In Senate debate, Perdue is the top target

With memorable ads saturating television, a lead in Republican primary polls and an RV with his name on it roaming the state, businessman David Perdue has become the biggest target in the U.S. Senate race.

His two most prominent GOP foes — Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah and former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel — sprung planned, personalized attacks on Perdue in the closing moments of a debate Saturday night.

“The outsider,” Handel said, referring to Perdue’s image as a first-time candidate for office. “It makes for great TV, but how do you trust someone who’s already flip-flopped on key issues such as Common Core, the second amendment and repealing Dodd-Frank.”

Handel was referring to Perdue’s contention that the Common Core education standards, which many tea party conservatives deride as government overreach, were a good idea but were poorly implemented and Georgia was right to pull out of the testing portion.

Perdue also expressed concern about allowing guns on college campuses and has said he can’t promise to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, given the political difficulties involved, but he does oppose it.

Kingston competes the most with Perdue for support among the business-minded crowd. The 11-term congressman pointed out that the nation’s largest business lobby, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, backed him over a certain Fortune 500 CEO.

“If someone’s business record is so good and so complete, perhaps they’re concerned about some of the shady business dealings and some of the layoffs and some of the golden parachutes,” Kingston said.

The remark drew a few groans and “ooohs” from the audience.

Kingston is taking the same approach in paid media, including a television ad that references Perdue’s $1.3 million payout from textile manufacturer Pillowtex as the North Carolina company went under. Kingston’s ad riffs on Perdue’s indelible “babies” advertisements that depict the other Republicans in the race as whining infants. Kingston’s ad imagines Perdue as yet another baby, eating too much cake and soiling himself.

Perdue kept his calm demeanor and avoided specific attacks, beyond his theme that the other candidates have not been able to solve Washington’s dysfunction.

“The career politicians in this race have been in elected office for 63 years,” Perdue said. “If they were going to make a difference, wouldn’t they have done it already?”

The debate was the seventh — and final — matchup sponsored by the Georgia GOP. But the candidates are still getting together twice more for televised debates in Atlanta, including today on Georgia Public Broadcasting and next week for Channel 2 Action News.

In the shadow of massive Fort Benning, the candidates were asked about military cuts, and all vowed to protect Georgia bases. Rep. Paul Broun, an Athens Republican, positioned himself firmly against any future Base Realignment and Closure, saying, “We should not ever close another base in this country as far as I’m concerned.”

Broun, who owns an arch-conservative voting record in the U.S. House and often spurns Republican leaders, whipped out his pocket Constitution to accuse his opponents of proposing policy that violates it. His platform includes eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency.

Art Gardner, an Atlanta attorney who has taken a more moderate path on many issues, replied “Getting rid of the EPA is the stupidest thing I’ve heard tonight.” He provoked laughs from the partisan crowd by saying “climate change is real,” but quickly fell in line with the rest by saying he’s not sure humans are causing it.

The candidates tried to one-up each other in hitting the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Perdue called it “the worst thing in American history, legislatively.”

Rep. Phil Gingrey of Marietta has vowed not to seek re-election if the law is not repealed in his first term if he wins the Senate seat.

Addressing other candidates he said: “Take the same pledge. Put some accountability, some skin in the game.” He had no takers.

On big-ticket federal entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, the Republicans generally agreed that they should be overhauled for future generations.

Derrick Grayson, a minister and MARTA engineer from Stone Mountain, took the boldest approach — get rid of them. Grayson said those who have already paid into the programs should get their money back, but “I would like to see retirement programs taken away from the federal government.

“Why do we continue to mess with the government when it comes to our livelihoods, our civil liberties and our freedoms? They’ve failed us time and time again.”