Georgia governor candidate David Perdue's PAC is helping fund the spread of election lies

Former Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue’s political action committee has made donations to candidates and groups who supported former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and who are pushing for “election integrity” legislation, a review of the his recent campaign finance filings has found.

One Georgia, the leadership PAC of Perdue, who is now running for governor of Georgia, has distributed a total of $21,250 to two candidates and three groups that have, to varying extents, trafficked in the so-called “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Perdue has consistently denied that the results of the 2020 elections were legitimate, including the result in his own lost Senate election against Democrat Jon Ossoff. In December 2021, Trump recruited Perdue to challenge incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp after Kemp had refused to help him overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia.

The largest donation Perdue has made thus far to a fellow candidate is a $5,000 contribution to former Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor in his state. Heller, who called President Joe Biden an illegitimate president in an interview last month after spending the early portion of his campaign refusing to say who he thought won the 2020 election, is one of several Republican candidates in Nevada jostling for Trump’s endorsement.

Heller is in a distant second place in the gubernatorial primary, trailing Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, the front-runner, by double digits.

Perdue also donated $1,000 to the reelection campaign of South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, whom Trump endorsed in March of last year.

On Jan. 11, McMaster announced the inclusion of a multimillion-dollar plan to audit state elections in the budget for the coming year.

“This executive budget includes three million dollars in funds for a new Election Integrity and Compliance Audit Program at the State Election Commission. This funding will provide for the hiring of new auditors at the state election committee to conduct regular and routine audits of elections,” McMaster said.

Dozens of audits, which are regularly conducted after elections, found that state and national vote counts in 2020 were correct and not marred by systemic voter fraud. Even the deeply flawed audits conducted by Republican partisans hunting for proof that the last election was stolen have confirmed that the official vote tallies were accurate.

McMaster’s plan echoes Republican efforts in Georgia, Florida, and Arizona to spend taxpayer money scrutinizing elections.

One Georgia also gave $10,000 to the Georgia Republican Party, whose chair, David Shafer, was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed an illegitimate document claiming to be the state’s rightful presidential electors, part of a multistate plan coordinated by the Trump campaign to submit fake certificates of vote to Congress in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Last year, the state party publicly rejected two of its highest-ranking members, incumbent Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, at its annual convention. It censured Raffensperger for “dereliction of his constitutional duty” and allegedly undermining the state’s election security during the 2020 election, while Kemp was booed and heckled over the presidential election.

In 2020, both Raffensperger and Kemp denied Trump’s requests to grant him Georgia’s electoral votes despite losing the popular vote. Their actions earned them the former president’s ire and sparked anger among the party’s base.

Despite Trump’s public support of Perdue and anger over the 2020 election, Kemp is still solidly in the lead, according to fundraising and polling numbers.

Raffensperger, on the other hand, is facing a strong primary challenge from the Trump-endorsed Georgia U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, who denies that Biden won the 2020 election.

Perdue’s PAC has supported two other Republican groups that have supported the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Republican Women of Forsyth County, with donations of $5,000 and $250, respectively.

Republican Women of Forsyth County, a local branch of the party, shared on their Facebook page a story published by the Federalist website that alleged the certified Georgia vote total in 2020 was incorrect.

The NRSC, which works to elect Republican senators, has committed to defending Republican “election integrity” laws, including a Georgia election law that is facing a legal challenge filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and others on behalf of a number of nonprofit organizations in the state.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the committee’s chair, awarded Trump its first “Champion of Freedom” award in March of last year.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.