The Rev. Raphael Warnock (D) warned Georgia voters in a humorous campaign ad released Thursday to expect a barrage of negative advertising from supporters of his opponent, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.).
The short video released on Twitter begins with a narrator jokingly accusing the Democrat of eating pizza with a fork and hating puppies.
Warnock then vows that the attacks “won’t stop us from fighting for a better future for Georgians and focusing on the issues that matter.”
“Kelly Loeffler doesn’t want to talk about why she’s for cutting health care in the middle of a pandemic,” Warnock adds.
He ends the ad by saying he’s focused on what Washington can do for Georgians.
“And by the way, I love puppies,” he adds.
Loeffler responded in a tweet of her own, writing that her campaign would not “talk about pizza and puppies. Everyone loves those, including me!”
“We ARE going to talk about your own words,” she added, before referencing Warnock’s past comments about the police response in Ferguson, Mo., during the demonstrations over the death of Michael Brown.
Warnock and Loeffler were the only two candidates to advance from Tuesday’s election, with both candidates failing to pass the 50 percent threshold necessary to avoid a runoff. The two will face each other again in January.
Loeffler trailed Warnock in Tuesday’s election results due to competition from a fellow Republican, Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), who failed to advance to the runoff and threw his support behind Loeffler following his concession.
Loeffler was appointed to the seat last year and is running to serve the remaining two years of a term begun by former Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). Isakson resigned from the Senate at the end of 2019 for health reasons.
Georgia’s special Senate election is seen as a key target for Democrats who saw disappointing results in House elections on Tuesday and have seen their hopes of taking the Senate fall to Warnock’s race and a few others, though it appears increasingly unlikely the party will gain a majority in the upper chamber.
Updated to include Loeffler’s response.