The Republican nominee for Georgia’s next governor will be settled in a runoff election next month in the race to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson were the top two vote-getters in Tuesday’s GOP primary, but both received less than 50% of the vote, triggering the June 16 runoff.
The winner of next month’s runoff is expected to face former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was on her way to victory in the Democratic primary, on the November ballot.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who infamously defied Trump when asked to “find” votes in the Peach State after the 2020 election, and state Attorney General Chris Carr came up short of making the GOP runoff.
Jackson went from virtual unknown to front-runner after spending $50 million of his own fortune to flood the Peach State in political ads.
The self-described “conservative outsider” has pledged to run Georgia like one of his businesses.
“Georgia’s at a crossroads. It’s going to take a conservative business leader to shake things up — and to stop Keisha Lance Bottoms from destroying our state,” Jackson wrote on X Monday morning.
“Career politicians make promises. I take action, and I’m going to deliver,” he pledged in a separate post.
Jackson has been endorsed by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, but faced questions on the campaign trail about his loyalty to President Trump — and even acknowledged being “late to the Trump Train.”
Trump endorsed Jones in the Republican primary, telling a tele-rally for the lieutenant governor last week: “He’s just an incredible guy who has my complete and total endorsement in the race.”
“There’s a lot of confusion,” Trump added. “Everyone’s saying I endorsed them. I didn’t. I endorsed a man named Burt Jones, who’s your lieutenant governor.”
Jones argued in a recent ad that “every one” of his Republican opponents has “opposed President Trump and the America First agenda at every turn.”
“I fought alongside the president since 2016, cutting taxes, fighting for fair elections, backing law enforcement and keeping boys out of girls’ sports,” he said.
“President Trump has looked at this race and he’s endorsed one candidate, one proven conservative fighter with a record to back it up.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have expressed concern that Bottoms, while the heavy primary favorite, carries too much political baggage to win in November.
Bottoms served only one term as Atlanta mayor before leaving to serve as a CNN political commentator and then head of the White House Office of Public Engagement under former President Joe Biden.
Biden, who was forced to drop out of the 2024 presidential race following a disastrous debate with Trump, is Bottoms’ most high-profile supporter in her quest to become the first Democrat elected Georgia governor since 1998.
The 56-year-old’s handling of crime, riots and the COVID-19 pandemic while Atlanta mayor have also drawn scrutiny, with the tony enclave of Buckhead even mounting a campaign to secede from the city during her mayoral tenure over crime and quality of life issues.
“The Republicans will eat her for lunch. The Republicans are begging us to nominate her,” a Democratic strategist told Politicoof Bottoms last week. “If she’s at the top of the ticket, the whole ticket loses. If she’s not … we can sweep it. The stakes are that high.”
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