Former GOP Sen. David Purdue Announces Candidacy For Georgia Governor

Brian Kemp, Georgia’s incumbent Republican governor, is now facing challenges from both the right and the left in his bid for reelection in November of 2022.

Last week, Democrat Stacey Abrams, a former Georga State Senate minority leader who narrowly lost the 2018 gubernatorial race to Kemp in a highly contentious and controversial contest that many including Abrams believe Kemp manipulated through voter suppression, declared that she will take on Kemp for a second time.

“I’m running for Governor because opportunity in our state shouldn’t be determined by ZIP code, background or access to power,” Abrams tweeted along with a two-and-a-half-minute-long video.

“Regardless of the pandemic or the storms, the obstacles in our way or the forces determined to divide us, my job has been to just put my head down and keep working toward one Georgia,” she said. “Because in the end, we are one Georgia.”

Then, on Monday, former United States Sen. David Perdue (R-Georgia) announced his candidacy for the governorship in a video posted to Twitter.

But instead of targeting Kemp directly, Perdue, who lost his Senate seat to Democrat Jon Ossoff in 2020, made Abrams, whose championing of protecting voting rights threatens the conservative movement’s modus operandi, the subject of his campaign.

“I’m running for Governor to make sure Stacey Abrams is NEVER Governor of Georgia. We need bold conservatives who will stand up to the woke left, not cave to their radical demands. Join me in this fight to Stop Stacey and Save Georgia,” wrote Perdue, a millionaire who profited off of insider stock trading as the markets collapsed during the turmoil of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Former President Donald Trump has thrown his support behind Perdue in appreciation for Perdue’s embrace of his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, which Kemp and the rest of Georgia’s GOP leadership have rejected.

If Abrams wins, she would be the first black woman governor in the history of the United States and would undoubtedly be thrust into the top-tier of potential future presidential candidates.