David Perdue waves to supporters after declaring victory in the Republican primary runoff for nomination to the U.S. Senate from Georgia at his election-night party in Atlanta on Tuesday, July 22, 2014. Perdue defeated Rep. Jack Kingston.ATLANTA – Within hours of David Perdue’s GOP Senate nomination, the real battle began with supporters of the new Republican nominee and Democrat Michelle Nunn launching attack ads in a general election matchup that will help settle control of the Senate.
Democrats wasted no time launching their first attacks against the businessman who spent at least $3 million of his own money defeating veteran Rep. Jack Kingston Tuesday night. Hours later, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee rolled out a 2½ minute online video that spliced together debate clips of Kingston and other Republican primary opponents attacking Perdue as an out-of-touch executive who enriched himself leading companies that lost U.S. jobs.
Nunn, meanwhile, was targeted for supporting Obama’s health care law and higher taxes in a new ad by the Ending Spending Action Fund, a Super PAC backed by the Ricketts family, whose patriarch, Joe Ricketts, founded TD Ameritrade and now owns the Chicago Cubs baseball team. It denounces Nunn as “the last thing Georgia taxpayers need.”
The contest is one of the nation’s most closely-watched in the 2014 elections, and the prospects of Democrats winning a Senate seat in the GOP-leaning state are tantalizing for Nunn and her party as they defend their Senate majority. But Perdue is running as a Washington outsider and has the firepower of his own wealth behind him, having sunk at least $3 million of his own money into winning the GOP nomination against veteran Rep. Jack Kingston.
“I’ve never run for anything in my life. I’m humbled,” Perdue told supporters gathered at a hotel in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.