The issues<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nEchoing the overall tone of this Senate race, much of the back-and-forth featured in Monday\u2019s frontrunners\u2019 debate centered on Collins and Loeffler, who each punched the other on their records in office, their personal backgrounds and which candidate is a bigger supporter of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Collins, a U.S. Air Force Reserve chaplain who has served four terms in Congress as well as a stint in the General Assembly, posed his experience as a contrast to the appointed Loeffler and argued certain attacks she has made on him reveal misunderstandings with how the legislative process works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In particular, Collins raised the issue of Loeffler\u2019s use of wealth in the campaign, to which she has devoted $20 million so far of her own money as a former executive in the company run by her billionaire husband, Intercontinental Exchange CEO Jeffrey Sprecher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShe doesn\u2019t want people to know about her past,\u201d Collins said. \u201cThat\u2019s the reason she\u2019s spending money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Loeffler, who has long touted her rural roots growing up on a family farm in Illinois, has batted back criticism of her wealth and sought to cast herself as a largely self-funded candidate like Trump who is spending her money for the cause of public service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDoug Collins doesn\u2019t know me,\u201d Loeffler said Monday. \u201cI don\u2019t need advice from a failed career politician who has built his campaign on lies about someone who is a true conservative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The spat continued into Loeffler and Collins\u2019 records and past political activities, with Loeffler accusing Collins of voting often with Democratic favorite Stacey Abrams while in the state legislature and Collins pressing Loeffler to delist Chinese companies from the New York Stock Exchange, which is owned by her husband\u2019s company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Warnock fended off an attack from Loeffler over past comments he made criticizing police officers from the pulpit, which were featured on a Fox News segment that both Republican candidates have highlighted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Warnock, who hails from Savannah, stressed he does not support calls from many Democratic leaders and groups to defund police agencies and noted he believes \u201cit\u2019s possible to appreciate the work that law enforcement members do and at the same time hold them accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI do think it\u2019s lamentable that the senator would use her power to politicize an issue where people are literally dying on the streets,\u201d Warnock said Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Warnock also raised the recent controversial endorsement of Loeffler by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican in line to win the 14th Congressional District seat who has made past comments echoing views expressed in the QAnon conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Loeffler, who has embraced the firebrand Greene, said she does not \u201cknow anything about QAnon\u201d but denounces all hate crimes. Collins outright condemned QAnon, while simultaneously challenging Warnock to disavow the so-called Antifa movement on the left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI condemn violence no matter where it shows up,\u201d Warnock said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the issue of the COVID-19 pandemic, Loeffler reiterated her stance that China played a direct role in allowing the virus to spread to the U.S. and should be punished, both for that health crisis as well as for cavalier trade practices that Trump has also made a hallmark of his administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI will not be an apologist or a shill for China,\u201d Loeffler said. \u201cChina brought this disease to our country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Collins backed the president\u2019s often-criticized response to the pandemic, noting Trump was quick to close travel between China and the U.S. He urged Georgia businesses and schools to continue reopening with social distancing and sanitization practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGeorgia is living proof that you can actually get the economy going and get our state going at the same time and actually make sure the virus is kept in check,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Warnock stuck with a solidly Democratic position that Trump and state leaders have botched the pandemic response by not enforcing rules like mask-wearing more strictly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wish that the folks who are serving in Washington would pay attention to the science instead of politicizing something as basic and obvious as wearing a mask,\u201d Warnock said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018It hurts our republic\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMeanwhile, several candidates criticized the debate process and party leadership on both sides for putting too much emphasis on Loeffler, Collins and Warnock in the race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most notably, educator and health-care consultant Matt Lieberman urged Georgians to not \u201cvote for one of these three stooges,\u201d arguing he represented the best chance for voters to pick a candidate who would not be beholden to major party figures and agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe establishment Republican and establishment Democratic candidates in this race are like party drones,\u201d said Lieberman, the son of former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. \u201cWhat\u2019s the good for us in Georgia to have a senator who\u2019s just going to be about agreeing with Donald Trump or [U.S. Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell or [U.S. Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer or anyone like that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former U.S. Attorney Ed Tarver, who like Lieberman has faced calls to drop out of the race and make way for Warnock, touted his experience as a lawyer, U.S. Army veteran and former state senator to argue why he should keep campaigning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve gotten a chance to see why many believe that our government in Washington is as polarized as many have ever seen, why many think it\u2019s broken and divided and that people have forgotten about the simple commitment to represent Georgians and not represent political parties,\u201d Tarver said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others like Libertarian candidate Brian Slowinski also took jabs at party leadership and media outlets that they feel have shut them out of the process with little news coverage and the split debate format, in which candidates who have not polled higher than 3% shared a different stage from those who have polled higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI also want to talk about candidate suppression as well,\u201d Slowinski said. \u201cIt hurts our republic when not everybody is being covered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 10 candidates who shared the second-tier stage expressed similar points while articulating a variety of policy proposals ranging from universal basic income and the Green New Deal to terms limits in Congress and a flat fair tax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They included Al Bartell, Alan Buckley, John Fortuin, Derrick Grayson, Annette Davis Jackson, Deborah Jackson, Tamara Johnson-Shealey, Valencia Stovall, Kandiss Taylor and Richard Dien Winfield.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Candidates vying for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler\u2019s seat from Georgia squared off for the first time in a debate Monday that touched on the coronavirus response, criminal justice reforms and concerns that not all challengers are getting a fair shake in the crowded free-for-all race. Sixteen candidates including Loeffler took the stage in two separate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[8758,8514,8644,8645,8646,8474],"class_list":["post-18986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-doug-collins","tag-election","tag-kelly-loeffler","tag-raphael-warnock","tag-senate","tag-sun","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}