No sooner had David Perdue wrapped up the GOP’s Senate nomination Tuesday night than he made clear his strategy against Democrat Michelle Nunn: tie her at every turn to President Barack Obama.
“She’s an outsider, and I’m an outsider,” Perdue told reporters. “Now we get to talk about the failed policies of this administration and really talk about the options we have as a country. There are two clear choices: more taxes, less taxes. More growth, less growth. Obamacare or a better health-care system. Those are opportunities that we are going to have, to prosecute their record and talk about alternative solutions.”
Not to be outdone, left-wing attack groups began branding Perdue less than 15 minutes after he was declared the winner of his primary run-off against U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston.
“Georgia, Meet Mitt Romney Lite,” began an email sent at 11:05 p.m. Tuesday by a group called American Bridge. It described Perdue as “an elitist millionaire with a checkered business record and an inability to understand the concerns of working families.”
This is a somewhat odd choice: The real Romney won Georgia two years ago, by an 8-point margin that suddenly seems impressive. A replay of 2012 doesn’t seem like a winner for the state’s Democrats.
Still, it’s hardly a surprise. A couple of weeks before the runoff, I asked Perdue how he would respond to such attacks if he were to become the GOP nominee.
“I was born to a mother and father who were school teachers, public school teachers. We grew up very modestly. I worked on our family farms. I worked my way through Georgia Tech,” he said, adding his wife, Bonnie, also worked her way through Georgia State.
His career since then, he said, has been a series of one risk and challenge after another.
“I moved my teen-aged (children and) family to Asia and opened up the first Asian headquarters office for Sara Lee. That had high risks,” he said. “I went to a Reebok that was in a terrible state financially. With the help of a lot of people, we collectively turned that around. Same thing at Dollar General.
“And so I built a career on trying to go places that were in trouble and trying to help. You couldn’t do that and be successful if you weren’t the kind of empathetic leader that listened to your customers, your employees, your stakeholders, your bondholders, your investors – all those.”
Those experiences have hardly made him out of touch, he argued.
"Matter of fact," he said, "in business, I think it's a prerequisite that you have to be in touch to be successful anymore. Particularly in consumer-oriented (industries), which I spent my career in."
OK, how about being accused of a role in the GOP’s supposed “war on women”? We know that’s coming from Democrats, too.
“The number one issue of mothers in this state is jobs and the economy,” he said, specifically referring to parents who have lost jobs and adult children who can’t find one after leaving school and have had to move back home.
“They really are concerned. I’m out talking to them all the time. So this ‘war on women’ is an idle chant by people who aren’t in touch with what people are really concerned about.”
