Perdue brings problem-solver reputation to campaign

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THE GOP SENATE RACE

This week The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is running profiles of the leading Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate. Here is a schedule of when each story will appear:

Tuesday: U.S. Rep. Paul Broun

Wednesday: U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey

Thursday: Former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel

Friday: U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston

Saturday: David Perdue

David Perdue has made his name and his fortune in the boardroom.

Now the former chief executive of Reebok and Dollar General is trying to add politics to his resume with a run for the U.S. Senate.

The 64-year-old is campaigning as an outsider even as he capitalizes on a last name that’s famous in the Georgia GOP: He’s a first cousin of Sonny Perdue, the first Republican governor in the state since Reconstruction.

Perdue has emerged as a top contender in the race for the GOP nomination, packed with three congressmen and a former secretary of state. He has led or been near the top of recent polls talking up his real-world business experience as the antidote needed in Washington to create jobs.

“I’m not in this for my ego. I’m not in this for my resume. And I’m certainly not in it for my pocketbook,” he told the South Gwinnett Rotary Club in Lawrenceville at a recent campaign stop.

“I’m here for one reason: because we have a full-blown economic and financial crisis on our hands.”

The national debt and congressional term limits are the cornerstones of his campaign. And he’s willing to sink his substantial wealth into the effort, investing more than $2.6 million of his own money in loans and donations to his candidacy, according to campaign finance disclosures.

Friends describe Perdue as a proven, pragmatic problem solver, not an ideologue.

“He’s not a Ted Cruz,” former co-worker Lloyd Davis said, referring to the U.S. senator and tea party favorite from Texas.

“He’s not going to burn down the building to make a point.”

Perdue grew up in Middle Georgia, the son of two schoolteachers. It was a modest, middle-class upbringing filled with family. He worked on the Perdue family farm during the summers.

“It was a pretty idyllic 1950s childhood,” Sonny Perdue recalls.

David Perdue earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Georgia Tech. He and his wife, Bonnie, whom he has known since elementary school, have gone on to have two sons and three grandsons.

Perdue started out as a management consultant and moved into the corporate world taking executive positions for Haggar and Sara Lee, among others. In 1998, he landed at athletic giant Reebok, where he worked his way up to chief executive officer. The work took the boy from Warner Robbins around the globe with stays in Asia and Paris. It also opened him to charges from critics that he’s a proponent of overseas outsourcing, something he denies.

Perdue developed a reputation as a corporate “fixer” and went on to lead Pillowtex, a financially troubled North Carolina textile company. He left after less than a year at the helm, and the company folded just months after he departed, leaving thousands jobless. He landed at Dollar General and is credited with modernizing the family-owned chain of discount stores. A leveraged buyout he helped engineer of the Nashville, Tenn.-based company led to him receiving a $42 million payout over two years.

His worth is estimated at between $11 million and $48 million, according to congressional financial disclosures, which use broad categories of wealth.

Since leaving Dollar General in 2007, he’s moved to Sea Island and runs a pair of investment groups. In 2011, then-Gov. Perdue appointed his cousin to the powerful board of the Georgia Ports Authority.

That move raised eyebrows, especially when the cousins founded Perdue Partners in 2011, soon after Sonny Perdue left office. Perdue Partners deals in exporting (along with trucking and business consulting), still David Perdue remained on the ports board for nearly two years after the company launched. His campaign said the company has no business with the ports and ships primarily to Asia through West Coast ports.

Still, for all his success, Perdue’s decision to run for elected office surprised those who knew him.

“Shocked me,” said Neal Purcell, a friend and former neighbor in Atlanta. “I can’t ever really remember talking politics.”

Since returning to Georgia, he’s only voted twice: in the 2012 presidential primary and the 2012 general election, records show.

Perdue likens himself to a politician such as Thomas Jefferson or Dr. Bill Frist of Tennessee, who’ve had full lives apart from politics.

The outsider status has helped distinguish Perdue in a race full of political vets. But it’s also resulted in some rookie missteps.

In January, he was captured on videotape at Republican headquarters in Bibb County taking a poke at Karen Handel’s lack of a college degree. Handel pounced, suggesting the jab showed the millionaire was out of touch with working-class Georgians.

Perdue is not a natural, backslapping pol and can quickly lapse into wonky economics speak.

But Sonny Perdue said his cousin has gradually improved on the stump.

“He’s a CEO and he’s used to calls with analysts where he has to be very guarded, very careful with what he says to protect the company’s image,” the former governor said.

“I hope what voters get to to see the warm, bright family man I know,” he said.