Kemp, Perdue Keep Fighting About 2020 in Second Georgia Governor’s Debate

The second Republican gubernatorial primary debate between Gov. Brian Kemp and former Sen. David Perdue on Thursday was much like the first one, a drawn-out fight over Georgia’s 2020 election process.

Perdue, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, kicked off the one-hour debate, hosted by WTOC, by declaring the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen,” just as he did on Sunday in the candidates’ first debate.

“The madness we see in the Biden administration started right here in Georgia, when Brian Kemp caved and let radical Democrats steal the election,” Perdue said.

Asked during the debate what evidence he had to support the claim of a “rigged” election, Perdue first condemned the media for refusing to entertain concerns about voter fraud.

Perdue then cited a lawsuit in Fulton, a heavily Democrat county in Atlanta’s metro region, where a judge ordered ballots to be unsealed last May to review reported irregularities. That case was later dismissed.

Perdue also referenced claims of a ballot harvesting scheme, which came to light through an investigation by the election integrity group True the Vote. Conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza is releasing a movie on the alleged scheme in about a week, and the Georgia State Elections Board just issued subpoenas to True the Vote seeking information on a complaint the group filed several months ago about its investigative findings.

Perdue then reiterated grievances he shares with Trump that Kemp was complacent in allowing a court agreement — frequently described as a “consent decree” — about the signature verification process to be signed in March 2020, and that Kemp did not call a special session after the election so that the legislature could choose its own separate set of electoral college electors.

Perdue added, “Nobody this year has been prosecuted by what they did in 2020, and that’s what people are upset about. That’s how you’ve divided the party.”

Kemp replied to Perdue’s string of accusations, “Lord have mercy. There’s a lot of spaghetti being thrown on the wall.

“Again, you’re completely false,” Kemp continued. The governor detailed investigations that took place and charged that Perdue, who lost a high-stakes Senate runoff after the 2020 election, did not raise the election concerns at that time the way he is raising them now:

There’s been plenty of investigations. The GBI [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] has investigated, the FBI has investigated. I have investigated stuff in my own office that was from one of the people that you are talking to and referred that to the Secretary of State’s office and the State Elections Board, and just the other day they’ve issued subpoenas for that. But the fact of the matter is, you were the candidate on the ballot. You, by the law — which I was following, by the way, the law and the Constitution in this state when I authorized the certification that Secretary of State did — but you’re the candidate that needs to go in the courtroom. You didn’t even ask for a recount. You didn’t contest the election, and you were at home for a year and did nothing when we were passing the strongest elections integrity act in the country.

Kemp also vehemently disputed Perdue’s claims that the governor “caved” to Democrats, saying, as he has in the past, that Perdue “is lying about my record because he doesn’t have one of his own to win the next election, so that’s why he continues to focus on the last one.”

Kemp has continued to tout that he is the only candidate who has beaten Stacey Abrams, the Democrat gubernatorial candidate who narrowly lost to Kemp in her first bid for office in 2018.

Perdue beat Democrat Jon Ossoff in 2020, but did not receive the 50 percent needed for an outright victory, which forced him into a runoff. Perdue replied, “I beat Jon Ossoff by 90,000 votes. That’s twice the victory he [Kemp] had over Stacey Abrams, 500,000 votes more than he got in ’18, and in ’18 he had Trump’s endorsement. He will not have that this November.”

Perdue has been lagging well behind Kemp in recent polls. The most recent poll, commissioned by local outlet 11 Alive, found Kemp ahead of Perdue by 25 points and about five points ahead of Abrams in a hypothetical matchup.

Barring a runoff scenario, the winner of the gubernatorial primary will be decided on May 24.