Republicans have spent the last several months launching xenophobic anti-China attacks against Democrats in races across the nation, but Mao didn’t make an appearance in the intraparty brawl between Loeffler and Collins until their debate on Monday. (Several Democrats, including pastor Raphael Warnock, are also competing in the Nov. 3 all-party primary, but the two Republicans have mostly focused on one another as they jockey for a spot in the inevitable January runoff.) Collins raised the issue by asking Loeffler if she still had “the $56,000 portrait of Chairman Mao hanging in your foyer, as was seen on social media.” Loeffler responded by accusing her opponent of launching another sexist attack against her, but she did not mention the painting.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution explains that a Collins aide said after the event that the congressman was referring to a 2018 Facebook picture that appeared to show a copy of an Andy Warhol painting of Mao hanging in Loeffler’s home in Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead neighborhood. The photo was deleted from Facebook shortly after the debate, though it appears in Collins’ ad.
Loeffler’s spokesperson first said in response that the picture Collins was using was “photoshopped,” and that neither Loeffler nor Sprecher owned a Mao portrait; however, he added that it wasn’t clear if the painting had ever hung in their mansion. Collins, for his part, insisted that the picture was very real.
Loeffler, meanwhile, is running a spot on Fox News that once again links Collins to someone that Georgia Republican voters may despise more than Mao: 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams. The entire ad shows a photo of Collins embracing Abrams as the narrator declares that he partnered with the Democrat when they both served in the state legislature “to embrace the largest tax-increase in Georgia history.”