‘He’s gotta go’: Perdue, Gingrich make case against Gov. Kemp
MARIETTA — Tuesday evening’s stump speech from gubernatorial hopeful David Perdue seemed to suggest he’s running against two candidates at once.
The former U.S. senator, before a crowd of dozens at Cobb Republican Party headquarters, had no shortage of disdain for presumptive Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams.
“If I have to tell you why we don’t want Stacey Abrams, then I’m here for the wrong meeting,” he said of his hopeful rival.
To face Abrams in November, however, Perdue will have to knock off incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp in the May 24 Republican primary. Perdue is down 11 points against the governor according to a Fox News poll released earlier this month. And despite saying when he kicked off his campaign last year, “I like Brian,” and that his challenge “isn’t personal,” he heaped scorn on his opponent.
“He’s got to go,” Perdue declared to murmurs of approval from the crowd. “…He’s got to go because he sold us out.”
Warming up the crowd for Perdue, former U.S. Speaker Newt Gingrich said Kemp had been “taken to the cleaners” in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
“It was just all suspicious. Why would you block a special session? Why would you refuse to investigate?” Gingrich said after the event.
Kemp told the MDJ earlier Tuesday that calling a special session would have cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars, to no effect.
“They wanted to change the rules in the middle of the game. Well, you can’t do that. There’s plenty of law and precedent out there that says that,” Kemp said.
Perdue has staked much of his campaign — and his opposition to Kemp — on the claim that 2020’s election was rife with fraud, an allegation the courts have not supported and investigative agencies have said is false.
“If we had any investigation to try to get to the truth, to protect the legitimacy of our voting system, then this might be a different situation,” Perdue told the MDJ after his speech.
Multiple audits, including by the Georgia secretary of state and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, found no voter fraud in Cobb County or the state of Georgia that could have impacted the outcome of the 2020 election. But the claim remains central to Perdue’s candidacy.