Can't say I'm that surprised but it does say a lot when you're a Republican running in a red state and you need this guy to help you out:
http://onlineathens.com/...
Mitt Romney will be heading to Georgia on Wednesday, raising money for Senate candidate David Perdue as the former Dollar General CEO looks to hold a key seat for Republicans this year.
Perdue spokeswoman Megan Whittemore says the former GOP presidential candidate will be attending a closed fundraiser for the campaign. Romney will later appear at a campaign event for Attorney General Sam Olens, an early Romney supporter during the 2012 presidential race.
That year, Romney won Georgia with 53 percent of the vote to 45.5 percent for President Barack Obama. - Online Athens, 9/30/14
Now there are several reasons Perdue could use Romney's help but I think the main issue here is that like Romney, Perdue likes to change up his record as a businessman:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
During a Georgia Chamber of Commerce forum on Aug. 21, Perdue talked about the best way to spur economic growth.
"We're losing our competitive edge because we're not paying attention to our infrastructure," he said. "It's one of the five basic precepts of economic development: regulatory control, educated workforce, water, cheap power and infrastructure. That’s how you grow an economy."
Perdue has cited those precepts in the past as well. But the difference was that in 2007, he attributed them to Lee Kuan Yew, the controversial former prime minister of Singapore. At the time, he also listed just four factors.
"Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's former premier and mastermind of Singapore's economic miracle of the last 40 years, once said that economic development depended on four fundamental prerequisites: (1) dependable electricity, (2) clean, potable water, (3) world-class transportation, and (4) an educated, skilled workforce. Having lived in Singapore, I can tell you that they were successful on each of these," said Perdue in a 2007 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
He added that while the United States has traditionally been able to take those elements for granted, this luxury was "coming to an end."
According to Perdue's biography, he has done business in Singapore.
Singapore's economy grew dramatically under Lee, who served as prime minister from 1959 to 1990. Over the years, he received a significant amount of praise from politicians around the world. President Barack Obama has called him "an outstanding friend and ally of the United States for many, many years," and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair described him as "the smartest leader I ever met."
But Lee's regime was also often criticized for its strict controls. In 2000, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof said "many in the West" found his "authoritarian policies ... harder to stomach." National Geographic has called Lee's model "a unique mix of economic empowerment and tightly controlled personal liberties."
Lee aggressively cracked down on Communist sympathizers, stifled dissent and became famous for harsh policies such as a "ban on chewing gum and the caning of people for spray-painting cars." In 1997, the late conservative columnist William Safire wrote in The New York Times that Lee had overseen an "ultra-orderly economy and anti-democratic politics." - Huffington Post, 9/30/14
So yeah. Perdue has been getting some bad press lately for trying to accuse Michelle Nunn (D. GA) of aiding terrorists but Nunn has been fighting back:
http://www.msnbc.com/...
In Georgia’s competitive U.S. Senate race, Michelle Nunn (D) found herself in this exact situation. Republican David Perdue recently approved a National Republican Senatorial Committee attack ad that accused Nunn of funneling money to terrorists while leading former President George H.W. Bush’s Points of Light Foundation. Neil Bush, the former president’s son, called the attack “ridiculous” and “shameful,” adding that the allegations make his “blood boil.”
As Benjy Sarlin reported, Nunn is trying to turn Perdue’s attack against him, making his dishonesty a campaign issue.
Georgia Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Michelle Nunn is out with a new TV ad in which she directly rebuts her Republican rival David Perdue’s claim that she “funded organizations linked to terrorists” while running former President George H.W. Bush’s Points of Light Foundation.
“That’s a terrible lie and an insult to the millions of volunteers I worked with to make a difference,” Nunn says in the new ad. “David Perdue’s ad has been called the worst in America and President Bush’s son called it ‘shameful.’”
Nunn’s pushback has the benefit of being true. Bush’s Points of Light Foundation directed grants to a problematic entity called Islamic Relief Worldwide, but additional research helped show that “the grants referred to funds that eBay sellers donated, not the foundation itself.” - MSNBC, 9/29/14
Nunn has also been getting some help from her father on the campaign trail:
http://www.accessnorthga.com/...
Obama lost Georgia twice, in no small part because of whites who once backed "Southern Democrats" such as Sam Nunn. That makes the elder Nunn a central part of his daughter's defense against Republican attacks that she's a "rubber stamp" for the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"Sam Nunn was, number one, extremely likable from a personality standpoint," said GOP campaign consultant Chip Lake, a Georgia native and lifelong Republican. "He just was Georgia to so many people. ... I don't think Michelle can duplicate that in this environment, but it's smart for them to try."
Sam Nunn dismisses the GOP assault as lazy.
"A Senate race is not about a president," he told The Associated Press. "I tell people if they think Michelle is the best candidate then they ought to vote for her," he adds, with a middle Georgia accent noticeably absent in his daughter. She grew up in suburban Washington before settling in Atlanta as a young adult.
"People used to ask Sen. (Robert) Byrd how many presidents he'd served under," Sam Nunn said, recalling the West Virginia Democrat who served 51 years. "His answer was he ain't never served under any. He served with presidents."
A 144-page strategy memo, written by consultants for Michelle Nunn and accidentally made public, listed "Senator Nunn" among the few recipients, confirmation of his place at the campaign's core. The document also named the former senator, a pivotal figure in foreign and military affairs while in Washington, as one of the candidate's defense policy advisers.
