(John Ransom, Headline USA) Former US Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., told Georgia voters that the 2020 election for president was “rigged and stolen” from President Donald Trump, during a GOP debate for governor of the state.
Purdue is challenging Gov. Brian Kemp, also a Republican, in the 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary.
“First off, folks, let me be very clear tonight, the election in 2020 was rigged and stolen,” Perdue began his opening statement, according to Newsweek.
Purdue then blamed his own defeat in 2021 on Kemp.
“You’re the top cop in this state. It’s your responsibility to make sure we investigate voter fraud,” charged Purdue, according to WSB radio in Atlanta.
Although Perdue actually prevailed in the Nov. 3, 2020, race with 49.7% of the vote, Georgia elections require that any elections where no candidate receives at least 50% must go to run-off.
The Jan. 5 special election that removed a libertarian candidate from the ballot was, nonetheless, subject to the same rules the November general election, including many dubious changes that had been implemented through executive action—under pressure from activist Stacey Abrams and Democrat lawyer Marc Elias—without approval from the state legislature.
Purdue was ultimately defeated by Democrat Jon Ossoff in the runoff election with just 55,000 votes separating the winner and the loser, according to the final tally at the Washington Post.
“[T]he only reason I’m not in the United States Senate is because you caved in and gave the elections to Stacey [Abrams] and the liberal Democrats in 2020,” Purdue told Kemp, said WSB.
Kemp fired back: “Weak leaders blame everybody else for their own loss instead of themselves.”
Kemp noted that prior to becoming governor he was secretary of state in Georgia for eight years and that he knew a little bit more about the state’s election laws than Purdue.
It’s a theme that will become more common as the primary seasons roll through the various states.
At least 20 Republicans who have made charges of vote fraud in 2020 are running in various primaries to be the “top election cop” in secretary of state primaries around the country, said an analysis by NPR.
The effort seeks, in part, to counterbalance George Soros’s long-running “Secretary of State Project,” which has succeeded in installing radical leftists officials in states like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
All, like Georgia, played a key role in interfering with normal election procedures in the leadup to the 2020 race, under the pretence of pandemic emergency orders, and later running interference as Trump and his allies sought to challenge the suspicious outcomes.
While it is unclear whether Kemp or Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been compromised by leftist dark-money operatives such as Soros, Raffensperger has been linked to Chinese donors, whom he thanked in Mandarin following his election.
He is currently being challenged by Trump-backed Republican US Rep. Jody Hice.
Democrats, did not altogether escape the night unscathed from Perdue’s rhetoric, although he tried to tie everything the Biden administration has done back to Kemp.
“All the madness we see from the Biden administration… all that started here in Georgia when our governor caved and allowed radical Democrats to steal our election,” charged Perdue, according to Newsweek.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
