On Saturday, a student from Georgia Tech approached Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) to ask about reports of 53,000 largely African-American voter registrations being put on hold by Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp. Kemp is also the Republican nominee for Governor, who is liked in a tight race with Democrat Stacey Abrams.
Immediately after the unnamed student asks Perdue “Hey, so, uh, how can you endorse a candidate …” Perdue grabs the student’s iPhone and refuses to return it.
The student repeatedly asks the Senator to return his property. After a short time, Perdue appeared to relent and return the phone. The student then continued to film Perdue. As Perdue fled the student can be heard saying: “That’s US Senator David Perdue. US Senator David Perdue just snatched my phone because he won’t answer a question from one of his constituents. He’s trying to leave. He’s trying to leave because he won’t answer why he’s endorsing a candidate who’s trying to purge people from voting on the basis of their race.”
The video of the incident was posted by the Young Democratic Socialists of America organization at Georgia Tech.
Today @sendavidperdue visited Tech to campaign for Kemp. A student tried asking a simple question about @BrianKempGA 's racist scheme to threaten voter registrations from black people, but before he could even finish the question, Perdue stole his phone. pic.twitter.com/K0iffU57Di
— YDSA Georgia Tech (@YDSAGT) October 13, 2018