CAIRO — As former Sen. David Perdue welcomed the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, he also has welcomed the challenge of trying to unseat an incumbent governor.

Perdue is running for the Republican nomination for governor — but the sitting governor, Brian Kemp, a fellow Republican, is running for a second term. 

“I just don’t see how Brian Kemp is going to be able to pull together these disenfranchised voters,” he said. “They blame him for what happened — and they don’t like the fact that he’s denied anything happened. They know it happened, and the evidence is beginning to come out.”

Trump, who has enthusiastically backed Perdue, has claimed election fraud. To date, no widespread fraud has been uncovered. Perdue, however, has been steadfast in asking for a review and he expressed his displeasure with the Dominion Voting Systems voting machines.

Perdue pulled in more votes than Ossoff in the general election, but fell short of the 50% plus one threshold to retain his seat. 

Ossoff got nearly 55,000 more votes than Perdue in the January runoff. Ossoff, who had 2.37 million votes in the November general election, also drew fewer votes for the runoff. His drop-off, however, wasn’t as significant as Perdue’s, who lost more than 248,000 votes from the general election to the runoff. 

“What I’m doing is going around and reminding people that what we did in 2020 is we all got together and defeated them in the general election,” Perdue said, “and then because of the vagaries of that general election, a lot of people chose not to vote in January. I want to clean that up. The way to clean that up is to get me elected and we’ll clean this mess up.”

Perdue told supporters at the Grady County GOP headquarters that people forget the Republicans brought in more Senate votes than did their Democrat opposition in November 2020. He also reminded them that the November results would have been good enough in nearly every other state to make him the winner. But Georgia requires a majority, rather than a plurality, to win.

Perdue also pointed to his vote total in 2020, which was 480,000 more than what Kemp received for governor two yeas before.

Perdue said he believes he has a better chance of beating Abrams than does Kemp.

“How did we do that? We united the party,” he said. 

In the general election, Perdue even outpolled President Trump, by more than 700 votes. Trump, who has assailed Kemp after the election, backed Perdue as soon as he entered the race and said Perdue is the best candidate to stop putative Democrat nominee Stacey Abrams.

“She’s a disaster for Georgia. She’s a disaster for our country,” Trump said in a recorded statement. “David Perdue must win for the good of the U.S.A. David Perdue is going to win the general election big, and I mean very big.”

Perdue pointed to the number of absentee ballots in DeKalb County, about 136,000, that had only nine thrown out for signatures not matching. 

“I want to fix this voting thing once and for all. We’ve never enforced the law,” he said. 

To do that, Perdue is proposing to add an election law enforcement agency and adding outside auditing of election. 

Having the state perform its own audits, Perdue said, “is like having your fifth-grader grade his own homework.”

Perdue acknowledges it’s a tricky line to walk between calling for a look at the last election and exhorting his supporters to have enough faith in the system to go to the polls. 

“The bottom line is, whether they have confidence or not, they’ve got to vote,” he said. “We’re doing some things this time that organized efforts didn’t do in 2020. They just have to vote. If they vote and I get elected and we beat Stacey, we’ll get this cleaned up. We’ll put the election law enforcement division in, we’ll put the audit requirement in. We won’t be satisfied with a washed-down, mediocre approach to this.”

Perdue isn’t a stranger to battling in a rugged primary and then having to bring the factions together under a united GOP banner for the general election. He won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate against former U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Savannah) in a runoff. 

After his runoff win over Kingston, Perdue beat Michelle Nunn, daughter of former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, for the seat once held by Saxby Chambliss. 

Though Perdue was in a tightly-contested primary against a longtime Republican and staunch conservative lawmaker, he acknowledged this race is different since he’s going up against an incumbent in the primary.

“I’m doing it because he caved in and gave over our elections to Stacey Abrams,” Perdue charged. “And because of that, we saw the outcome.”

Perdue chastised Kemp for not calling a special session and for entering a consent decree on absentee ballot signature verifications. He said he called on Kemp to call a special session not to change the outcome but “to make sure what happened didn’t happen in that January runoff.”

The number of absentee ballots rose from a 5% in previous elections to 30% for his runoff. Perdue got more votes from in-person voting, he told supporters. But he got 300,000 fewer votes from absentee voting.

Perdue said he filed three lawsuits to fix the voting rules. 

He said the reports of “false accusations in Georgia” having been proven to be false are “lies right out of the pit of hell.”

“In last May, the judge ruled the evidence is compelling and ruled to unseal the absentee ballots in Fulton County,” Perdue said. “That’s what we want — we wanted to take a look at them.”

But the judge in the case, Perdue added, also ruled the voters did not have legal standing in the matter and threw out the suit. He has since filed suit on his own.

“I put my life on hold trying to file that suit,” he said. “It’s not false — it’s been proven in Arizona, it’s been proven in Michigan, it’s been proven in Georgia now.”

Perdue pointed to President Trump’s assertion that his campaign had been spied upon — and those claims having been dismissed by the national media — now becoming the focal point of independent counsel John Durham’s lengthy probe as telling.

“it’s so hard to get people convinced that the national media doesn’t have their best interest. This is the perfect example,” Perdue said. “What President Trump was saying about Georgia is going to turn out to be true, just like it was with Russia.”

Four years ago, Kemp got just over the threshold, getting 50.2% of the vote, to beat Abrams. He garnered more than 55,000 votes than Abrams to succeed Nathan Deal, who was term-limited from running again.

Perdue also said he will call for an end to the state income tax if elected. Neighboring states Tennessee and Florida do not have state income taxes. 

He also stressed public safety as a top priority.

“You can’t go to Atlanta, Georgia right now and feel safe,” he said. “There are things we can do about this.”

Perdue also said he encourages term limits. 

Though polls show Perdue trailing Kemp slightly now, he reminded his audience Wednesday that polls early in his Senate campaign put him at around 3%.

“I’ll live with whatever outcome we get,” he said. “The objective I have is to get a Republican in the White House in 2024 to stop this madness. Whether you vote for me or vote for Brian, you know we have to beat Stacey Abrams.”

Early voting begins May 2 for the primary, which will be held May 24.