Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock (left) and Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (right) are campaigning to win a runoff election on Jan. 5, 2020. (Photos by Beau Evans)
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her runoff opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock are squaring off over how to bolster health care and insurance coverage amid a bruising stretch of campaign attack ads in Georgia.
Warnock, the Democratic senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has fixed health care as the hallmark issue of his campaign to unseat Loeffler, who until recently gave few insights on the campaign trail about her health-care stances beyond opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Loeffler’s office unveiled a broad plan last Friday calling for passage of several bills including incentives for telehealth options, expanding short-term health plans pushed by the Trump administration and creating a new federal official tasked with lowering prescription drug prices through trade negotiations with other countries.
The plan by Loeffler, a Republican Atlanta businesswoman, also pledges to protect insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, a central part of the Obama-era ACA health-care bill. On that point, Warnock and several health-care advocates on Monday said Loeffler’s plan falls flat.
Warnock supporters, including a former acting chief of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Monday argued a bill Loeffler sponsored on short-term health insurance contains loopholes potentially allowing insurers to avoid paying treatment costs for patients with pre-existing conditions.
“These so-called plans that are being laid out by the Republicans are no plan at all,” Warnock said in one of two virtual news conferences Monday. “Simply announcing that you’re going to cover pre-existing conditions does not answer the question.”
Loeffler’s campaign dismissed the criticism from Warnock Tuesday and went on the offensive, calling his plan too extreme for Georgians who favor less government involvement in their health insurance. Loeffler spokesman Stephen Lawson sought to assure the senator’s plan would be less costly and include coverage of pre-existing conditions.
“Warnock wants a government takeover which would eliminate your private insurance, skyrocket costs and turn your doctor’s office into the DMV,” Lawson said.
Warnock, who was joined in a virtual conference Monday by U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., has advocated expanding Medicaid in states like Georgia and empowering the federal government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. He also favors adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act.
Clashes between Loeffler and Warnock look to ramp up in the coming weeks ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff election, as both campaigns pour millions of dollars into television ads and the two contenders meet for a face-to-face debate on Dec. 6.
A pivot by Loeffler to focus more on health care in the race could signal her push to compete with Warnock on an issue he dominated in the months before the Nov. 3 special election, when Loeffler was forced to fend off a fierce challenge from fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville.
GOP Sen. David Perdue has also faced broadsides from his Democratic opponent, investigative journalist Jon Ossoff, over health care and insurance coverage in Georgia’s other heated runoff race, which together with the Loeffler-Warnock contest could decide the balance of power in the Senate.
Perdue, like Loeffler, has said he supports protecting coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions, while Ossoff, like Warnock, has argued Republican-backed legislation contains loopholes allowing insurers to deny paying for treatment.
Ossoff also slammed Perdue on Tuesday for declining to participate in a Dec. 6 debate, saying the senator “shouldn’t run for re-election” if he shirks public debate. Perdue’s campaign accused Ossoff of having “lied repeatedly” in two debates before the Nov. 3 election as the reason for not participating next month.
Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock would likely tip the Senate in Democrats’ favor along with control of the U.S. House and the presidency, clearing the way for President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers to enact their priorities with little resistance for at least the next two years.
Top national Republican officials have rushed to Perdue’s and Loeffler’s sides at rallies over the past week in a bid to block Democrats from controlling the Senate. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to join the Republican duo at two rallies on Friday.
Early voting for the Senate runoff elections starts Dec. 14. The deadline for Georgia voters to register for the runoffs is Dec. 7.
President-elect Joe Biden (left) maintains a close lead in Georgia over President Donald Trump (right) as a statewide hand recount nears completion. (Biden and Trump campaign videos)
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to maintain his lead in Georgia as a statewide audit of nearly 5 million ballots wraps up shortly, despite the discovery Monday of around 2,600 uncounted ballots in Floyd County that went mostly for President Donald Trump, according to a top state elections official.
Biden, who is poised to be the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992, has held a lead of more than 14,000 votes over the past week and after several news outlets called the race for the former vice president on Friday.
