GA SEN: Perdue plans hug Trump and appeal to suburban moderates

[QAnonKelly]

^^^ This more or less says it all about how Perdue and the GAGOP feel, and how they're going to approach it:

Perdue said he thinks he’ll be able to win back some of those suburban voters. He argued that Trump hardly campaigned in Georgia during the presidential race, and Brian Kemp, the GOP governor, didn’t message to them, instead focusing on rural Republican turnout after emerging late from a primary runoff. Democrats flipped one suburban Atlanta House district and only narrowly lost in a second. But Perdue plans to target suburban voters rather than just ceding them to Democrats.

“They only heard one side of this argument in ’16, and they only heard one side of the argument in ’18,” Perdue said. “They’ll hear both sides of the argument in ’20.”

“He has worked the Atlanta suburbs over his tenure and continues to work them very hard,” said GOP Rep. Rob Woodall, who is retiring next year from his suburban Atlanta district after a surprisingly narrow victory in 2018. “While the governor’s race had a Republican rural strategy, David is working in every corner of the state to make sure he’s turning out the vote.”

I'd also argue that Handel has never been the most popular GOP candidate in GA, and Woodall specifically was a lazy guy who didn't even begin campaigning in earnest until he was already in substantial danger (and I imagine a huge part of why he's dropping isn't because he thinks it's unwinnable - though it probably is - but because he's lazy and doesn't want to put in the work). Perdue would have done better than Handel, Woodall and Kemp had he been on the 2018 ballot in these places.

Agree with you. I guess the next play after that is to start picking off Latinos to keep down the damage in Gwinnett. 2022 is probably the last election where the state isn’t majority minority and by I think 2030 Gwinnett is going to be the most populous county in the state. Idt Hall will ever be D but it’s the heart of the GOP in the state and even there Latinos are starting to eat into the margins.

[HarrisonL]

Georgia Senate will be a close race no matter what.

[ElectionsGuy]

He's probably making the right choice. Georgia is very much a 'base-turnout' type state, with very few persuadable voters, so I expect if Trump is winning the state narrowly so is he.

[Frodo]

I can see why he would 'hug Trump' -Democrats are going to tie him to the Orange Idiot anyway, so why bother trying to set himself apart especially if that just winds up depressing his own base in a deep southern state who absolutely love the guy?  Might as well have one last hurrah before the curtains close on the Georgia GOP. 

[QAnonKelly]

I can see why he would 'hug Trump' -Democrats are going to tie him to the Orange Idiot anyway, so why bother trying to set himself apart especially if that just winds up depressing his own base in a deep southern state who absolutely love the guy?  Might as well have one last hurrah before the curtains close on the Georgia GOP.  

Plus he probably knows the GE is gonna be tough no matter what and it makes more sense to go all in to ward off a primary. Saves him money for the GE where it will get ugly bc he has a lot of stuff to be attacked on and it’s really likely to go to a runoff.

[Adam Griffin]

Ultimately, the odds I think are as follows:

Both win > Trump loses/Perdue wins > Both lose > Trump wins/Perdue loses

It's also possible in some remote universe that Trump wins and Perdue loses, even though Trump gets a lower vote share (whether that be through a higher third-party vote share in the presidential, or Perdue botching a runoff).

Perdue is more likely to carry Trump over the finish line than vice-versa, but Perdue of course doesn't want what is already a millstone around his neck to become an even greater liability by depressing base support, turnout and dollars. I doubt he's going to go out of his way to say anything publicly rebuking the President, but that's probably the best hole through which to thread the needle in a state like GA. I don't see him gaining anything in net terms via virtue-signaling like Heller or Manchin. It's all about avoiding land-mines on both sides of the fence.

That Politico article was surprisingly transparent in terms of showing his thought process & campaign strategy:

“Republicans have made a mistake in the past by running away from this president. I don’t see any need to do that,” Perdue, the first-term Georgia senator, said in an interview. “I support this agenda. I don’t support everything he says or how he says it, but this agenda is working.”

Those 3 sentences are probably the most succinct way to summarize his thoughts - and probably the most effective strategy when dealing with the Trump effect in GA.