The Senate has failed to agree on any kind of unemployment extension on Friday, July 31, putting Georgians at risk of possibly losing their apartments, townhomes, and single-family homes. As a backdrop, the latest CBS News poll has Republican incumbent Senator David Perdue leading Democrat Jon Ossoff 45-43. By all indications, the 33-year-old Ossoff is performing better than expected.
“I can say up front, I am not running to be anyone’s partisan soldier,” Ossoff said in an interview with The Albany Herald, conducted via telephone from his Atlanta home. “David Perdue is one of those politicians who puts his self-interest above those of the people he was chosen to represent. He’s proud; he brags about making his money by outsourcing American jobs to Asia.
With 91 days remaining until Election Day currently, former Vice President Joe Biden has turned the state of Georgia into a tossup. According to the FOX News poll, Biden leads Trump 47-45, falling within the 3% margin of error. In the One America News poll, Trump leads Biden by three points, however, the margin of error in that poll is 4%. The President’s bungling of the Coronavirus response coupled with down ballot squabbles has put Georgia republicans into a huge conundrum.
Ossoff is currently self-quarantined with his wife, Dr. Alisha Kramer, an OB/GYN at Emory who recently tested positive for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the Perdue campaign was reeling from an ad that showed Ossoff’s nose larger, and inciting claims of Anti-Semitism. After a report by the Jewish publication The Forward, the ad was taken down. A Perdue campaign spokeswoman said the size of Ossoff’s nose in the ad was an “unintentional error” caused by an “outside vendor” who applied a filter that “distorted the image.”
“Obviously, this was accidental, but to ensure there is absolutely no confusion, we have immediately removed the image from Facebook,” said the Perdue campaign spokeswoman. “Anybody who implies that this was anything other than an inadvertent error is intentionally misrepresenting Senator Perdue’s strong and consistent record of standing firmly against anti-Semitism and all forms of hate.”
Ossoff says the race is reflective of the tenuous moment most Americans currently find themselves.
“And what these special interest groups who support Sen. Perdue fear is that when the public finds out that not only was he not being honest, or taking the threat seriously when he downplayed and downplayed and downplayed, he was also busily trading medical and vaccine stocks and dumping his casino shares that he’s in deep deep trouble with Georgia voters,” said Ossoff.
Conversely, Perdue has collected more than $11 million in contributions for his reelection bid and is reporting nearly $10.7 million cash on hand in the most recent campaign finance reports released in July. Ossoff has raised $7 million in contributions and has $2.5 million cash on hand.
Perdue has repeated a widespread Republican talking point of “exposing this liberal, socialist agenda” of Democrats.
“There are a group of people on the left in the Democratic party who believe in anarchy right now because they want that kind of radical change,” Perdue said to the Valdosta Daily Times. “They want to defund the police, they want to get rid of ICE, they want sanctuary cities to prevail, they don’t want a controlled border.”
