Former Sen. David Perdue jumped into the Georgia governor’s race on Dec. 6 to challenge incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp. Perdue is a good man, and it is a shame that he is no longer in the Senate, but it is at least as much a shame to see him splitting the Republican Party in the closely contested gubernatorial race. It would have been much better had he not done so.
It is worse that he is doing so as the chosen candidate of former President Donald Trump, who destroyed Perdue and his party’s chances in the state in the 2020 runoffs by discouraging Republican voters in claiming the vote was rigged and worthless.
And it is even worse that Perdue, by running, is facilitating Trump’s effort, not for the first time, to use the GOP for his own gain. The former president will not admit he lost Georgia in the presidential election and blames Kemp for his defeat. He wants revenge, and his method of taking it, pushing Perdue into this challenge, could very well gift the governor’s mansion to Stacey Abrams and the Georgia Democrats.
The 2020 Georgia election was not stolen. Post-election data show the black vote fell as a percentage to its lowest level since 2006. The truth, unacceptable to Trump, is that he lost because his rival, Joe Biden, won huge percentages of wealthy, white, college-educated voters in Atlanta’s suburbs.
Trump pressured Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the election results and call for a special election. Kemp and Raffensperger treated Trump’s voter fraud claims professionally and responsibly, opening more than 250 cases into alleged fraud. None was found.
Trump filed lawsuits demanding that Kemp and Raffensperger decertify the election and let the state Legislature choose Georgia’s electors instead. One Trump lawyer told Georgia Republicans not to bother voting in January’s runoff elections for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats. Both GOP candidates ended up losing largely because of depressed turnout among Trump voters.
Perdue beat his Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, in the general election 49.7% to 47.9% but was forced into a runoff because he fell short of 50%. Never one who enjoyed campaigning, Perdue declined to debate Ossoff, allowing his opponent to claim the incumbent was frightened because he’d stumbled during their general election meetings. Ossoff went on to win the runoff 50.6% to 49.4%.
Trump was a historically effective president in several specific ways. He saved the Supreme Court from a hard-left turn and pushed the Republican Party to listen to voters on important issues such as China and illegal immigration. He also taught Republicans to fight, showing them it was more effective to battle liberal outrages head-on rather than shying away from them, as they had previously done, preferring genteel defeat to ugly victory.
But Trump also did significant damage to the GOP, producing huge losses in the 2018 elections and driving legions of suburban voters away in 2020. He showed what success could be achieved with confident and combative fighting against the Left, but he never distinguished this from bullying and self-interest.
Now, Trump has persuaded Perdue to join a race that, as recently as this summer, he promised he would not enter. The result is that Georgia Republicans face an expensive and backward-looking primary fight. The only issue separating Kemp and Perdue is the 2020 election. Kemp wants to move forward; Perdue is the champion of relitigating the past. The big winner of Perdue’s announcement is Abrams, another politician incapable of admitting she lost. With Trump’s help, however, she may finally win.
