Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Ltd. (GHCL) is an Indian chemical textile conglomerate. The Hill reports David Perdue worked for them as a Senior Consultant between 2007 and 2009. This company also makes chemicals, textiles, yarn, and edible salt.
Perdue’s official website biography for Perdue Partners, a firm he co-owns with his cousin, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R), once alluded to his work with GHCL.
“In 2007, after a major turn-around that included the sale of a Fortune 500 company, he retired to pursue international entrepreneurial interests. During the past three years, he has been involved in a start-up retail venture in India,” the original biography at Perdue Partners read.
But between February and April 2013, as he geared up for a Senate run, that six-paragraph biography was replaced by a much shorter single-paragraph one that deleted any reference to India, as well as some other parts of his career, including corporate boards he’s recently served on. Perdue officially launched his campaign in May.
His more robust 12-paragraph campaign biography also doesn’t mention the time in India, and he has made little to no mention of it on the campaign trail.
Earlier reports have pointed out that Perdue’s short-lived tenure running Pillowtex, a company that collapsed and laid off thousands shortly after he left for Dollar General, was also not mentioned in his online biographies.
His campaign says the Perdue Partners biography was shortened because he was getting increased demands for speaking engagements, and downplayed Perdue’s influence at the company, saying that he was just a consultant splitting time between India and the United States, and serving on a number of corporate boards at the same time.
It’s unclear exactly how much of Perdue’s time was spent on GHCL during those years. Perdue himself indicated in a 2011 interview that it was one of his major focuses, though his campaign says it was just one of many projects he was involved in and says he never lived full-time in India.
“I’ve spent the better part of the last three years in India helping people there start a retail operation,” Perdue said in a 2011 interview with Global Atlanta.
Perdue’s campaign is insisting the work for GHCL isn’t in his biography or mentioned much on the campaign trail because it was no big thing, just a little part-time job:
“It’s very clear this was a part-time job, he was traveling back and forth and he had a growing amount of work with the other companies he was getting involved with,” Perdue campaign spokeswoman Megan Whittemore told The Hill. “He never relocated there, he never moved there. He traveled back and forth.”
David Perdue shouldn’t get a free pass to only talk about the parts of his resume he thinks will appeal to Georgia voters. It’s time for him to explain why GHCL has gone from being the thing he “spent the better part of the last three years” on to being just some insignificant part-time job. One his biggest attacks is that Nunn is somehow less a Georgia native than him even though she is 9th generation, was born here, and has lived here since college. No wonder he wants to gloss over all the time he has spent in India and other countries around the world exporting American jobs to those locations.
While not directly responsible for the death of the textile industry, maybe Perdue doesn’t want the death of the textile industry that he potentially helped this Indian company exploit to come up while so many voters still have personal knowledge and financial hardship related to the death of domestic textile manufacturing. If I am not mistaken isn’t one of the last big employers left in Albany, GA the Proctor & Gamble plant which would compete with this Indian company? Hmmm. maybe that is why his three year work suddenly became so insignificant. I wonder how the good people in Albany and surrounding areas would feel about him helping foreign competition with his self-proclaimed outsourcing expertise.