Brian Kemp and David Perdue battle over polls at Georgia governor debate

In the first of three debates for Georgia's governor race, the two leading Republicans fought over who was responsible for the 2020 and 2021 Republican election losses. The former U.S. senator David Perdue is continuing his attack that Gov. Brian Kemp is responsible for Democratic control in Washington, but Kemp countered that Perdue was trying to pass the blame for his loss to Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Perdue highlighted the debunked claims that Democrats purposefully won the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 United States Senate runoffs in Georgia.

It was his opinion that the 2020 election had been rigged and stolen, said David Perdue. All the madness we observe today started in Georgia when the governor caved in and allowed the extreme Democrats to steal the elections.


Perdue claimed that Kemp permitted a settlement agreement over how signatures were verified on absentee ballots, but Kemp said he followed the law, and the secretary of state and State Election Board are responsible for investigating election wrongdoing.

As a nonparty to the settlement agreement, Kemp should have called a special session and asked lawmakers to reverse it, according to Perdue. Kemp is the "top cop" in Georgia, so he was expected to do more to investigate fraud claims, he said.

Throughout the debate, both candidates were largely on message, and their message was largely disparaging. Perdue called Kemp a flawed governor who tried to cover up his bad record. Kemp said Perdue attacked his own record in office because he did not have any, which is why he did not win the Senate race.