Former Sen. David Perdue of Georgia filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Monday evening to be a 2022 US Senate candidate, the first step in a potential comeback bid after a bruising loss in a runoff election last month.
Perdue is leaning toward launching another campaign, according to a person familiar with his thinking.
If he does decide to run, Perdue will face Georgia’s Sen. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Warnock and Jon Ossoff respectively beat Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and Perdue in January, flipping the Senate. The two Democrats were the first elected to the Senate from Georgia in 20 años.
Perdue said in a statement at the time, “Although we won the general election, we came up just short of Georgia’s 50% rule, and now I want to congratulate the Democratic Party and my opponent for this runoff win.”
“Bonnie and I will continue to pray for our wonderful state and our great country. May God continue to bless Georgia and the United States of America.”
Perdue’s campaign had faced considerable scrutiny after he willfully mispronounced Kamala Harris’ name. He was also forced to pull a digital ad attacking Ossoff, which showed the Democrat’s nose enlarged, a hallmark of an anti-Semitic trope.
A campaign spokeswoman at the time called the distorted image “accidental … but to ensure there is absolutely no confusion, we have immediately removed the image from Facebook.”
The spokeswoman said Perdue has a “strong and consistent record of standing firmly against anti-Semitism and all forms of hate” and co-sponsored a resolution in 2019 condemning anti-Semitism.
While the tight January political calendar meant Perdue wasn’t in office when Congress met for a joint session on the Electoral College, el dijo Fox News before the count that he sided with the objectors as he spread election fraud misinformation.
“I’m encouraging my colleagues to object. This is something that the American people demand right now,” Perdue said at the time. “There are huge irregularities in Georgia. They need to be investigated, and they need to be corrected, in my opinion.”
