Cobb Reporter

David Perdue wants Republicans to have a choice in the upcoming Georgia gubernatorial race between one candidate who is endorsed by Donald Trump and one who isn’t.

That seems to be the crux of Perdue’s campaign for governor.

Perdue, who lost his re-election bid for U.S. Senator, said he is challenging incumbent Brian Kemp to unify the state’s Republican Party and put a Trump supporter in the statehouse, according to Fox5 Atlanta. Trump has endorsed Perdue over Kemp after publicly blaming Kemp for Trump's failure to win Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. It’s among the many reasons Trump has offered for his defeat to current President Joe Biden. A recent poll by the Trafalgar Group had Kemp owning a 10-point lead over Perdue, but the poll was taken before the Trump endorsement.

"We've got a lot of work to do here to make sure everybody knows that I have Trump's endorsement,” Perdue told Fox5 Atlanta. “More than that, I want them to know my vision for Georgia."

Perdue accused Kemp of dividing the Republican Party and claims he is the only Republican who can defeat the expected Democratic candidate, Stacey Abrams.

"I tried all year to bridge this gap that divided our party and I just decided at that point that Brian Kemp was not going to be able to pull us together," Perdue told Fox5. "So, when Stacey got in, in order to avoid the train wreck of having her become governor, I decided to give Republican conservatives a choice and that's what I've done."

Perdue is using numbers to prove his point. He said he earned 2.4 million votes in his bid for re-election for the Senate. It wasn’t enough to earn him more than 50% of the vote and he lost the run-off to Democrat Jon Ossoff in January 2021.

Kemp won the governor’s seat in 2018 receiving 1.9 million votes. Perdue fails to mention a million more Georgia residents voted in the 2020 presidential election year than in 2018.

"We did that by bringing together all different parts of the Republican Party,” Perdue said of the votes he earned in 2020. “We got regular Republicans, we got new people in the suburbs and we got those people who were Trump voters.”

In addition to aligning himself with Trump, Perdue told Fox 5 his other campaign agendas are enhancing voter integrity, eliminating the state income tax, and giving parents more control over what their children learn in school. He also announced a proposal this week to institute term limits for statewide officeholders.