GOP Raises 400% More Than Democrats For Georgia Runoff

Despite calls by Trump supporters for Republicans to withhold votes for Georgia GOP candidates in January's runoff election, GOP donors have been showing up big for the candidates, despite their refusal to back the president's claims of widespread election fraud.

According to Bloomberg, GOP donors contributed $95 million to their party's Senate super-pac and party election committee between election day and Nov. 23 - over four times the $18 million Democrats contributed to similar groups over the same period. Granted, that time frame excludes much of the fervor over election fraud, or the fact that Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are essentially never-Trump Republicans.

Their Democratic opponents, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have a much higher volume of donations - albeit in far smaller amounts contributed mostly online.

Thanks to the massive contributions, the Georgia GOP has been able to ramp up expensive advertising - with the GOP candidates having booked $161.6 million in airtime vs. $118.3 million for Democrats, which came primarily from out of state.

Both parties are laser focused on the Georgia runoffs because the outcome will determine who controls the upper chamber. If Democrats manage to unseat both incumbents, the Senate would be split 50-50. Democrats will be able to set the agenda because Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be able to break any ties.
And big money Republicans are stepping up for the fight. The Senate Leadership Fund, a super-PAC that has ties to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, raised $104.2 million between Oct. 15 and Nov. 23, with $71.1 million of that amount donated after the Nov. 3 general election. -Bloomberg

GOP donors include Blackstone Groujp co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, who gave $15 million on Nov. 12, as well as Citadel co-founder Kenneth Griffin, who put $10 million towards the race the same day. Adding to the list of megadonors who contributed after election day are investor Timothy Mellon, Steve Wynn - who each gave $5 million. In the $1 million club are Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, and real estate developer Geoffrey Palmer.

Meanwhile, the National GOP Senatorial Committee has raised $23.9 million since Nov. 3, which include contributions from Senate Republicans' own campaigns. A super-PAC with ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell raised $104.2 million between Oct. 15 and Nov. 12 - of which $71.1 million was contributed after the election.

WinRed’s data suggests that online donations to the two Republicans lag behind the Democrats. Using the platform, Republican donors contributed $28.6 million to Perdue and $27 million to Loeffler. Loeffler had largely self-financed her campaign before Oct. 15, loaning it $23 million while raising just $5 million.
The national interest in the races is reflected in the grassroots giving. Of nearly $114 million raised by the two Democrats through ActBlue, 96% comes from donors outside of Georgia. For the Republican candidates, 92% of their $56 million through WinRed is from out-of-state contributions. -Bloomberg

On the Democratic side, their Senate Majority PAC has raised $89.9 million between Oct. 15 and Nov. 12, however just $10.2 million of that came after Election Day. Big donors who contributed before the election include Renaissance Technologies founder James Simons, Eric Mindich of Eton Park Capital Management, and Bain Capital co-chairman Joshua Bekenstein - while Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Carlyle Group co-founder co-founder William Conway donated $250,000.

LIES, LIES, LIES:

6 Nov: AJC: Trump’s claims about Georgia lacked facts, context
By Chris Joyner, Ben Brasch; Staff writer Mark Niesse contributed to this article.
Fulton County Elections head Richard Barron said Wednesday that the pipe dumped a lot of water, soaking the carpeting and hampering work.
“It looked really like there was rain coming out of the ceiling and the entire carpeting was just covered in water,” he said. “There was no way to go in there and perform work.”...

There was backlash internally and externally, but Barron said he sent almost all of his staff, who’d worked long hours and at a point were becoming “counter-productive.” So GOP observers thought all was done for the night.

***But five county workers stayed to do final processing of ballots until 1 a.m., ***under the supervision of a state observer...
https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/trumps-claims-about-georgia-lacked-facts-context/BSXOQMXVPNAXVCAEGH57OAJUSM/

compare with timeline below, which would suggest they weren’t under supervision the whole time at all!

updated 4 Dec: 11alive: Live updates | Fulton County Board of Elections addresses State Farm Arena video
9:20 a.m. | Here’s what Fulton County Elections Director Rick Barron had to say about the surveillance video from State Farm Arena that has become a major point of contention among those who believe there was fraud in Georgia’s election process:

“I’ll just address the timeline of that evening - the staff at State Farm that evening, they began letting certain people go, no announcement was ever made to leave, for anyone to leave. Certain staff that were on the cutting stations, that were on the flattening stations, that were extracting from the inner envelopes, those staff left as work completed. I found out sometime, I think a little after 10:30, that they were gonna cease operations and I told them not to do that... at about 11:15 they were fully scanning again, ***and once they were scanning Carter Jones, the State Election Board monitor, he told me 11:42 or 11:52 that he arrived***. There were media in the room, external affairs representative there until approximately 11:15. The Secretary of States investigator arrived at 12:15, and they scanned until all the ballots they had available to scan were complete and then cleaned up the room.

“What the video shows is that they have pulled out plastic bins from underneath the desks, those are bins that they keep under their desks near the scanners. They will cut those seals that are on those, open those up and pull the ballots out.
“They were still in the process of cleaning so they hadn’t sealed those ballot boxes up, so they were able to just start right back up, normal processing that occurred there
“Other than that we’ve gone through everything with the Secretary of State investigators on that video and the timeline that evening.”...
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/georgia-recount-results-live-blog-dec-3/85-a4209de7-4213-4fe8-96be-37d7a2aa7676

I don't follow anti-American foreigners.

Loeffler, Perdue call for GA’s head of elections to resign
Sara Carter
Douglas Braff
Nov 9, 2020
"Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) on Monday called for the resignation of their home state’s chief elections official, according to a tweet posted by The Daily Caller’s Henry Rodgers...In a joint statement on Monday afternoon, both of Georgia’s U.S. senators, who are set to face runoff elections in their respective re-election fights, called for Raffensperger’s resignation due to allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities."

Never Trumpers Go All in for Democrats Against Republicans in Georgia State Runoffs
Breitbart
Sean Moran
December 2, 2020
"The Lincoln Project released the ad, titled “On the Ballot,” which asks Georgia voters to consider voting against Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA)."

No, the 2020 Election was a total scam, we won by a lot (and will hopefully turn over the fraudulent result), but we must get out and help David and Kelly, two GREAT people. Otherwise we are playing right into the hands of some very sick people. I will be in Georgia on Saturday! https://t.co/1ziqFq9S6O

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2020

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