Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff responded to Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s (R-Ga.) criticism of her Democratic opponent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, by saying on Wednesday that she has been “campaigning with a Klansman.”
Loeffler has leveraged a Washington Free Beacon report of alleged abuse at a camp that Warnock oversaw in Maryland, calling the incident “disqualifying” in a Monday Fox News interview.
Ossoff was responding on Wednesday to a question by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy when asked if he had “any concern that the allegations of wrongdoing by Rev. Warnock could possibly be a drag on the Democratic ticket” during the Senate runoff races next week.
“None whatsoever,” Ossoff responded in the video shared on Twitter. “Rev. Warnock addressed this issue a year ago, and here’s the bottom line: Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a Klansman.”
“She is stooping to these vicious personal attacks to distract from the fact that she’s been campaigning with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan,” he added. “I mean, we deserve better than that here in Georgia.”
With his remarks, Ossoff called attention to the photo that Loeffler took earlier this month at a campaign event with Chester Doles, who is a reported former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and was imprisoned for beating a Black man.
Doles also has ties to the Hammerskins, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the “best organized, most widely dispersed and most dangerous Skinhead group.”
Loeffler’s campaign denounced Doles, with spokesman Stephen Lawson telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “Kelly had no idea who that was.”
“If she had she would have kicked him out immediately because we condemn in the most vociferous terms everything that he stands for,” Lawson said.
On Monday, the Washington Free Beacon reported about an alleged abuse victim who said counselors at Camp Farthest Out allegedly threw urine on him and locked him outside overnight when he was 12 in 2002. Warnock oversaw the camp for inner-city children as the senior pastor at the Douglas Memorial Community Church.
“It’s disgusting,” Loeffler told Fox News. “It’s really alarming, and frankly it should be disqualifying.”
Michael Brewer, Warnock’s campaign’s rapid response director, told Fox News earlier this month that the camp allegations are “yet another one of Senator Loeffler’s lowest of the low attacks that independent fact checkers have said is ‘mostly false.’”
Next week, Warnock will face Loeffler, and Ossoff will go up against Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) in two Senate runoff races in Georgia that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
If either Republican keeps their seat, the Senate will remain in GOP control, but if both Democrats win, it will be split 50-50, making Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tiebreaking vote as president of the Senate.