‘Georgia Is Not A Blue State’: Why David Perdue Isn’t Running Again For Senate

David Perdue, who lost his Senate seat in a heated Georgia runoff election, said he won’t be seeking to regain his position, but maintained disciplined allegiance to the Republican Party.

The incumbent Perdue lost in a runoff election to Jon Ossoff in a tight race that concluded early this year. Ossoff received 50.37% of the votes compared to Perdue’s 49.63%.

In an about-face, Perdue issued a statement to his supporters saying he was not seeking political office again. The decision, he said, is a personal rather than a political decision.

Published by The Hill, Perdue said he would turn his support to Republican leadership in the state.

"As we saw in my race in November, Georgia is not a blue state,” he said. “The more Georgians that vote, the better Republicans do.”

That marks a reversal from comments made just last week on his political ambitions. Ossoff isn’t up for reelection until 2026, though sitting Sen. Raphael Warnock will have to defend his seat next year. Perdue last week said he was considering a challenge to Warnock, but his explanation struck many of the same themes as his Tuesday announcement.

“First, Georgia is not a blue state and yet, as I write this today, the people of Georgia are represented by two of the most radically liberal individuals to ever occupy a seat on the hallowed floor of the United States Senate,” Perdue said in the statement, cited again by The Hill. “They do not fairly represent most Georgians.”

Warnock won a special election to fill a seat vacated by Sen. Johnny Isakson by defeating Kelly Loeffler in the runoff. Ossof at 33 is among the youngest of the freshman class of lawmakers and Georgia’s first Jewish senator. Warnock, for his part, made history by becoming the state’s first Black senator.

After Georgia flipped to the Democrats, both in the Senate and in the presidential vote, Republicans turned inward to blame then-President Donald Trump for questioning the integrity of an election they were hoping to win.

Trump launched a relentless bid to overturn the presidential election results, honing in states such as Georgia and key battleground states in the Midwest to peddle an unproven narrative the Nov. 3 election was fraudulent.

His move backfired in Georgia. Republican voters may have stayed home, refusing to participate in an election that Trump insisted was a sham.