Georgia Governor Kemp’s Campaign Defends Rivian Plant Deal

(Bloomberg) -- Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's campaign and rival Republican David Perdue slugged it out for a second day Tuesday over a planned $5 billion Rivian Automotive Inc. electric-vehicle plant that Kemp enticed to the state.

Perdue, who is challenging the incumbent in the May 24 primary with the support of Donald Trump, held a rally Tuesday in Rutledge, Georgia, to protest the project, which some residents have opposed. The former U.S. senator promised the few hundred attendees that he would fight to stop the plant, whose backers include billionaire George Soros.

“George Soros has invested $2 billion and Kemp is calling that economic development,” Perdue said. “To me, it looks like an election giveaway.”

Kemp campaign spokesman Cody Hall said Perdue, a former garment and retail executive, was attacking a project that will bring thousands of jobs to Georgia residents.

“It's disappointing and, quite honestly, it's just sad,” Hall said “He spent his entire career in business outsourcing these kinds of jobs overseas.”

The attack has put Kemp's biggest economic development coup squarely in the middle of the U.S. culture wars. Perdue latched on to the project in announcing the rally Monday, saying the governor is “selling us out” to Soros, the Hungarian-born American billionaire investor and philanthropist.

Soros, 91, is a target of right-wing conspiracy theories that are widely seen as antisemitic and are increasingly part of mainstream Republican politics. His Open Society Foundation has donated billions of dollars to progressive and liberal political causes, including reducing poverty and reforming the criminal-justice system.

Rivian is backed by a long list of institutional investors and Wall Street stalwarts, including Soros Fund Management. The firm — which also participated in several private funding rounds before the IPO — owns more than 2% of Rivian's shares outstanding, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That would make Soros the 10th-largest shareholder. Stakes held by the likes of T. Rowe Price Group Inc., BlackRock Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., among others, are significantly greater.

Perdue, who lost his U.S. Senate re-election bid in 2020, entered the gubernatorial primary in December, saying that Kemp couldn't win votes from Trump supporters. He has campaigned largely on his support from Trump -- and his embrace of the ex-president's false claims of a stolen 2020 election. The former president has targeted Kemp for not doing more to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the state.

If neither candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff in June. The winner will face Democratic voting-rights activist Stacey Abrams in November.

The planned plant near Rutledge, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) east of Atlanta, is poised to be the largest single investment in Georgia history, promising to employ more than 7,500 people and pump out 400,000 electric vehicles annually, with production due to start in 2024. Construction is scheduled to start in the summer but no specific date has been given by the company, which announced the location in December.

Within the last five years, 78 automotive-related companies have located or expanded operations in Georgia, creating thousands of new jobs, according to a December press release from the governor.

Kemp's budget proposal includes $125 million for land and training costs for the Rivian project, but the full package hasn't been finalized.

The plan has local detractors, who say it would bring environmental problems and Atlanta-style sprawl to the community. They've launched a Facebook page and a GoFundMe site to raise money to hire a lawyer. The opponents contacted Perdue with their complaints, as well as Kemp and Abrams, according to Chas Moore, one of the organizers of No2Rivian.

Rivian said it would host events in the spring where residents could air their complaints.

While Rivian has produced relatively few vehicles, it's seen as a genuine competitor to legacy automakers and EV market incumbent Tesla Inc. That's in large part due to its financial might. The company's November IPO was the sixth biggest in U.S. history, generating $13.5 billion in net proceeds.