Did Trump endorse the wrong candidate?
In an interview with Fox News on Monday (December 6th), Vernon Jones – Georgia’s gubernatorial candidate – said he believes he is “the future of the Republican Party.”
The former Democratic state representative – who switched to the GOP in 2020 after becoming former President Trump’s leading Black supporter during his reelection campaign – launched his primary challenge against GOP Governor Brian Kemp in April.
In his interview with Fox News, Jones was adamant that people knew he had stood strong for Trump and the America-First agenda.
This revelation came hours after former Sen. David Perdue entered the Republican gubernatorial race, preceded by months of very vocal encouragement by Trump.
In the hours after Jones’ interview, he suffered his first public setback; Trump, expectedly, endorsed Perdue’s bid.
In Trump’s endorsement, he referred to Perdue as “a Conservative fighter” who was not afraid of the Radical Left. He also said he believed Purdue was the only candidate in Georgia who could win against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in the 2022 election.
When questioned about the possibility of Trump backing Perdue, Jones stated that he was in it to win it. He mentioned that although he would appreciate the former president’s endorsement, it was not important to win the election. Instead, he would focus on the endorsement of the people of Georgia.
Jones also disagreed with Trump’s statements. Instead, saying that he was the only candidate capable of holding the line with the Republican Party and getting voters “enthused about coming out in record numbers, and at the same time be able to capture a significant part of the minority community, that are Democrats.”
However, beating Stacey Abrams could be a feat. As a rising star in the Democratic Party, Abrams was also a potential running mate for Joe Biden in 2020. The voting rights champion is launching her second bid for governor, which she narrowly lost to Kemp in 2018.
Taking Abrams’s track record into account, Jones believes Perdue would not be an effective opposition. He especially took aim with policies he says the former senator is taking from his “message book to voters.” One such policy is eliminating state income taxes.
He also brought up that Perdue had “been silent on election integrity,” saying he hoped the former senator followed his lead in calling for a forensic audit.
These grievances aside, Jones believes Perdue’s greatest weakness is that the former senator was defeated in his bid for a second term by Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s twin runoff elections on January 5th. Raising the matter, Jones mentioned that Perdue “had two bites at the peach and spent over $97 million … and could not beat a no-name like Jon Ossoff.”
Jones said this before asking, “What makes him think he can beat Stacey Abrams?”
