Loeffler campaign repudiates white supremacist after she poses for a photo with him
Sen. Kelly Loeffler has condemned a white supremacist with whom she posed for a photo, her campaign told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Sunday.
Loeffler is the Republican incumbent who is running against Rev. Raphael Warnock, in a runoff race for her Georgia senate seat, set for January 5.
The pictured man was Chester Doles, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, who was convicted in the 1993 beating of a Black man, according to the Baltimore Sun.
ALERT: Kelly Loeffler just posed for a photo with Chester Doles, a former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA.
In 1993, Doles nearly beat a Black man to death.
In 2017, he marched in Charlottesville.
This is who @KLoeffler is proudly appealing to. pic.twitter.com/4YZcvL05rf
— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) December 13, 2020
“Kelly had no idea who that was,” Stephen Lawson, Loeffler’s campaign spokesman, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “if she had, she would have kicked him out immediately because we condemn in the most vociferous terms everything that he stands for.”
Earlier this year, Doles also posed for photos with Marjorie Taylor Green, an incoming congresswoman from Georgia, known for her support of the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory. However, at a later rally for both Green and Loeffler, Doles was ejected.
Doles is affiliated with the Hammerskins, a white supremacist group who are “one of the oldest hardcore racist skinhead groups in the United States and have a history of violence,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30