Republican Perdue eyes fresh Senate run in 2022, says Georgia 'not a blue state'

[February 17, 2021]  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Republican U.S. Senator David Perdue, who lost his seat last month in a hotly contested Georgia run-off vote, said on Tuesday he was considering running again in 2022, this time against newly elected Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock.

Perdue narrowly lost his Senate seat in a runoff race against Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff. Ossoff and Warnock won in a political earthquake that resulted in Democrats seizing control of the Senate from the Republicans, who had held the chamber since 2015.

Their unexpected twin victories came after President Joe Biden narrowly carried Georgia, a seismic change in a state that also elected hard-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had espoused the QAnon conspiracy theory.

"Georgia is not a blue state," Perdue wrote in a statement posted on Twitter. "It is imperative that Republicans regain the majority in the U.S. Senate in 2022."

The victories by Biden, Ossoff and Warnock followed a near-win of Georgia's governorship by voting rights activist and former state legislator Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp in 2018.

U.S. Senator David Perdue (R-GA) attends a campaign event as he runs for reelection at the Olde Blind Dog Irish Pub, in Milton, Georgia, U.S., December 21, 2020.REUTERS/Al Drago/

The near victory gave Abrams a national profile. She has not yet said if she will run for governor again in 2022, but Kemp allies have launched a "Stop Stacey" group in anticipation.

While Ossoff was elected to a full six-year term, Warnock was elected to serve the remainder of former Republican Senator Johnny Isakson's term and will need to face the voters for another election in 2022.

(Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Scott Malone and Dan Grebler)

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