Out of the Senate, Kelly Loeffler takes on GOP's grassroots challenge

Aug. 6—ALBANY — Asked why she, who'd suffered a bitter loss to Raphael Warnock in a runoff for the U.S. Senate seat she'd held since being appointed to the position by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, took it upon herself to take on the "lonely" task of organizing a grassroots campaign to register conservative voters in Georgia, Kelly Loeffler doesn't even need a moment to think about her answer.

"Because (the lack of such a campaign) happened to me," Loeffler, the businesswoman/turned Senator/turned organizer, said during a conversation with The Albany Herald. "I felt called to put on the hood of public service in Georgia, but sometimes God may have a different plan for how you serve."

While many conservatives lamented the fact that Loeffler chose not to seek a return showdown with Warnock, whose term was limited to only two years after being selected to complete the unfinished term of long-time Georgia political giant Johnny Isakson after Isakson stepped down for health reasons, and many whisper now that she'd be a much greater challenge than the Republicans' choice to run against Warnock, former Georgia football player Herschel Walker, Loeffler said she doesn't concern herself with such what-ifs.

"I came to Georgia 20 years ago, so I was part of the conservative grassroots movement that flipped the state red," Loeffler, who is vice-chair and top donor of the state Senate Republican leadership committee Citizens for a Greater Georgia, a group that seeks to "register, educate and mobilize conservative voters," said. "But once we accomplished that, I think we got a little complacent. Meanwhile the Democrats put 100 or so operatives on the ground in Georgia in order to take advantage of changing demographics in the state, and we recognized that at the last minute. They outmanned us in 2020 and 2021.

"Organizing can be lonely, especially initially, but after you make inroads, you analyze the data to see where folks were not engaged and are able to have an impact in those areas, it makes the lonely days worth it."

Loeffler said the results of the Republican Party's lax organizational efforts in the state during '20 and '21 had an impact on the outcome of state and national elections. She said 339,000 GOP voters that had cast ballots in the November 2020 general election failed to return in January for the runoff that saw she and David Perdue lose the two Georgia Senate seats to Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively.

"And we found more than 900,000 registered Republicans who did not vote," she added. "While that was disappointing, it also offered us a great opportunity."

So Loeffler has taken to the road. She was in southwest Georgia Wednesday for a roundtable with GOP Agriculture Commissioner candidate Tyler Harper, and after a stop at The Herald's offices for an interview, she and campaign Director of Marketing and Communications Caitlin O'Dea were off to Thomasville and "a couple of more stops before we leave southwest Georgia."

Loeffler said Greater Georgia is part of the conservative "ground game" that is itself an element of the "road map to November" and the mid-term elections.

"What we're looking for is improvement up and down the ticket," she said. "We saw a lot of that in the last election cycle. Nobody talks about how 51% of Hispanic voters pulled Republican ballots in the last election. And nobody is mentioning that there was a 100% increase in black Republican voters.

"Georgia is not just a large state, it is a diverse state. We're talking to people, knocking on doors, rebuilding the party's infrastructure. We're out there talking to black, Latino and Asian voters, to women's groups. Part of our mission is to educate voters, to help them understand the issues and where the people they're asked to vote for stand on those issues. Because an engaged voter is a more empowered voter."

Loeffler brushes off a mention that many Republican voters suggest that she might in fact be a stronger candidate than Walker, but she offers her take on why so many Republicans have remained loyal to former President Trump.

"I think President Trump spoke to a part of America that's long been overlooked," she said. "He spoke more to blue-collar Americans, the people who work for a living, and he helped create an economy that lifted those people up, shifted the focus away from the Democratic elites. He also stood up to nations like China and let them know America would not back down.

"I think he helped create an economy that gave the working man opportunities to rise, and that is the American dream. I really loved working with him."

As she prepared to head for her next meeting, to knock on a few more doors, talk to another group looking for answers, Loeffler said doing the groundwork for Greater Georgia is, at this time, her calling.

"This is a great opportunity for our party," she said. "The other side is pushing this concept of a 'green economy,' and that's nothing more than a fallacy. Instead of working to make things better, they're selling this green utopia that's not happening. So we get these high gas prices, high food costs, an economy that's making it tough for people to make a living.

"We have the pieces in place: the data, the resources, the manpower ... the infrastructure. It's a matter of working that ground game, knocking on those doors, making those calls, sending those texts. Right now, this is what I'm called to do. I experienced a setback, a failure in my campaign. But you learn more from failure than you do success. I'm taking what I learned and putting it to good use."