Georgia Republican David Perdue has spent his Senate campaign defining himself as a businessman and a job creator. But if any Georgia voters were duped into thinking Perdue's business experience might help create jobs in Georgia, they should check out what he had to say about
his career in outsourcing in a 2005 legal deposition:
Perdue was asked about his “experience with outsourcing,” and his response was blunt.
“Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that,” Perdue said, according to the 186-page transcript of his sworn testimony. [...]
“[At] Kurt Salmon Associates, some of my experience there was helping footwear companies develop the ability to import shoes from Asia, specifically Taiwan, Korea, China, Indonesia, Malaysia,” Perdue noted, referring to his 12 years working for that management consulting company that specialized in outsourcing manufacturing for apparel companies. Perdue eventually became a partner with the firm.
“Later with Haggar Corporation — sorry, with Gitano and Sara Lee, having lived there, I lived in Singapore with Gitano and in Hong Kong with Sara Lee — sourcing was my primary responsibility in both of those locations.”
Perdue's campaign now claims he was not causing the companies he worked for to send any more jobs overseas than they otherwise would have. But it's really hard to spin "some of my experience there was helping footwear companies develop the ability to import shoes from Asia." Or "Sara Lee did not have a centralized sourcing operation in Asia, and we built that from the ground up."
Do you think that's what voters in the state with the highest unemployment rate in the country want to hear? Talk to me about outsourcing, Mr. Perdue. "Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that." What Georgia voters need to hear is how a career spent outsourcing makes you well-suited to promote job creation in the United States of America. Or maybe why voters would believe that a candidate who spent his career outsourcing cares about creating jobs in the U.S. If Perdue only discovered a passion for American jobs when he was getting ready to run for office, should voters believe him?
David Perdue isn't just an outsourcer, he's also discriminated against women. Please give $3 to Daily Kos' list of strong Democratic women.