Nunn casts Perdue as Mitt Romney as 2012 theme reappears

Like so many summer blockbusters, the Michelle Nunn ad hitting Georgia television screens is a sequel.

Republican businessman David Perdue is cast as a more sinister Mitt Romney in almost a shot-for-shot remake of an anti-Romney ad from 2012.

As Republicans couple Nunn with her fellow Democrat, President Barack Obama, the presidential election lives on in the contentious race for Georgia’s open U.S. Senate seat. The last time, Obama kept the presidency, but Romney won Georgia without a fight.

The Romney-Perdue comparison is not exact. Perdue is a political unknown making his first run for office, while Romney had the experience – and baggage – of serving as governor of Massachusetts and running for president once before.

And while Romney had a privileged upbringing as the son of a governor, Perdue’s parents were a teacher and a school principal, though the family also had a farm.

Romney made millions at the private equity firm Bain Capital, nurturing startups or taking over older firms, and depicted himself as a turnaround artist. Perdue had the same reputation, but he was the one in charge as the CEO of brands such as Reebok and Dollar General.

Similar approach, same firm

Both had businesses succeed and fail on their watch. Political attacks emerged when they would collect big paychecks as workers lost their jobs in upheaval spurred by globalization.

That sentiment is powerfully evoked in the twin ads. In 2012, the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA put out an ad in which a worker describes a paper plant closing in Indiana after Romney had invested in the company.

Last week, the Nunn campaign released an ad in the same style — as first pointed out by The Washington Post — with narration by workers laid off from one of Perdue's companies, the now-defunct North Carolina textile maker Pillowtex. Both ads were made by the same Philadelphia-based firm.

Georgia Republican strategist Joel McElhannon said the message will not play as well in conservative-leaning Georgia as it did across the country in 2012.

“Your average independent voter in Georgia, they tend to lean Republican, tend to lean more right on the political spectrum,” said McElhannon, who is a consultant for the Georgia GOP. “They don’t fall for the class-warfare arguments quite as often, so I don’t see how it gets (Nunn) very far.”

Atlanta Democratic strategist Tharon Johnson coordinated Obama’s campaign in the South in 2012 and is now advising the Nunn campaign. Johnson said he considers the digs against Perdue to be even more powerful.

“Unlike Romney, David Perdue was at the top level of leadership of these companies where he was making all of these decisions,” Johnson said.

The president is featured prominently in Perdue's speeches and in TV ads produced by outside groups. The National Republican Senatorial Committee's $2.5 million ad campaign declares that Nunn would be "Obama's senator, not yours."

Nunn has sought to distance herself from Obama at times by advocating a more muscular foreign policy and calling for changes to his signature health care overhaul.

Strategy is a rerun

Perdue’s campaign is confident that the Romney line will not stick because Perdue beat back similar claims in a raucous Republican primary.

“One of the advantages we had of going through a tough primary is that people got to know David on a deeper level and understand the kind of person he really is: He’s not Mitt Romney, or anyone else for that matter. He’s David Perdue,” Perdue campaign strategist Derrick Dickey said. “… We dodged some arrows that were slung our way during that process, and now we’re in a really solid position.”

Dickey said Nunn’s contention that Perdue is a “greedy corporate type” is not believable and a sign that “they can’t win on ideas.”

Many of the anti-Perdue attacks were deployed during the primary, particularly when it comes to Pillowtex. Perdue came in as CEO as the company was emerging from a bankruptcy with designs on turning it around but he left eight months later. The company then went under in the biggest mass layoff in U.S. textile history.

Perdue told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last year that he was not aware how severe the company's financial problems were before he took the job, and it proved to be beyond saving.

During the primary runoff, U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah sent a mailer with a cartoon Perdue jumping out of a plane marked "Pillowtex" with a parachute made of dollar bills. Perdue made $1.3 million the year the company went out of business.

Primary vs. general election

A Republican primary audience is a tougher one for attacks on business practices. In 2012, Romney foe Texas Gov. Rick Perry called Bain Capital an example of "vulture capitalism." It didn't stick with primary voters, but the Obama campaign pushed similar themes in the general election.

Johnson, the Democratic strategist, said it can work again.

“Middle-class workers and voters are going to pay close attention to this race because they will show how out of touch David Perdue is with most Georgians,” he said.

The "out of touch" accusation against Romney was reinforced with his infamous comments that he does not worry about the "47 percent" of voters who would automatically side with Obama because they "believe the government has a responsibility to care for them."

During the primary, Perdue dismissed former Secretary of State Karen Handel as "the high school graduate in this race" because she did not finish college. Handel and others charged Perdue with elitism, an epithet that remains embedded in the Democratic case against him.

Emory University political science professor Merle Black said the Romney strategy has shown a newly aggressive Nunn after she came off as “bland” while the Republicans were choosing a nominee.

“These messages by the Nunn campaign are aimed at making Perdue just unelectable among independents and certainly a lot of Democrats,” Black said. “The Nunn campaign has made a transition to the general election much swifter than Perdue has done. Perdue could recover from that, but he’s got to go negative, too, now.”

Romney took Georgia by 7.8 percentage points in 2012, and midterm years tend to feature a larger share of Republican-leaning voters.

In order to fulfill her campaign path to victory of winning 30 percent of white voters, Nunn must woo centrist Romney voters. Several business leaders have given money to both Romney and Nunn, who touts herself as a moderate in the same vein as her father, four-term U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn.

James S. Grien, the CEO of TM Capital, is one of those Romney-Nunn donors and serves as Nunn’s campaign treasurer. Grien said their long personal relationship since she helped found the volunteer service nonprofit HandsOn Atlanta convinced him that Nunn is the best choice.

Grien said he did not want to speak ill of Perdue or wade into the tactics of comparing him to Romney.

“There are a lot of things that go on in a political race that probably rub a lot of people the wrong way,” Grien said. “But what I’m really focused on and the reason that I’m supporting Michelle Nunn is because I believe in the big picture she brings the right set of skills, the right set of experiences, the right pedigree.”