David Perdue

David Perdue was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of David Alfred Perdue Sr., and the former Gervaise Wynn, both schoolteachers. His father, a Democrat, was the elected superintendent of schools for Houston County, Georgia from 1961 to 1980.

Perdue was raised in Warner Robins, Georgia, and graduated from Northside High School in 1968,. 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 of Science degree in industrial engineering in 1972, and a Master of Science 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 by their grandfather George Ervin Perdue Sr. As such, Perdue is not related to any descendent of the family that founded and operates Perdue Farms.

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. 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. In 2007 and 2008, he received $42 million in compensation from Dollar General. After the sale to KKR, Dollar General faced shareholder lawsuits alleging that Perdue and other executives undersold shareholders; it paid $40 million to settle those lawsuits.

From 2007 to 2009, Perdue worked as a senior consultant for Indian chemical and textile conglomerate Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Ltd. In July 2010, his cousin, then-governor Sonny Perdue, appointed him as a director of the Georgia Ports Authority. In April 2011, he started Perdue Partners, an Atlanta-based global trading firm, with his cousin, whose term had ended in January 2011, and two former state officials.

In December 2012, Perdue Partners acquired Benton Express, an Atlanta-based logistics company, and renamed it Benton Global. In February 2013, Benton Global began hauling cargo directly from the port, rather than contracting out for trucking services. Perdue left the ports board in mid-2013. Benton Global closed abruptly in 2015.

From 2010 to 2014, Perdue served on the board of directors of the data marketing firm Cardlytics. He acquired 75,000 shares in compensation for his board service. When Cardlytics became publicly owned, Perdue made $6 million from the shares.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has described Perdue as having a "mixed" business record, but says that he was "known on Wall Street as a turnaround specialist who helps revive brands and reap rewards for investors." Most of his jobs involved outsourcing jobs overseas, and he said in a deposition, "I spent most of my career doing that."

Health care

Perdue opposed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and voted to repeal it. In 2017, he supported replacing Obamacare with the American Health Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office projected that 22 million fewer Americans would be insured by 2026 with this bill than if Obamacare remained. The Urban Institute projected that the Better Care Reconciliation Act would have resulted in 376,000 more Georgians lacking health insurance. Ultimately, no measure to replace Obamacare in 2017 succeeded.

During his 2020 reelection campaign, Perdue said he "always believed in protections for Americans with preexisting conditions", and that "health insurance should always cover preexisting conditions. For anyone." PolitiFact rated this claim "false", noting Perdue's opposition to Obamacare and support of policies that would allow insurers not to cover all preexisting conditions. Perdue co-sponsored the PROTECT Act (which was not voted on in the Senate), which would have allowed insurers to refuse coverage if they "will not have the capacity to deliver services adequately." In 2018, Perdue also supported longer extensions for short-term health insurance plans, which can exclude coverage for preexisting conditions. A spokesperson for Perdue said that PolitiFact "cherry-picked select information to draw a misleading conclusion".

Same-sex marriage

Perdue opposed same-sex marriage. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it constitutional in 2015, he co-sponsored a bill that would allow federal contractors and employees to oppose same-sex marriage on the grounds of moral or religious convictions.

Environment and climate change

Perdue rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He had criticized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and supported Trump's appointment of Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator, saying in 2017, "Outside of eliminating the EPA altogether, Scott Pruitt is the next best thing." Perdue was one of 22 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump urging him to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. As of 2020, Perdue lives in a private beachfront community that is building sea walls to combat sea level rise, a known effect of climate change.

President Donald Trump

Perdue was a close ally of President Trump during his tenure in the Senate. Some of Perdue's only public criticism of Trump centered on tariffs. Perdue was initially reluctant to support Trump's proposed tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, but came to support them.