"I'm glad to have my father here with me today," Michelle Nunn told voters on a day she spent highlighting Georgia's military installations.
She turns his influence into a laugh line when the former senator isn't around. "My dad has called me twice today already," she told a friendly crowd in Athens.
He made a cameo in one of her early television ads, recounting his days as a high school basketball player in Perry, about 100 miles south of Atlanta. - AP, 9/27/14
Of course changing demographics are key to who wins this race and even Perdue knows this:
http://www.wral.com/...
Washington is at the heart of a fierce partisan battle to shape Georgia's November midterm electorate, as Democrats try to recruit more minority voters to the polls in this increasingly diverse state. Republicans, meanwhile, are seeking just enough "persuadable" voters to maintain the GOP's electoral advantage amid Georgia's tense, shifting political landscape.
The outcome will help determine control of the U.S. Senate, as Democrat Michelle Nunn and Republican David Perdue tussle for an open seat, with Libertarian Amanda Swafford also on the ballot. Separately, GOP Gov. Nathan Deal looks to withstand a challenge from state Sen. Jason Carter, grandson of former President Jimmy Carter.
Perhaps just as important as those marquee races, the election will serve as an early scorecard for both major parties in a state poised to join North Carolina and Virginia as Southern presidential battlegrounds — perhaps as soon as 2016.
"The more black and brown people, the more pressure we put on Republicans and Democrats to take our political strength seriously," said the Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King once preached. Warnock backs Democratic-aligned registration and turnout efforts, but said the matter goes beyond party. "You don't want to be in a situation where one party can ignore you and the other can take you for granted," he said.
Nunn's campaign, according to an internal memo, set a goal of winning 150,000 more black votes than the 700,000 Democrat Roy Barnes received in 2010 when he lost to Deal. Nunn also wants about 5,000 new votes from Asians and Latinos. Democrats are targeting about 869,000 eligible-but-inactive black, Asian and Latino voters. And they're hoping that five black women running for statewide offices will help boost minority turnout.
Republicans counter with an effort aimed at about 275,000 nonwhites who have voted in general elections but have little or no history of casting Democratic primary ballots. "We believe those are persuadable voters for us," said Leo Smith, the minority outreach director for the Georgia Republican Party.
Democratic and Republican campaign committees from Washington have invested heavily in field offices here, with paid staffers and volunteers using national party voter databases that try to replicate turnout successes of President Barack Obama's national campaigns. Both sides are pushing their identified supporters to vote early, and each camp agrees that it will take about 1.4 million votes to win in Georgia this year.
The scramble has produced bitterness and finger-pointing. Republicans balked when local leaders in DeKalb County — a Democratic stronghold in metro Atlanta that gave Obama 78 percent of its vote in 2012 — announced plans to open Sunday voting locations.
Republican state Sen. Fran Millar called it a "blatantly partisan move," citing proposed locations near large black churches, and Millar added in an extended social media post that he would "prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters."
Democrats mocked the GOP hand-wringing, noting that the DeKalb plan is possible only because Republican Supreme Court appointees struck down a Voting Rights Act provision that required Georgia officials to submit all election protocol changes for approval by the U.S. Justice Department.
"What have Georgia Republicans come to when they are outwardly admitting to suppressing the African-American vote?" said Georgia Democratic Chairman DuBose Porter. "I suppose (Millar) would prefer a return to literacy tests or the poll tax while he's at it." - WRAL, 9/29/14
And of course this lady could have an impact on the race:
http://time.com/...
There is a nightmare scenario that keeps most politicos working on both sides of the aisle up at night: after the midterm elections, and even through the anticipated Dec. 6 run off in Louisiana, control of the Senate likely won’t be decided until Jan. 6, the date a run-off in Georgia will take place, if any one candidate fails to muster 50% of the vote. It is this scenario that Libertarian candidate Amanda Swafford, who regularly pulls 5% in most polls, relishes.
“In that situation, if we did force a runoff,” Swafford tells TIME, “I’d say that’s a clear mandate from people of Georgia for a small government and less involvement in people’s lives.”
Small government has hardly been a theme in the race between Republican businessman David Perdue and Democrat Michelle Nunn, who are competing to fill retiring Republican Saxby Chambliss’s seat. The two have spent millions firing at one another: Perdue accused Nunn of funding terrorists through her work with the Bush Family Foundation and Nunn said Perdue lost jobs and discriminated against female workers as CEO of Dollar General.
“If that nastiness continues in a run-off, the folks responsible for the run-off will probably just stay home,” Swafford says of her supporters. “And they will have to find new voters in order to win and they will be exceptionally hard.”
Perdue now leads Nunn by 3.4 points, according to an average of Georgia polls by Real Clear Politics. But Perdue has only broken the 50% threshold in one out five of the most recent polls, and he’ll need at least 50% of the vote to avoid a run-off. Swafford’s “mere presence on the ballot creates the potential for a run-off,” says Jennifer Duffy, who follows Senate races at the non-partisan Cook Political Report. “Overall, Libertarians tend to draw more from Republicans, so she is a bigger problem for Perdue than Nunn.” - Time Magazine, 9/30/14
We have a real shot here and it's clear Republicans scared but we have to make sure our base comes to vote for Nunn and help her get to 50%. So click here to donate and get involved with Nunn's campaign:
http://www.michellenunn.com/