Tag: jon ossoff
Trump Ally Perdue To Challenge Georgia GOP Governor Kemp In Primary

Trump Ally Perdue To Challenge Georgia GOP Governor Kemp In Primary

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Senator David Perdue plans to challenge Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in next year's election, U.S. media reported on Sunday, opening a new Republican Party rift in a battleground state that handed Democrats their current U.S. Senate majority.

Perdue intends to make his announcement in a video on Monday and file his campaign paper work at the same time, Politico and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, citing unnamed sources briefed on his plans.

Neither Perdue nor the Georgia Republican Party were immediately available to comment.

The reports said Perdue, a wealthy businessman, was recruited to run for governor by former President Donald Trump, after Kemp refused to help block November 2020 election results in the state that contributed to Democrat Joe Biden winning the presidency.

Voting rights activist Stacey Abrams announced on Wednesday that she would run for the Democratic Party's gubernatorial nomination in Georgia, her second bid for the office.

Trump's false claims about widespread election fraud have been blamed for dividing Georgia Republicans ahead of a pair of U.S. Senate run-off elections last January, in which Perdue was defeated by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff. Former Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler also lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock in the run-offs.

Responding to the Sunday media reports, a Kemp campaign spokesman blasted Perdue as "the man who lost Republicans the United States Senate."

"Governor Kemp has a proven track record of fighting the radical left to put hardworking Georgians first," Kemp spokesman Cody Hall said in a statement.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Susan Heavey; editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool)

With Ossoff Near Victory In Georgia, Democrats Closing On Control Of Senate

With Ossoff Near Victory In Georgia, Democrats Closing On Control Of Senate

With only one percent of votes still outstanding, Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff held a lead of about 16,000 votes over incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue in yesterday's Georgia Senate runoff. The historic surge of Black voters that ensured victory for Rev. Raphael Warnock -- the Democrat who won the other Georgia Senate seat from appointed Sen. Kelly Loefller in the same election -- seemed likely to boost Ossoff, since remaining votes are from Democratic precincts, according to most analysts.

Victories by both Democrats will assure their party's control of the upper chamber in Congress as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take over the White House. Although the Senate would be tied at 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, Harris would be empowered as vice president to cast tie-breaking votes that assured her party's control.

At 33, Ossoff would be the youngest member of the Senate elected in decades and the first Jewish senator from his home state.

Both Georgia Democrats had lagged in the late evening count, but pulled ahead as votes from heavily Democratic DeKalb County came in early this morning. Neither Loeffler nor Perdue have conceded with both insisting that they will ultimately prevail.

Ossoff's campaign manager Ellen Foster issued a statement that stopped just short of claiming victory.

"When all the votes are counted we fully expect that Jon Ossoff will have won this election to represent Georgia in the United States Senate," said Foster. "The outstanding vote is squarely in parts of the state where Jon's performance has been dominant."

Nevertheless, Perdue's campaign issued its own statement: "This is an exceptionally close election that will require time and transparency to be certain the results are fair and accurate and the voices of Georgians are heard. We will mobilize every available resource and exhaust every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots are properly counted. We believe in the end, Senator Perdue will be victorious."

voters

How Georgia Voters Aim To Transform America’s Future

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Vermeshia Slay burns up the phone lines these days, encouraging Georgia voters to join the burgeoning grassroots movement to transform America's future.

After delivering a crucial victory for Joe Biden in November, Slay and millions of other change-hungry Georgia voters set their sights on something even bigger.

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Georgia’s First Day Of Early Runoff Voting Breaks Record

Georgia voters are already smashing absentee ballot records as early voting begins for a pair of U.S. Senate runoff elections in the state.

Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told the Wall Street Journal on Monday, at the start of the early voting period, that it appeared the runoffs would be a "high-turnout election."

The outlet cited figures from the U.S. Elections Project, which tracks mail ballots using data from the Georgia secretary of state. The Journal reported 246,531 mail ballots had been accepted so far — a 20.1 percent return rate of requested ballots — and 1,227,285 mail ballots requested, which is a 16.1 percent request rate of registered voters, as of Monday.

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