Republican U.S. Senator David Perdue appears in a video as U.S. President Donald Trump campaigns with Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler on the eve of Georgia's run-off election in Dalton, Georgia, U.S., January 4, 2021. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/Files
Dec 20 (Reuters) - Since announcing his candidacy for the Georgia governorship earlier this month, Republican David Perdue has wasted no time in releasing ads that revive former President Donald Trump's false voter fraud claims and filing a lawsuit seeking to inspect absentee ballots from the 2020 presidential election.
The former U.S. senator's focus on what Republicans assert is election integrity will provide an early litmus test in the 2022 midterm contests for how such messaging resonates with voters in the post-Trump era. Republicans across the country have enacted new curbs on voting access and sought to expand control over election administration in the wake of Trump's disproven stolen-election claims.
But Republicans in Georgia are split over whether Perdue's rhetoric and attacks on the state's sitting Republican governor, Brian Kemp, will hurt the party's chances in what is expected to be a fierce general election fight against Democrat Stacey Abrams, a nationally-known voting rights activist.
"Perdue is signaling his loyalty to the Trump tribe," said Carl Cavalli, a political science professor at the University of North Georgia.
"If Kemp wins by a large margin, it may mean the whole voter fraud drama does not have...
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