-heavy states — as well as some battleground states. Warnock had already received the endorsement from five Democratic senators who ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary: Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Michael Bennet.
"I'm beyond grateful for the support of so many leaders in this movement, who I hope to call colleagues very soon." Warnock said in a statement first obtained by CBS News. "They have stood on the side of working people across this country, and I look forward to joining them in the struggle for the soul of our nation and against the injustice and corruption in Washington.
To be clear, Ossoff has the backing of the DSCC. Here’’s an e-mail I received from Ossoff on behalf of the DSCC:
I'm the Democratic nominee for Senate in Georgia running against corrupt GOP Senator David Perdue, and I need your help.
With TWO Senate races in Georgia, winning this race helps guarantee that Democrats flip the Senate and END Mitch McConnell's majority. But I can’t do it without you. Will you rush in $60 now to win this crucial race and flip the Senate? »
Here's why I'm coming to you right now: I'm just ONE POINT ahead of my GOP opponent in the polls. And Republicans are unleashing a massive voter suppression strategy to stop Joe Biden and me from flipping Georgia in November.
They recently tested that strategy on Georgia's primary elections, and you saw the results: six-hour lines to vote, missing ballots, and even broken voting machines.
Mitch McConnell knows that if Democrats flip Georgia, Donald Trump will lose the presidency and he will lose the Senate.
So now that the polls have found Joe Biden and I are both in the lead here, Republicans are doing everything they can to suppress our momentum.
There is NO question we can defeat them in November and finally flip the Senate, but we need an immediate surge of grassroots support to beat their voter suppression strategy. So I'm personally asking:
Will you rush in $60 to flip Georgia and the Senate? We need 1,200 Democrats to pitch in before 9 A.M. tomorrow to win this fight. And Catherine, for maximum impact, your donation will be split between my campaign and the DSCC.
Thank you for stepping up at this crucial moment,
Jon Ossoff
Democrat for U.S. Senate, Georgia
Let’s keep up the momentum to flip Georgia Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Ossoff, Warnock, Biden and their fellow Georgia Democrats campaigns:
Jon Ossoff
Raphael Warnock
Joe Biden
Lucy McBath
Carolyn Bourdeaux