http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
That's rich, coming from a guy who's business took stimulus money he constantly bashed:Perdue took his swipe at Nunn in a comment cited by the Associated Press, downplaying her work as CEO of Points of Light, the foundation launched by former President George H.W. Bush to promote volunteerism."Now you've got two outsiders talking about Washington, and now you get down to the issues," Perdue said. "Let's talk about debt, the economy and jobs and who brings more value to that debate. Someone who has been running a philanthropy for 15 years or whatever, or someone who has been out here, not to go bragging, competing in the real world?"
Perdue is the former CEO of Dollar General, Reebok and the failed textile firm Pillowtex. (He is not related to the Perdue Chicken people.)
Although Nunn's background isn't in business, as head of Points of Light, she ran a massive organization.
It coordinates 250,000 service projects annually and had 4 million volunteers in 2012, according to the most recent yearly review on its site. According to the organization, the economic value of the work generated by those volunteers amounts to $635 million.
Nunn has emphasized this experience during her campaign, making it the focus of her first ad in which she mentioned Bush. - Huffington Post, 7/23/14
And is also a job killer:Georgia Senate candidate David Perdue (R), whose campaign has focused on the need to cut federal spending, is on the board of a company that received millions of dollars from the federal stimulus program.Perdue has been on the Alliant Energy Corporation's board of directors since 2001. Since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in 2009, the company received $3.4 million in stimulus funding.
That includes a $3.2 million grant to one of its subsidiaries, Wisconsin Power, for smart grid investment.
Perdue has been fiercely critical of government overspending, and his call to rein in deficit spending is a cornerstone of his campaign. His website prominently features a national debt clock, and the deficit is the first issue he discusses on both his website and in most campaign speeches.
"We have a crushing $17 trillion national debt that is growing larger and larger every day," Perdue says on his website. "And the debt keeps growing because the politicians keep spending."
He has rarely mentioned the stimulus package itself in his campaign, though a spokesman says he opposes the spending package. - The Hill, 4/19/14
http://www.theguardian.com/...
And has a history of denying women equal pay:Democratic political action committees are expected to unleash a barrage of attack ads against Perdue in the coming weeks, drawing attention to his business background, which became the focus of his Republican opponents during a bruising primary campaign.“This is someone who has spent his career tearing apart companies, cutting thousands of jobs in communities around Georgia and across the country, outsourcing jobs overseas, and becoming a millionaire while doing it,” said Justin Barasky of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
“Our strategy in Georgia will be make sure voters know that voters know that David Perdue is looking out for himself. While he is leaving companies in debt and bankrupt and thousands jobless, he has become a multi-millionaire.”
Barasky added: “He’s arrogant; he’s elitist.”
Two months ago, when Perdue triumphed in the first round of the primary, the Guardian reported that his candidacy was inviting comparisons with Mitt Romney – and Democratic operatives believe the line of attack that helped defeat Romney could be applied in similar ways in Georgia. - The Guardian, 7/23/14
http://www.motherjones.com/...
Not to mention also supports Wall Street bailouts and was ok with letting the automobile industry go under:But Perdue's record on women's issues—specifically, whether women are entitled to equal pay for equal work—is far from clean. In 2006, three years into Perdue's four-plus years as Dollar General's CEO, federal investigators at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that female store managers who worked for the company he ran "were discriminated against," and "generally were paid less than similarly situated male managers performing duties requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility." A year later, separate from that investigation, thousands of female managers who were paid less than their male counterparts joined a class action suit against the company—which Dollar General eventually settled, paying the women more than $15 million."Dollar General has set up a pay system which permits stereotypes about men and women to be used in judging their pay, performance, and salary needs," female Dollar General managers claimed in sworn statements. "This includes stereotypes about men being the breadwinner, head of the household, or just more deserving because they are men."
The case began on March 7, 2006, when Janet Calvert, the former manager of a Dollar General in Alabama, sued the company for paying her less than male managers. Dollar General, which was still under Perdue's leadership, tried and failed to prevent other female employees from joining Calvert and suing as a class. By 2008, more than 2,100 current and former employees had joined a certified a class open to women who worked as store managers for Dollar General between November 30, 2004 and November 30, 2007. (Perdue was CEO from April 2003 to summer 2007.)
The women claimed that Dollar General was violating not only the Equal Pay Act, a federal law that prohibits pay discrimination on the basis of gender, but also Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, by using compensation practices that disproportionately hurt women. For example, the company considered employees' past salary at Dollar General or other jobs when determining pay—which hurt women because they are paid less in the job market generally, and at Dollar General specifically, than men.
One plaintiff, Patty Eberle, said in a sworn statement that from 2001 to 2008, the men she trained to be store managers made more than she did as both a store manager and trainer.
"Every male manager that was hired in the Springfield, Missouri area was brought in at a higher rate than I was making as store manager," another plaintiff, Ruby Sims, said in a sworn statement. "A former district manager came into my office one day right before she quit working at Dollar General and provided me with documents detailing the excessive pay men were receiving for doing the same jobs as female managers." Sims said she complained to two male superiors. "Nothing was ever done."
The EEOC, which must green-light pay discrimination lawsuits before they can proceed in federal court, began issuing right-to-sue notices addressed to Perdue beginning in 2007. Dollar General's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for that year—Perdue's last year with the company—stated, "The Company believes that the case is not appropriate for class or collective treatment and that its policies and practices comply with the Equal Pay Act and Title VII. The Company intends to vigorously defend the action."
