Lieberman is one of more than a dozen candidates running for the seat now held by Republican Kelly Loeffler in a special election. Loeffler was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp to fill the seat of the now-retired Johnny Isakson, and now she is facing an election battle to serve the final two years of Isakson’s term.

Trailing in polls, Lieberman is resisting calls to exit the race and support fellow Democrat Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church and the pick of both Stacey Abrams and the political arm of the U.S. Senate Democrats.

“I’m the only one of the four top contenders in this race who’s here not because someone in Washington, D.C., or Atlanta put me here, but because fellow Georgians have supported me and know I’ll be accountable to no one but them,” Lieberman said.

Besides Loeffler and Warnock, U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a Republican, is also polling high in the race. Real Clear Politics’ average of polls pegs Loeffler with a slight plurality at 24%, followed by Warnock and Collins both at about 21%, and Lieberman at about 10%. Another Democrat, Ed Tarver, is further behind, in the low single digits.

Warnock also has a sizable fundraising lead over other Democrats in the race. Some party leaders fear a split Democratic vote could pave the way for an all-GOP runoff in January between Loeffler and Collins.

A series of polls recently released by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other outlets suggest Lieberman’s chances of seriously contesting the seat are dim after once running neck-and-neck with Warnock.

The latest round of polls unleashed another round of calls for Lieberman to abandon his campaign and clear the way for Warnock.

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and former President Jimmy Carter have both endorsed Warnock. Abrams is calling on Lieberman to “search his conscience” and make way for Warnock.

“We need Matt Lieberman to understand he’s not called for this moment,” Abrams said. “Dropping out of the race is not a possibility. But we’re asking for people to consolidate their support around Raphael Warnock.”

A group of Atlanta Jewish community leaders is preparing to run an ad with the names of more than 300 local Democrats backing Warnock over Lieberman, a former principal at a Jewish day school.

“More than one Democratic candidate is running ... but only one has a chance of winning,” says the ad slated for the Atlanta Jewish Times, which was obtained by the AJC.

Lieberman is a graduate of Yale Law School, but before graduating, he launched a local “I Have a Dream” program to provide college scholarships to low-income applicants. He also founded one of the nation’s first homelessness voucher programs in New Haven and in 2000 was an adviser and surrogate to the Al Gore-Joe Lieberman campaign. He was on stage with his family at the close of the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

Lieberman and his family moved to Atlanta in 2005 to serve as the head of the Atlanta Jewish Academy, and two years later he started a group benefits consultant firm and later two tech startups.

One of Lieberman’s key issues is lowering the cost of insurance premiums and prescription drugs. He is a supporter of Planned Parenthood and opposes Georgia’s abortion laws that he says take away “a woman’s right to choose.” He also opposes overturning Roe v. Wade, the nation’s landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision allowing women to choose whether to have an abortion.

Lieberman also supports universal background checks for gun purchases, as well as a new voting rights act.

In 2018, Lieberman wrote a novel called “Lucius” focusing on race and friendship in the South. He said he penned the book in response to the “shocking ugliness of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia,” in 2018, when violent protests broke out over the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Lieberman came under severe criticism from other Democrats over the racist tendencies of characters in the book.

“Its an anti-racism book,” Lieberman said. “It has racist characters who say racist things, but it’s fundamentally a book about my revulsion at racism.”

Lieberman said he has invited Georgia’s NAACP chapter president, James Woodall, “to a digital town hall where we can work together to bring solutions to problems, but he hasn’t taken me up on that offer."

“People of good faith want to be able to have open discussions about hard issues without fear of blowback,” Lieberman said. “Rev. Warnock’s top supporters have done the opposite by dividing Georgia by race, which offers the worst of politics and is a total distraction to important issues like police reform and universal background checks.”

Lieberman said growing up in politics “prepared me for this rough and tumble."

“I’ve lived through all sorts of intense, high-level campaigns,” he said, "and I’ve experienced everything, good and bad.”

Georgia has been under solid GOP legislative control since Sonny Perdue’s 2002 gubernatorial election, and it hasn’t had a Democratic senator in Washington since Zell Miller in 2005. Political analysts say Warnock has a slim chance of winning without a runoff, another reason why Lieberman said he’s staying in the race.

“This is going to be a record-breaking turnout,” he said. “In the primary, we broke all sorts of turnout records despite voting system malfunctions, the coronavirus and everything else. It’s clear there’s going to be a January runoff, and I’m the only Democrat best positioned to beat either of the top two Republicans.”

Georgia’s U.S. Senate special election

This profile of Democrat Matt Lieberman is the fourth in a series of stories about major candidates running in November’s special election to fill the final two years of former U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term. Other stories in the series focus on Republicans Doug Collins and Kelly Loeffler and Democrats Ed Tarver and Raphael Warnock.