David Perdue, payday lending consultant

David Perdue is a businessman. The U.S. Senate candidate has balanced budgets. And he’s helped a long list of companies tighten up operations and find new opportunities.

Among the industries on that list: a firm that engages in payday lending, the age-old practice of loaning someone cash - often times with high interest rates - to keep them afloat usually until the next paycheck arrives. Some consumer advocates have likened the practice, which traditionally caters to people living on low incomes, as “legalized loan sharking.” Regulation varies from state to state but it’s generally illegal in Georgia.

According to his November 2013 campaign disclosure, Perdue was paid more than $5,000 to serve as a consultant for Community Choice Financial, an Ohio-based company whose website says it provides financial services to “unbanked and underbanked consumers” at more than 500 stores in 15 states and via the Internet in 24 states. In the past, those services have included payday loans, check cashing, money transfers and prepaid debit cards.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio consumer groups in 2012 raised concerns about CCF subsidiary SmartCheck’s business practices and alleged it maneuvered around payday lending cap laws through complex transactions. The groups asked federal regulators to block its partnership with a Florida bank. A CCF spokeswoman told the paper that critics were misinformed.

A Perdue campaign spokesman says the consulting gig was a “short-term” contract that “was not related to the company’s payday lending services.”

Perdue isn’t necessarily opposed outright to the practice. “David believes that individuals should have access to capital and that some personal responsibility must be exercised on the part of the person choosing to enter the agreement,” the spokesman says. “However, top end rate setting and terms of the contract have to be reasonable.”

He says Perdue Partners, the consulting firm Perdue founded with his cousin, former Gov. Sonny Perdue, and which worked on the CCF contact, “was helping the company identify opportunities to expand other parts of their business.” We might never know what that specifically entailed. Citing a “strict confidentiality agreement,” the spokesman said Perdue was “not at liberty to discuss the company’s internal business strategies.”