Georgia Republicans do not appear to be rallying behind former Georgia Republican Senator David Perdue’s Trump-backed campaign to unseat Republican Brian Kemp as the governor of Georgia. Trump has appeared in Georgia to campaign for Perdue, but based on these new numbers, it clearly wasn’t enough. A new survey from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found Kemp with 53 percent of the support of likely voters compared to just 27 percent for Perdue. Although that gap is obviously substantial, Kemp has to stay above 50 percent to knock Perdue out of the running without needing to go to a run-off election, which would feature just the top two finishers from the first round. One complicating factor is that 15 percent of respondents indicated they were undecided.
New: Jan. 6 committee asks judge to expedite its legal battle against Mark Meadows, who is challenging a subpoena, including for his personal phone records. Committee proposing May briefing schedule with oral arguments in June. https://t.co/uLt1m8EuzX
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) April 27, 2022
The new poll also found that more voters had a favorable opinion of Kemp than Perdue. A full 71 percent of respondents indicated a favorable opinion of the incumbent, while just 57 percent indicated the same in Perdue’s case. There’s a lot at stake here, including issues with relevance beyond Georgia. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Kemp faced intense pressure to go along with pro-Trump attempts to undercut Joe Biden’s victory. The governor resisted these pushes — but Perdue has clearly established that he’d have been inclined to take the opposite approach. To have a swing state governor potentially willing to meddle with the presidential election outcome in the event that it’s unfavorable to them could present serious problems. What if the results were even closer than they were in 2020, meaning that a single state could have even more of an impact? At a recent debate between Perdue and Kemp, Perdue said: “First off folks, let me be very clear tonight. The election of 2020 was rigged and stolen.” So that’s what we’re working with here.
New: Proud Boys member Louis Enrique Colon — who started planning to go to the Capitol weeks before the attack in December — will cooperate with the criminal investigation into Jan. 6 as part of a plea deal, DOJ announces.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) April 27, 2022
Georgia will also have a high-stakes election for a U.S. Senate seat this year. Incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock seems likely to face off against Republican Herschel Walker, another Donald Trump ally. Walker has been caught flat-out lying about his business background. In February of this year, he claimed to have “started this little… drapery company, where I still have about 250 people that sew drapery and bedspreads for me.” In reality, the company — which Walker has referred to as both Renaissance Manufacturing and Renaissance Hospitality, both of which no longer exist — doesn’t seem to have been started or legitimately owned by him in any legally meaningful sense. Walker described a company he owned, Renaissance Man Foods, as “the largest minority-owned food company in the United States,” which doesn’t seem to be true according to any reasonable estimation. Warnock’s original victory last year helped cement Democratic control of the Senate for two years.
The court order was clear: Donald Trump is in contempt of court and must pay $10,000 a day until he complies with our subpoenas.
We’ve seen this playbook before, and it has never stopped our investigation of Donald Trump and his organization.
This time is no different. https://t.co/6P0bF03wHm
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) April 27, 2022
