Former Senator David Perdue of Georgia.Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images
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Former Senator David Perdue is set to challenge Governor Brian Kemp in the race for Georgia governor, according to the AJC.
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Competition between the two Conservatives will spark an epic clash in the Republican primary.
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Those who emerge from the race are likely to face Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Former Senator David Perdue is set to challenge Governor Brian Kemp in Georgia’s primary election next year, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and launch a blockbuster competition in one of the most politically competitive states in the country.
Perdue, a businessman who was reportedly pushed into the race by former President Donald Trump, will now face Kemp as the incumbent governor prepares to challenge Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams, who announced her decision last week , back in position for running after a narrow loss to Kemp in 2018.
The former senator served one term in the upper chamber before being ousted by Democrat Jon Ossoff in a Senate runoff earlier this year.
Kemp has seen his standing among the Conservatives deteriorate after months of attacks by former President Donald Trump, who continues to spread allegations that the incumbent governor did not uphold the integrity of the 2020 elections.
Perdue’s entry into the race reflects Trump’s continued influence in the Republican Party, and the primary result will be one of the biggest indicators of whether his personal dislike for Kemp will outweigh the governor’s otherwise solid conservative credentials on politics.
In the upcoming primary, the governor can refer to his signature on a GOP-backed restrictive voting bill passed earlier this year and an abortion law passed last year.
But with Trump’s involvement in the race, those accomplishments can’t matter.
Republicans are trying to keep the governor’s mansion in a state that has been a conservative redoubt for years, but where the Democrats are on the rise due to the exponential growth of the Atlanta suburbs.
The story goes on
Abrams, who lost just 1.4 percentage points to the contest in 2018, has played a pivotal role in registering hundreds of thousands of new voters in the state over the past decade – and was a key replacement for Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in their runoff elections earlier in this year.
Perdue, who found himself in the political wilderness after his runoff election, will now seek a political comeback that could put the Georgia GOP on a stronger footing for the general election or divide it even further.
Read the original article on Business Insider