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- Former Sen. David Perdue will challenge Gov. Brian Kemp in the Georgia governor’s race, per the AJC.
- The contest between the two conservatives will set up an epic clash in the Republican primary.
- Whoever emerges from the race will face likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams.
Former Sen. David Perdue will challenge Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia’s gubernatorial primary next year, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, setting up a blockbuster contest in one of the most politically-competitive states in the country.
Perdue, a businessman who had reportedly been prodded by former President Donald Trump to enter the race, will now go up against Kemp as the incumbent governor was gearing up to challenge Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams, who last week announced her decision to run for the the position again after narrowly losing to Kemp in 2018.
The former senator served in the upper chamber for one term before being ousted by Democrat Jon Ossoff in a Senate runoff election earlier this year.
Kemp has seen his standing among conservatives deteriorate after months of attacks from former President Donald Trump, who continues to propagate allegations that the incumbent governor didn’t stand firm on election integrity in 2020.
Perdue’s entry into the race reflects Trump’s continued influence in the Republican Party, and the result of the primary will be one of the biggest indicators of whether his personal distaste for Kemp will override the governor’s otherwise solid conservative credentials when it comes to policy.
In the upcoming primary, the governor can point to his signature on a GOP-backed restrictive voting bill that was approved earlier this year and an anti-abortion law that was passed last year.
But with Trump’s involvement in the race, those accomplishments may not matter.
Republicans are angling to hold on to the Governor’s Mansion in a state that for years had been a conservative redoubt, but where Democrats have been ascendant due to the exponential growth of Atlanta’s suburbs.
Abrams, who lost the 2018 contest by only 1.4 percentage points, played an instrumental role in registering hundreds of thousands of new voters in the state over the past decade — and was a key surrogate for Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in their runoff victories earlier this year.
Perdue, who found himself in the political wilderness after his runoff loss, will now seek a political comeback that might put the Georgia GOP on stronger footing for the general election or divide it even further.
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