David Perdue

David Alfred Perdue Jr. (born December 10, 1949) is an American politician and business executive who served as a United States senator from Georgia from 2015 to 2021.

A member of the Republican Party, Perdue was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Georgia in 2022.

After 12 years as a management consultant, Perdue became the senior vice president for Reebok, eventually becoming CEO.

His father, a Democrat, was the elected superintendent of schools for Houston County, Georgia, from 1961 to 1980, where he oversaw the desegregation of the school system.

Perdue was raised in Warner Robins, Georgia, and graduated from Northside High School in 1968, where he was an excellent student, a varsity athlete, and class president.

He went to college for one year at the United States Air Force Academy starting in June 1968, after receiving an appointment from Congressman Jack Brinkley of Georgia, but dropped out after earning low grades.

In 1969 Perdue wrote to Congressman Brinkley that he wanted to quit the Air Force Academy writing, "I have made a mistake and I do not want this type of career.”

Perdue later transferred to Georgia Tech, where he earned a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering in 1972, and a master's degree in operations research in 1975.

Perdue is the first cousin of former governor of Georgia and former U.S. secretary of agriculture Sonny Perdue.

Perdue began his career in 1972 at Kurt Salmon Associates, an international consulting firm, where he worked for 12 years as a management consultant, leaving in 1984.

From 1991 to 1992, Perdue was a managing director at international clothing company Gitano Group Inc. in Singapore.

In 1992, Perdue took a position as senior vice president of Asia operations for Sara Lee Corporation.

During his tenure, Perdue was involved in sourcing suppliers in China and Hong Kong while the company closed dozens of plants in the U.S., four of them in Georgia.

Two years later, Perdue became senior vice president of operations at Haggar Clothing, increasing international production in lower-cost countries to 75 percent of the company's operations.

In 1998, Perdue joined Reebok as a senior vice president, eventually rising to president and CEO of the Reebok Brand.

He is credited with rejuvenating its sneaker line.

Perdue negotiated a contract with the National Football League that a former Reebok executive called "revolutionary" for repositioning the company's shoe brand.

Perdue left Reebok in June 2002 to become the CEO of PillowTex, a North Carolina textile company.

The company had recently emerged from bankruptcy with a heavy debt load and an underfunded pension liability.

He later joined PillowTex, a North Carolina textile company; the company went bankrupt and folded shortly after his departure in 2003.

He subsequently became CEO of Dollar General.

Unable to obtain additional funding from the company's investors or find a buyer for the company, he left the company in 2003 after nine months on the job and $1.7 million in compensation.

An internal auditor noted that Perdue's long absences from its North Carolina Headquarters was "terrible for morale. We felt he'd given up."

In July 2003, Pillowtex announced it would go out of business, leaving 7,650 workers out of work nationwide.

After leaving Pillowtex, Perdue became CEO of Dollar General.

Before he joined the company, it had recently overstated profits by $100 million and paid $162 million to settle shareholder lawsuits.

Perdue overhauled the company's inventory line and logistics network and updated its marketing strategy.

After initially closing hundreds of stores, the company doubled its stock price and opened 2,600 new stores.

During his four years as CEO, almost 2,500 individual employment cases were filed in federal court against the company, compared to 76 in the prior four years.

Perdue is credited for arranging the sale of Dollar General in 2007 to private equity investors KKR.

Perdue first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014, defeating Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn, daughter of former U.S. senator Sam Nunn.

Perdue ran for reelection in 2020, losing to Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former investigative journalist and filmmaker, in a January 5, 2021, runoff election.

After the November 2020 presidential election, Perdue called for the resignation of Georgia's top elections official and claimed that there were unspecified "failures" in the election.

He later supported a lawsuit by Trump allies seeking to overturn the election results, and falsely claimed during his 2022 gubernatorial election campaign that his 2020 Senate election was "stolen."

Perdue was linked to the 2020 congressional insider trading scandal for allegations of STOCK Act violations.

The basis was stocks he sold before the 2020 stock market crash allegedly using knowledge from a closed Senate meeting.

The U.S. Department of Justice closed its inquiry in mid-2020 without bringing charges.

Perdue sought the Republican nomination in the 2022 Georgia gubernatorial election against incumbent Brian Kemp, and was endorsed by former president Donald Trump.

Perdue lost the primary to Kemp in a landslide.

David Perdue was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of David Alfred Perdue Sr., and the former Gervaise Wynn, both schoolteachers.