ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — New Republican nominee David Perdue and
Democratic opponent Michelle Nunn used the first day of the general
election campaign to retool the "outsider" arguments they’ve used to
reach this point in a race that will help determine who controls the
Senate for the final years of the Obama administration.
Their first targets: each other’s private sector experience.
Perdue
was a journeyman corporate CEO; Nunn is a nonprofit executive on leave.
Neither has held public office, making Georgia’s Senate race the only
one in the country to feature two self-styled "outsiders" who now must
find other distinctions to capitalize on voter discontent.
"I do
think that our records are very different," Nunn told reporters in
Athens, a liberal enclave that is home to the University of Georgia.
Nunn,
47, is on a leave of absence as CEO of Republican former President
George H.W. Bush’s Points of Light foundation, which coordinates various
volunteer efforts.
"My record, obviously, is around building
communities, lifting people up, trying to make a difference, working in
collaboration with folks from the other side," she said in offering a
more muted version of earlier criticism from Perdue’s primary rivals who
noted that he presided over layoffs and outsourcing.
Perdue, 64, downplayed Nunn’s resume as inferior to his.
"My
issue isn’t so much how she ran that organization," he said in a
Wednesday interview. "It’s just that that leadership does not prepare
you, in my mind, to deal with issues we have in a free-enterprise
system. I want to focus on why my background is more appropriate to lead
in the Senate in regard to bringing economic and free-enterprise
solutions to fix the problems that we have with the economy today."
It
was the opening salvo of a general election matchup the day after
Perdue defeated Rep. Jack Kingston in a Republican runoff to set up one
of the nation’s most-watched races in the 2014 midterm elections.
The
prospects of Nunn, the daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn, winning in the
GOP-leaning state are tantalizing for Democrats as they try to hold
onto a majority for the last two years of Obama’s presidency.
Republicans need six seats to regain a majority and know they can ill
afford to lose retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss’s seat. A little-known
Libertarian, Amanda Swafford, also is on the Nov. 4 ballot.
Of the
dozen or so competitive races that will determine Senate control, only
Georgia’s involves two major party nominees who have never held elected
office. Perdue defeated three congressman, including Kingston, on the
way to the nomination. Nunn has built her campaign running against
Washington discord and said often that the Republican primary was "a
race to extremes." Now, both candidates must find new, or at least
modified, appeals to capitalize on voter discontent.
Besides
questioning Nunn’s credentials, Perdue focused his ire on President
Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill, a noticeable
departure from a primary campaign in which he hammered Kingston and
other longtime politicians as part of the problem in Washington.
"The
thing I am going to do is prosecute the failed record of the Democratic
administration over the last six years," Perdue said at GOP unity event
sponsored by Georgia Republicans. "She’s going to have to own up to
that and … defend fixing Obamacare. I’m going to talk about repealing
it. She’s going to talk about fixing Dodd-Frank, and I’m going to talk
about repealing it."
At her stops, Nunn massaged her usual
critique of partisan rancor to fit Perdue. "We’re going to give voters
something different, as opposed to what they saw the last nine weeks"
during the bitter Republican runoff. "Georgia’s motto is ‘Union,
Justice, Moderation,’" she reminded her supporters. "I think those are
pretty good values."
Third-party groups also injected themselves
into the general election, after spending more than $8 million on the
primary already.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
rolled out a 2½-minute online video that Nunn’s more subtle critique of
Perdue’s career. The video 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
was targeted for supporting Obama’s health care law 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."
Several Democratic senators made fundraising appeals for her Wednesday.
Nunn,
meanwhile, got a fundraising boost from baseball Hall of Famer Hank
Aaron. The former Atlanta Brave, who still lives in Georgia, asked
supporters in an email to contribute $7.55, a nod to his 755 home runs.