Wait?
Isn’t the runoff election IN Georgia?
Shouldn’t ALL of the Republicans be rowing TOGETHER?
Tensions between Georgia officials and Republicans in Washington have been rising for weeks. But they came to a head Tuesday when Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting systems manager, lashed out at Trump and his supporters for their sustained assault on the integrity of the election, accusing them of tacitly encouraging threats against both high-level state officials and low-level election workers.
“This has to stop. We need you to step up. And if you take a position of leadership, show some,” a visibly angry Sterling said, later adding: “I’m talking about Sen. David Perdue and Sen. Kelly Loeffler, two people whom I still support. But they need to step up.”
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, echoed that sentiment Wednesday morning after Trump repeated the false claim that Georgia’s election results were marred by “massive voter fraud.” That rhetoric, Raffensperger said, is responsible for “the growing threat environment for election workers who are simply doing their jobs.”
The tensions between Georgia Republican officials and the president have put Sens. David Perdue (R-Ga.) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) in a tight spot at a critical moment in their political careers. Both are facing competitive runoff elections against well-funded Democrats on Jan. 5 that will determine the balance of power in the Senate for the next two years.
“It’s pretty shocking to see,” one GOP political consultant in Georgia said of the recent backlash from state officials. “I was not expecting that. It certainly makes things more difficult for [Loeffler and Perdue].”…