It’s one thing to hear former U.S. Sen. David Perdue tell reporters why he’s challenging Gov. Brian Kemp in the Republican primary. It’s another to listen to him make his argument to dozens of activists.
“It’s the first time in Georgia history that a Republican is running against a Republican incumbent governor. You just don’t do that – it’s like the 11th Commandment, right?”
That’s how Perdue opened his pep talk over the weekend to the DeKalb County GOP, with a reference to Ronald Reagan’s famed admonition that Republicans should not speak ill of one another.
And while it’s factually incorrect – John Barge and David Pennington both unsuccessfully challenged then-Gov. Nathan Deal in 2014 for the GOP bid – it’s noteworthy that Perdue addresses the question of party loyalty head-on.
“I looked at this all year. Our phone rang off the hook. Our text messages, emails just blew up from people all over the state. Bonnie and I prayed about it, then Stacey Abrams got in. We said, ‘We don’t know how to do this. We don’t know if we’re going to win. But we’ve got to do this.’”
That’s when he launched into a prolonged argument that Kemp “failed” Georgia Republicans by not calling a special legislative session that could have invalidated Joe Biden’s election victory. The room lit up with applause.
(Kemp and other GOP leaders said such a move would have triggered “endless litigation” to no avail. Multiple recounts upheld Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in Georgia, and a litany of lawsuits from the former president’s allies were tossed from court.)
“I got into this race and we had some career politicians who called me and said, ‘David what are you doing? You’re going to divide the party?’ I said, it’s already divided. Get out of Atlanta … all over the state, people are rising up.”
Kemp and his aides see Perdue’s challenge as an egotistical binge that will tear the Georgia GOP apart.
”No matter how many desperate confessionals David Perdue makes across the state to patch up his own bruised ego, it doesn’t change the fact that his entrance into the Republican primary is the largest contribution to Stacey Abrams’ campaign to date,“ said spokesman Cody Hall.
”We look forward to contrasting Governor Kemp’s record of job creation and fighting for Georgians against Perdue’s long history of sending American jobs to China and lying to save his political career.”
Much of Perdue’s pitch centered on his support from Trump, who taped an introductory video for the former senator. Perdue told the crowd matter-of-factly that Trump knows that “if you’re going to have a Republican president in ‘24, you’ve got to win this governor’s race right now.”
“Why do you think I’m not running for the Senate? I looked at the calculus and I said I didn’t know that I can win if I run alongside Brian Kemp with a divided party. The whole thing is about unity.”
“The political elite guys don’t want this. The political connected don’t want this,” he added. “The people who have jobs and contracts don’t want this. They want the status quo. But guess what? The status quo is going to get our butt beat next November.”
Perdue also addressed one of the most potent arguments against him: If he couldn’t beat Jon Ossoff in the January 2021 runoff, how can he beat Democrat Stacey Abrams in 2022?
“We still produced more votes than Democrats in November,” he said of being forced into a runoff against the Democrat.
“And because lots of us lost the confidence in the voting system, they decided they weren’t going to vote. And we saw what happened in January. We’re not going to let that happen again.”
And, time and again, he tried to energize the crowd by summoning the threat of an Abrams victory.
“This is not a persuasion election. It’s a referendum. You have an incumbent governor who has divided the party and hopefully who can bring the party back together. Then you have an election in November about whether you want communism in Georgia or continued capitalism and have people first in our state, not government first.”
Before he left, he let a question to the audience linger:
“If Brian Kemp were capable, if he were ever going to be able to pull the party together, don’t you think he would have done it by now?”
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Credit: Nathan Posner
Credit: Nathan Posner
Don’t dance on the grave of the Buckhead cityhood push yet.
That’s what Senate GOP leader Butch Miller told the same DeKalb crowd when he was asked about Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan’s decision to sideline legislation that would pave the way to an Atlanta divorce.
“As Paul Harvey would say, get ready for the rest of the story.”
The legislation that’s been effectively scuttled was sponsored by GOP state Sen. Brandon Beach, who has made an enemy of himself to many Republican Senate leaders.
We hear Miller – a candidate for lieutenant governor – is working on alternate push for cityhood that will have more legs.
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In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, our colleague Tamar Hallerman has an insightful read on how his hometown plans to test the civil rights hero’s call for the concept of guaranteed income to combat widening inequalities.
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Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver remarks remotely to the Beloved Community Commemorative Service hosted by the King Center during today‘s ceremony.
The program begins at 10 a.m., and Harris’ remarks are scheduled for 11:15 a.m. Atlanta’s FOX 5 TV station will broadcast the service live, and it will also stream on the King Center’s YouTube channel, Facebook page and website.
Harris is likely to tie King’s legacy to a new push for federal voting rights legislation she and President Joe Biden spearheaded in Atlanta last week.
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Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff joined four other Democrats in competitive states in writing a letter to the White House expressing concern about the lack of a national strategy to ramp up coronavirus testing.
The group, led by Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, sent a letter to COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients requesting information about COVID-19 preparedness and asking why the White House didn’t focus earlier on increasing access to rapid and PCR tests.
“This Administration either knew or should have known that testing shortages were occurring across the country over the past several months, and with the full expectation that the virus would likely mutate into a new variant steps to increase testing access should have happened before the current wave hit, not several weeks into the surge, with resources still not available until later this month or beyond,” the senators wrote.
Other signers include Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin.
The letter follows up on a hearing last week held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions where Democrats expressed their frustration with how the Biden Administration is handling aspects of the pandemic.
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A northwest Georgia country club once kicked out a member who owned an adult novelty store. But that same country club recently let in U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene despite her high-profile controversies, the New Yorker’s Charles Bethea writes.
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Credit: Special
Credit: Special
More dominoes are falling in Democratic primary contests.
A few days after ex-prosecutor Charlie Bailey dropped out of the race for attorney general to run for lieutenant governor, the race for Georgia’s No. 2 position got a little clearer.
Bryan Miller, the grandson of Zell Miller, told supporters he was quitting the contest because it was clear he wouldn’t have the fundraising backing to win.
“As candidates, we often forget campaigns do not determine who we are, they reveal who we are,” he wrote in a memo. “As voters, we should hold our elected officials and candidates to the highest ethical and moral standards. Our future depends on it.”
Read more about the decision here.
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Our condolences to the family and friends of MARTA chief executive Jeff Parker, who died by suicide over the weekend.
Please, if you’re struggling with mental health, know that you can call the Georgia Crisis and Access Line at 1-800-715-4225, which is available around the clock. All calls are free and confidential. To find a mental health service provider, visit www.mygcal.com.
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As always, Jolt readers are some of our favorite tipsters. Send your best scoop, gossip and insider info to patricia.murphy@ajc.com, tia.mitchell@ajc.com and greg.bluestein@ajc.com.
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