Sen. Kelly Loeffler on Historic Georgia Turnout

CLAY: We’re gonna be joined right now by former Senator Kelly Loeffler who has helped to spearhead the new policies that are in place in Georgia, which have led to a record high, effectively, turnout in the primary season with Brian Kemp winning overwhelmingly the Republican governor nomination and with Herschel Walker doing so in the Senate side.

Right now, 1.9 million people ended up voting, a 63% increase over 2018. Kelly Loeffler, I know you are a Braves fan, and we saw Delta Airlines, we saw so many different companies, I believe Coke as well, all criticize this bill. What would your response be now that the full numbers are out and we know the impact of that bill and how much voting has increased?

LOEFFLER: Well, thanks for having me on, Clay. And let me just say my heart and prayers go out to the victims in Uvalde, Texas. I know I join the country and y’all in praying for them.

And I will tell you we just wrapped up the historic midterms in Georgia. And you’re seeing a conservative comeback. And that is largely thanks to Senate Bill 202, the Election Integrity Act, that Stacey Abrams marshaled support behind to get the Major League Baseball All-Star Game canceled in Atlanta, Georgia, and they’re paying the price for that now.

We’ve flipped from playing defense to playing offense. Greater Georgia played a big role in educating Georgians who were concerned by election integrity after 2020, about the hard work that our state house and senate did getting the Election Integrity Act through and Georgia understood that it was gonna be easy to vote and hard to cheat and we proved it.

And look. This historic turnout really shows the energy on Republican side. Republican turnout was up 97% over the last midterm. So look. We got a lot of work done but there’s a lot more to do, too.

BUCK: Want to ask you — and it’s Buck, Kelly. Thanks for being with us. Wanted to ask you what you think the impact of Trump endorsements for various candidates were and if there’s any takeaway from that as to how it might affect obviously the midterms in Georgia but more broadly, the GOP’s chances across the spectrum.

LOEFFLER: Well, look. President Trump’s voice is a very important one in Georgia. But what we saw here in Georgia last night, obviously Herschel Walker with the resounding win, several of President Trump’s endorsed candidates are now in runoffs as well.

But what we also saw is that Georgians do not want Stacey Abrams, the president of United Earth, to become the governor of Georgia or the president of the United States. So they stood up and said we’re gonna get engaged, we’re gonna stand behind our incumbents who have showed strong conservative leadership.

Governor Kemp has been a conservative fighter for our state, keeping it open during the pandemic and Stacey Abrams said she would have had it locked down. He fought for election integrity. He stood for the unborn, he got constitutional carry into law and really has enacted so many positive economic growth initiatives, not just the largest tax cut, but bringing thousands and thousands of jobs to the state through new manufacturing opportunities that we need so badly in the United States.

So I think Georgians just said look, we learned in 2020 we gotta take local matters into our hands. We can’t allow the left to rule our cities, our states, our schools, and they want to make sure they have conservative leadership.

CLAY: Kelly, how confident are you that Brian Kemp is gonna beat Stacey Abrams and that Herschel Walker is gonna beat the Reverend Raphael Warnock in what are gonna be two of the signature races going on in 2022?

LOEFFLER: Well, I’m incredibly confident, but only if we do the work. We showed in the midterms here, in the primaries, that we go hard in the paint and that means getting out the vote, which is what we did at Greater Georgia. We had over a million and a half voter contacts, that means we’re at their doors, we’re calling them, we’re texting, we’re postcards, we’re running ads.

If we do that contact, we will get more people out, we will get the disenfranchised back, those who now understand that Senate Bill 202, election integrity, is back. Those that are disengaged, that don’t understand that Joe Biden’s reckless policies, his spending, his anti-energy platform is driving up costs and hurting their families — and we have to continue that contact.

BUCK: Former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, spokeswoman for Greater Georgia. Kelly, thanks so much for being with us. We appreciate it.

LOEFFLER: Loved it. Thanks, guys.