The next several years saw more failed attempts by Dollar General to convince the court to decertify the class. In early 2011, the company allowed the case to go to mediation. A year later, the court finalized Dollar General's agreement to pay $15.5 million toward a fund for members of the class, $2.8 million for a claims administrator, and $3.25 million in attorneys' fees. The company also committed to altering its employee compensation policies.
Dollar General faced another significant lawsuit under Perdue, brought by some 2,000 current and former employees who in 2006 claimed that the company had made them managers in name only so it could deny them overtime they would have earned as store clerks. In 2013, Dollar General agreed in mediation to pay the ex-employees up to $8.5 million. That settlement awaits court approval.
In another case, a district court forced Dollar General to pay nearly $74,000 to Martha Bryant, a diabetic employee it fired in 2004 for taking time off under the Family Medical Leave Act. Dollar General argued that the law does not prohibit retaliation against employees who take FMLA leave. Dollar General appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which upheld the district court's judgment against Dollar General. - Mother Jones, 5/20/14
And bashes people for not having college educations:
So yeah, what an asshole. Michelle Nunn (D. GA) though wasted no time hitting the campaign trail:
There is a lot of excitement for Democrats in Georgia this year:Less than 24 hours after Georgia's primary season ended, Democrat Michelle Nunn headed to the Rookery in Macon for some bacon and pimento cheese served up with a side of politics.Nunn, a Houston County native, captured the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia's May 20 primary election. Her general election, fellow Houston County native David Perdue, won the Republican nomination by defeating U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston in Tuesdays primary runoff.
Nunn hit the campaign trail in Atlanta Wednesday morning. In mid-afternoon, she arrived in Macon. "We're talking about collaboration and common sense," Nunn said. She sat down in the Rookery to discuss issues with some small business owners and field some of their questions.
Macon was the fourth stop on her tour.
Perdue also hit the ground running by attacking Nunn and trying to tie her to the Obama administration. Nunn, however, said the race isn't about the President. It's about who would best represent Georgia, she said.
"I know they're tired of what they've been hearing over the last nine weeks during the runoff," Nunn said. "I hope that we can have a different tone and a different conversation with Georgians about what it really means to create change in Georgia. - 13 WMAZ, 7/23/14
And thanks to the runoff, we have a head start:Democrats here don’t have to wait for the demographic projections to come true. The state’s voting population is already much more African-American than even 10 years ago, Latinos are on the rise, and there’s a business community relocating to the Atlanta metro area at a pace that looks a lot like the migration to Northern Virginia and the North Carolina research triangle the past 15 years that turned both states into presidential battlegrounds.Those shifts, together with the surprisingly competitive candidacies of Senate hopeful Michelle Nunn and gubernatorial contender Jason Carter, have convinced more than a few Democrats here that the Republican lock on the Peach State could be broken as soon as November.
It’s a tall task, no question: Nunn has her hands full against businessman David Perdue — who edged out Rep. Jack Kingston in the Republican Senate primary runoff Tuesday night — as does Carter in his bid to oust Republican Gov. Nathan Deal.
But a win by either Democrat would deliver a jolt so powerful that it could potentially reshape the national political landscape: Yes, Texas has its 38 electoral votes, but putting Georgia’s 16 votes in play could do just as much to complicate the GOP’s path to the White House.
“Georgia’s next in line as a national battleground state,” Carter said during a break at a campaign stop last week. “If you look at sheer numbers, people can dispute whether it’s red or blue, but everybody knows where it’s headed.”
The rumblings of change are happening, to the surprise of many, here at a Wal-Mart parking lot on the heavily African-American south side of Atlanta, where an older man nudges through a crowd to introduce his grandson to the Democrat running for governor. Jason Carter smiles — not the same toothy grin that became the unofficial logo of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign, just his top lip pulled back eagerly — as he poses for one cellphone photo after another.
“You know,” Carter says to the man, “I get introduced as a grandson all the time.”
That introduction was enough to help Carter win a state Senate seat four years ago, and enough to draw him more attention last year than most long shots against Deal would get just for entering the race.
No one was really expecting what happened next. Carter started pulling even and, according to some polls, ahead in the race. Meanwhile, in the open Senate race for Saxby Chambliss’s seat, where Republicans just finished a multi-month process of picking their nominee, Nunn has been up repeatedly over generic Republican challengers — and that, her supporters point out, is before she’s had the chance to really focus attacks on a GOP opponent. - Politico, 7/23/14
So lets keep the momentum going by donating and getting involved with Nunn and Carter's campaigns:Nunn, the daughter of a popular former senator, is among several Democratic female candidates who are showing strength as the party tries to preserve its Senate majority. She's also considered a real contender to turn the Georgia seat Democratic.Nunn has taken advantage of the Republicans' late runoff date, which gave her time to raise money for November, says Justin Barasky, press secretary for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington.
The GOP "will be in a pretty bad financial position," Barasky says. "Meanwhile, Michelle Nunn has built her organization and her cash-on-hand advantage to a really strong place."
But campaign cash isn't everything. Outside groups are important, too — superPACs and so-called "social welfare" organizations. McConnell has more of them spending money on his behalf than Grimes does.
It's an imbalance that shows up in other races, too. Democratic candidates have had strong fundraising, while Republicans benefit from wealthier outside groups.
Barasky notes that funds in candidates' coffers are worth more, because candidates pay less for TV airtime. - 90.5 WESA, 7/23/14