On Monday, the state’s voting system manager, Gabriel Sterling, said around 2,600 votes were found through the audit that began last week after officials in Republican-leaning Floyd County discovered they had failed to upload a memory card containing electronic counts of those votes on Election Day.
Locating those 2,600 votes is set to cut Biden’s lead over Trump by 800 votes in Georgia, leaving the Republican president with a deficit unlikely to be surmounted once the audit’s hand recount finishes by a Wednesday deadline ahead of the election’s formal certification later this week, Sterling said.
“Nothing is making us see any substantive change in the outcome,” said Sterling, a top deputy in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. “It’s verifying what we saw on election night.”
Speaking at a news conference Monday, Sterling also continued to dismiss claims from Trump and his allies of alleged voter fraud in Georgia as state and county officials gear up to hold a pair of pivotal U.S. Senate runoff elections that could decide the balance of power in Congress.
Republican allies of Trump, led in Georgia by outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville, have lodged unfounded claims of ballot harvesting, software tampering, improper signature verification for absentee ballots and voting by dead persons.
State and county election officials have found no evidence in support of those claims pushed by Trump and his allies after counting 4.3 million of the nearly 5 million votes in Georgia as of Monday afternoon, said Sterling, who along with Raffensperger is a Republican.
“Those people out there undermining this thing through crazy, over-the-top claims on cable news, if you have evidence, call us,” Sterling said Monday. “We will investigate any credible leads someone gives us.”
As for the ballots found in Floyd County, Sterling attributed the issue to human error and “gross negligence” on the part of the county’s election director, Robert Brady, who has been asked to resign by Raffensperger’s office.
State officials have been unable to reach Brady to discuss what caused the issue since the Floyd elections director is in quarantine due to COVID-19, Sterling said. An investigator from Raffensperger’s office is in Floyd County now to determine exactly what happened.
Even with the Floyd County issue, Sterling on Monday called the unprecedented statewide audit effort a success as elections boards in the state’s 159 counties closed in on recounting every ballot by hand. He said the state next plans to create a website to publish data on the recount results for transparency.
“We’re about accuracy, we’re about process and we’re about following the law,” Sterling said.
Coronavirus has sickened hundreds of thousands people and killed thousands more in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Results of final-phase testing for a COVID-19 vaccine partly taking place in Atlanta show nearly 95% effectiveness at preventing the virus, marking a huge breakthrough in the push to end the global pandemic, Emory University researchers announced Monday.
The vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical company Moderna and given to more than 700 volunteers in Atlanta since August is the second candidate vaccine to clear major testing hurdles over the past week, after the company Pfizer announced last Monday its vaccine has shown 90% effectiveness.
Both vaccines have progressed through trial phases enough to be on the cusp of receiving approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency-use authorization by year’s end.
“This is a great day for science and a great day for hope that we will see the end of the [COVID-19] pandemic,” said Dr. Colleen Kelley, an Emory infectious-diseases professor who helped lead the university’s Moderna vaccine trials.
With FDA approval, Kelley and other health experts estimate COVID-19 vaccines could be distributed as early as next month for hospital workers, first responders, elderly persons and those with chronic health issues. The general public would receive vaccines later next year, possibly by summer.
Around 30,000 people enrolled for trials of the Moderna vaccine candidate across the U.S., including more than 700 people at three sites in Atlanta led by Emory. Lasting from Aug. 11 to Oct. 23, the final trial phase was unusually fast due to the intense interest in developing multiple vaccines for COVID-19.
Trial volunteers only showed mild negative reactions to the vaccine, Kelley said. Many participants represented the most vulnerable persons to COVID-19 including people aged 65 and older, though the vaccine has not yet been tested on children.
A few steps are needed next before people can start receiving the Moderna vaccine, said Kelley. The vaccine’s data still needs to be peer-reviewed before FDA approval can be given, and state and federal officials still need to ensure the logistics are in place for millions of doses of the vaccines to ship out.
Both Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines use genetic sequencing to create proteins that mimic COVID-19 and trigger a response from the patient’s immune system to erect safeguards, rather than other types of vaccines that introduce disease-causing organisms to create resistance.