On January 11, 2018, Perdue attended a meeting at the White House at which, according to some participants, Trump purportedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as "shithole nations" and remarked the United States should not take additional immigrants from them. Perdue said he did not recall Trump making those statements. Perdue subsequently elaborated that Trump "did not use that word", and that the accusation was "a gross misrepresentation". Off the record White House officials told the Washington Post that Perdue privately expressed belief that Trump had said "shithouse", not "shithole". On January 1, 2021, Perdue absented himself from the override of Trump's veto of the defense spending bill.

Stock trading controversies

During his time in office, Perdue was the Senate's most prolific trader of stocks, funds or shares, making almost one third of all trades among members, roughly equivalent to the combined sum of trades conducted by the second- to sixth-most active traders in the Senate. Many trades were in companies with interests in the committees Perdue sat on, including banks, cybersecurity firms, and defense firms. For example, as part of the Senate Banking Committee, he regularly traded in stock of the Regions Financial bank in 2017 and early 2018. During that period, Perdue co-sponsored a Senate bill that would reduce financial regulations on medium-sized banks such as Regions. His proposed deregulations became law in May 2018, and Region's stock had risen by 35% since Perdue bought its shares. Perdue's office maintains that all of his stock trading activities were conducted independently through his broker.

In January and February 2016, Perdue invested in Halyard stocks shortly before and after the Senate first held a hearing on the opioid epidemic in the United States. Halyard sold medical devices that could assist in providing alternatives to opioids. The stock was worth up to $150,000. Perdue sold the stock around seven months later, profiting between 33% and 54%. Perdue reiterated that his broker operated independently from him.

In February 2017, Perdue attempted to remove regulations the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had imposed on the prepaid debit card industry. The regulations were not removed, but they were scaled down, with Perdue taking credit in May 2017 for having solicited "significant concessions". From June 2017 to April 2019, he actively invested in card processor First Data, which held major interests and power in the prepaid debit card industry. The Daily Beast reported that Perdue's transactions of First Data stocks "coincided with both policy announcements affecting the company and a major merger that sent its stock price soaring." Perdue's office said that the transactions were done by his financial advisers, and that they operated independently from him. His office also denied that he knew of the merger before it happened.

Shortly before becoming chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower in January 2019, with jurisdiction over the Navy, Perdue bought $190,000 of stock in BWX Technologies, which builds nuclear power components for submarines. Later, Perdue secured almost $5 billion in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to build Virginia-class nuclear submarines built with BWX parts. He profited between $15,000 and $50,000 (according to his financial filings) when he sold the shares while writing the bill. His office reiterated that he was not personally involved in the stock-trading decisions.

On January 23, 2020, Perdue directed his financial advisers to sell over $1 million in stock of the finance firm Cardlytics weeks before its shares fell significantly. Two days before the sale, Cardlytics's CEO sent Perdue an email mentioning "upcoming changes", then later said he had sent the email to the wrong person. The Department of Justice investigated this incident, and concluded that Perdue had not engaged in insider trading. After Cardlytics' shares fell, he bought between $200,000 and $500,000 of their shares in March; these shares more than quadrupled their value by November 2020.

On January 24, 2020, Perdue bought around $65,000 of stock in DuPont, a company that makes personal protective equipment, on the same day as a private Senate briefing on the spread of COVID-19. Over the next few months, he bought and sold around $5.8 million and $5.6 million worth of stocks, respectively. Perdue bought up to $245,000 in stocks of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, and sold up to $165,000 in stocks of the casino Caesars Entertainment, which closed its doors during the pandemic. His stock-trading activity sharply increased in March 2020. In May 2020, after his portfolio was scrutinized, Perdue announced that his financial advisers would no longer buy and sell individual stocks. He was criticized for his stock-trading during the coronavirus pandemic, with allegations of insider trading. Perdue has said advisers made the trades without his influence.

Perdue has asserted that the Senate Ethics Committee investigated the incident and in June 2020 privately concluded that it "did not find evidence that [Perdue's] actions violated federal law, Senate Rules, or standards of conduct". But as of December 2020, the Ethics Committee has not disclosed such an investigation.