Notably, Moderna’s vaccine can be stored at far less extreme refrigeration temperatures than the Pfizer vaccine, which requires storage as low as minus-80 degrees Celsius. The Moderna vaccine can be stored for up to 30 days at between 2 degrees and 8 degrees Celsius, Kelley said.
Amid encouraging results, health experts say it will be important for more vaccines besides just those from Moderna and Pfizer to be developed and approved so that as many people as possible around the world can have access to preventative COVID-19 medicine.
“It could be that this year we cannot gather with our family and friends, but hopefully that would happen soon with the dramatic effects that the vaccines are showing just in the past week,” said Dr. Nadine Rouphael, an Emory infectious-disease professor and another trial leader for the Moderna vaccine.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida rallies with Georgia’s Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler at Black Diamond Grill in Forsyth County on Nov. 13, 2020. (Photo Beau Evans)
CUMMING – The hotly contested U.S. Senate runoff races in Georgia got off to a bang this week with packed campaign rallies, new attack ads swarming local television airwaves and visits from both of Florida’s senators.
Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida campaigned with Georgia Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler on Friday, energizing conservatives at a Forsyth County restaurant just days after Florida Sen. Marco Rubio did the same in Cobb County.
Like Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, Perdue and Loeffler have linked their campaigns ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff elections in a bid to drive up Republican voter turnout in a state set for a flood of outside dollars and big-name politicians.
“If I win, she wins,” Perdue said at Friday’s rally. “If she wins, I win.”
As the Republican senators stumped for votes in metro Atlanta, Perdue opponent Ossoff criss-crossed the state from Savannah to Columbus this week to maintain voter momentum after the Nov. 3 general election saw Georgia flip to the Democratic presidential nominee for the first time since 1992.
Ossoff, who owns an investigative journalism company, and Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, have focused their campaigns on health-care issues and on contrasting their backgrounds with Perdue and Loeffler, who are both wealthy businesspersons.
“This race is about who you think best represents you,” Warnock said in a new ad released this week. “If you’re looking for a billionaire, I’m not your guy.”
Warnock and Ossoff are both fending off intense attacks as their Republican opponents try to paint the Democratic duo’s policies as too extreme – in a word, “socialist” – for Georgia voters.
Warnock, in particular, is battling attacks from Loeffler that highlight the Atlanta pastor’s past comments criticizing certain law enforcement members and his past involvement with a New York church that hosted Cuba’s Fidel Castro in 1995.
Warnock’s and Ossoff’s campaigns have brushed off those and similar attacks as distractions and diversion tactics meant to stir passions in conservative Georgia voters, while the Democratic candidates continue homing in on issues like health insurance, criminal justice reform and the national COVID-19 response.
The TV ads and campaign stops look to ramp up in the coming weeks with control of the Senate hanging in the balance. Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock would likely tip the Senate in Democrats’ favor along with control of the U.S. House and the presidency, clearing the way for President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers to enact their priorities with little resistance for at least the next two years.
Republican leaders and groups are marshalling forces in a push to lock down the Senate and keep the Democrat-controlled House and the incoming Biden administration in check. Speaking after Friday’s rally, Florida’s Scott said he’s confident Republicans will turn out the vote for the Perdue-Loeffler ticket on Jan. 5 despite the Democratic voter surge that flipped Georgia for Biden last week.
“You’ve just got to get your votes out,” Scott said. “We did it in Florida, and I know we’re going to do it in Georgia.”
Aiming to invigorate conservative voter enthusiasm even more, Scott and other Republican leaders have echoed President Donald Trump in questioning the results of last week’s presidential election and calling for investigations into ballots cast in states with tight races like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
State election officials across the country from both political parties including Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, have said they’ve found no evidence so far of ballot-casting fraud as Trump and his allies have alleged since last week.
Even so, Raffensperger has warned people from outside Georgia not to relocate to the state with the sole intent to register and cast ballots in the Jan. 5 runoffs, which would be a felony. His warning came on Friday as Georgia launched a statewide hand recount of the nearly 5 million votes in the presidential election. The state’s 159 county elections boards have through Wednesday to wrap up the recount.
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders have shown similar confidence as Republicans in their prospects for mustering supporters for another big election turnout on Jan. 5, buoyed again by a massive vote-by-mail effort that drove turnout for the presidential election amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Notably, former Democratic gubernatorial candidate and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams – who has been widely credited with playing a major role in boosting Democratic turnout this election cycle – has stayed in the national media spotlight over the past week as she seeks to drum up donations for Warnock and Ossoff and inspire another round of huge mail-in voting.
“We have seen what’s possible when we work hard and when we work together,” Abrams said in a recent Twitter video. “We know we can win Georgia. Now, let’s get it done.”
Early voting for the Senate runoff elections starts Dec. 14. The deadline for Georgia voters to register for the runoffs is Dec. 7.
Emory University’s Dr. Carlos del Rio urges Georgians to wear masks and keep distanced ahead of a potential COVID-19 surge during the winter holiday season on Nov. 13, 2020. (Emory University video)
A top public-health expert in Atlanta is calling for Georgians to double down on social distancing and cities to impose mask mandates amid a surge in COVID-19 infections ahead of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Dr. Carlos del Rio, a leading Emory University epidemiologist, said Friday Georgia and states across the U.S. are entering a “perilous time” in the pandemic as virus-weary people gather for the holidays and a vaccine remains several months away.
“I think we really need to take this seriously,” Del Rio said in a news conference Friday. “The numbers clearly show us that we have to do something.”
Positive COVID-19 case rates in Georgia have crept up since Oct. 1 to more than 1,700 new daily cases on average after plummeting from a peak of more than 3,500 average daily cases in July, according to state Department of Public Health data.
Georgia’s recent case numbers haven’t spiked as much as other states in the U.S., which nationwide has seen more than 100,000 new cases each day over the past week and is projected to suffer tens of thousands more deaths without a clamp-down on health and distancing measures.
On Thursday, Gov. Brian Kemp noted Georgia is currently in better shape than other states but urged people to “remain vigilant” about distancing, wearing masks and washing hands this holiday season.
“We are still facing a once-in-a-century global pandemic, and we will continue to fight every day to keep Georgians safe and healthy,” Kemp said at a news conference in Covington.
Del Rio said that’s the right message for the governor to send: Don’t ignore the importance of distancing and masks to keep the virus’ spread in check. City and county officials should also require masks, while restaurants and bars should consider closing if they can’t tightly limit the number of patrons, he said.
“I think what we’ve been doing in Georgia is working but we need to not let the guard down,” Del Rio said. “Emphasize the fact that more masking, more social distancing, more avoiding crowded places is going to keep our cases down in Georgia.”
Del Rio also pressed for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to take a more vocal role in communicating the need for safety measures, since he said a “leadership vacuum” has formed in the White House following President Donald Trump’s election loss last week.
“Communicating the message to the people on a regular basis through the media is a critical thing I think the CDC has to do right now,” Del Rio said.
Meanwhile, many Georgia hospitals have not yet seen the kind of COVID-19 surges occurring elsewhere in the U.S., though they are gearing up for a potential holiday spike. That’s the situation now at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, which was hit hard by the virus in the pandemic’s early days.
“We are especially concerned about the potential for the virus to spread through upcoming holiday gatherings,” Phoebe Putney President and CEO Scott Steiner said Friday. “We urge you to plan now to ensure your family get-togethers are safe.”
More than eight months into the pandemic, health experts say a big risk is for people tired of keeping apart from each other to throw caution to the wind and bank on a vaccine arriving soon in the U.S.
De Rio said that would be a mistake. While he estimated hospital workers, first responders, elderly persons and those with chronic health issues could start receiving vaccines as early as January, widespread vaccine availability for the general public will likely not come until July or August. For now, the best course of action is to wear a mask and avoid large gatherings like holiday parties.
“If I was invited today to a party with 100 people,” Del Rio said, “I would politely say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not doing that.’”
More than 380,000 people in Georgia had contracted COVID-19 as of Thursday afternoon. The virus had killed 8,403 Georgians.
