Georgia’s downballot Republicans tie their hopes to Rick Jackson
Today’s newsletter highlights
- Keisha Lance Bottoms increases her campaign TV spending.
- Jon Ossoff votes for the Protect College Sports Act.
- Marty Kemp gets involved in the attorney general’s race.
Coattails
The GOP contenders who gathered in Forsyth on Monday night to rally for gubernatorial nominee Rick Jackson are running for very different offices. But they largely settled on the same opponent: Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Secretary of state hopeful Tim Fleming invoked Bottoms’ handling of the 2020 unrest in Atlanta back when she was mayor. Lieutenant governor nominee Greg Dolezal warned against turning Georgia into “the Atlanta of 2020.”
Insurance Commissioner John King told the crowd to “get used to burning patrol cars” if she wins the governor’s race. And U.S. Rep. Austin Scott said she’s more liberal than California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Now apparently some people in Georgia hadn’t figured that out yet,” Scott, R-Tifton, said. “But I’m telling you, this lady’s dangerous.”
Noticeably absent from the attacks was U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff. In fact, his name wasn’t uttered from the stage. Neither were the actual opponents many of the down-ticket candidates are facing.
It was a revealing glimpse of how Republicans increasingly view the November race. With U.S. Rep. Mike Collins’ Senate campaign sputtering — like other Jackson-organized rallies, Collins wasn’t at the event — the party’s focus is increasingly on its candidate for governor.
State Rep. Dale Washburn summed up the strategy: “If Rick Jackson does well, all of them will do well.”
The GOP contenders took that to heart. Gov. Brian Kemp linked the party’s campaign against Bottoms to the one Republicans waged against Stacey Abrams eight years ago.
“I’ll tell you, in this election, we don’t have to wonder what Keisha Lance Bottoms would do because she’s already done it,” he said.
Jackson closed the rally with a lengthy indictment of Bottoms’ tenure, casting the race as a choice between “purpose or distraction, competence or destruction, duty or dereliction.”
Things to know
Good morning! The midterms are in 35 days. You have six days left to register to vote. Here are three things to know for today:
- Rick Jackson has promised that local governments and residents would decide whether data center projects move forward. But that stance has prompted howls of hypocrisy in Bowie County, Texas, where Jackson is an investor in a major data center project, Greg Bluestein reports.
- Kemp on Monday suspended Georgia’s motor fuel tax for 30 days as the war with Iran sends gas prices soaring, Bluestein reports.
- Georgia and the entire East and Gulf coasts have yet to face a hurricane threat this year as a powerful El Nino weather pattern produces wind shears that smother tropical activity in the Atlantic Ocean, Adam Van Brimmer reports.
Stepping aside
Andrew Bailey, a co-deputy director of the FBI who personally oversaw the agency’s Fulton County raid earlier this year, announced Monday he is leaving his post after just over one year on the job.
Bailey was the Republican attorney general of Missouri when President Donald Trump appointed him as co-deputy director last year. The agency historically had only had one deputy director, usually a career agent.
“I am stepping down to return to my family in Missouri,” Bailey wrote on X.
The move now means both of the highest-ranking Trump administration officials who were present during the FBI’s Fulton County raid in January have now left the government. Tulsi Gabbard resigned as director of national intelligence in June.
Ad watch
Bottoms is putting more money behind her TV campaign after Democrats fretted over her meager advertising footprint compared with Jackson.
Bottoms’ campaign is more than tripling its television spending from last week, according to figures shared with the AJC, a notable escalation as November nears.
And Bottoms is using the new spending to sharpen a familiar line of attack.
A new ad out this morning accuses Jackson of “supporting Trump even when it hurts Georgia” and stitches together clips of the Republican aligning himself with the president.
The spot closes by turning Trump’s own praise of Jackson into the final attack: “Wow, he’s going to be a great governor.”
College sports
In a bipartisan vote, the U.S. Senate late Monday night passed a bill that would create national standards for name, image and likeness contracts in college athletics.
The Protect College Sports Act passed 77-22. Ossoff was among the 27 Democrats who voted with all but two Republicans in favor of the legislation.
In a statement after the vote, Ossoff said he saw the measure as just the first step in leveling the playing field for collegiate sports.
“This bill improves on the broken and untenable status quo for college sports, student athletes, and colleges and universities in Georgia,” the Atlanta Democrat said. “It includes new protections for student athletes and protections for women’s sports and non-revenue sports. More work will be required to ensure fairness and stability for college athletics.”
Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock was critical of the bill and voted against it. Although the bill was amended shortly before the final vote, Warnock said it still did not do enough to ensure college athletes were protected and able to share in the wealth at top-tier programs.
The measure now goes to the U.S. House, which is not scheduled to return until after the midterm elections.
Listen up
Today on the “Politically Georgia” podcast Bluestein and Patricia Murphy dig into the political power shift to metro Atlanta and what it means for rural Georgia. Plus, Atlanta News First political reporter Doug Reardon previews the upcoming Bottoms-Jackson and Ossoff-Collins debates, including the questions voters will get to put directly to the candidates.
You can listen and subscribe to “Politically Georgia” for free on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Have a question or comment for the show? Email us at politicallygeorgia@ajc.com or give us a call at 770-810-5297 and you could be featured on a future episode.
(Marty) Kemp for Strickland
State Sen. Brian Strickland is getting a boost in his race for attorney general from first lady Marty Kemp today with the launch of Women for Strickland.
Kemp is co-chairing the group along with Dayle Burns, the wife of Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns; Joan Kirchner Carr, the wife of Attorney General Chris Carr; and Lindsay Strickland, Brian Strickland’s wife, who is also a former Capitol staffer.
Strickland is running for Carr’s open seat against Democratic state Rep. Tanya Miller, an attorney from Atlanta.
A “women-for-somebody” effort is a relatively standard campaign move. But this group could be especially helpful with Kemp at the top of it in a race where suburban female voters will be key.
The first lady called Strickland a “fighter” and credited him with helping to pass the first piece of anti-human trafficking legislation that she pushed for in the General Assembly.
Miller, for her part, prosecuted human trafficking cases in her role as a former Fulton County prosecutor.
Little help?
The State Election Board’s right-wing majority on Monday approved a resolution seeking intervention from the Trump administration over Georgia’s voting system about two weeks before early voting begins.
The measure urges Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to implement security upgrades to the statewide touchscreen voting system to resolve known vulnerabilities. It also wants Raffensperger to make forensic images of voting machine data and hand them to the board and federal agencies for examination.
Under the resolution, the board’s executive director, James Mills, gets a broad and vague marching order. It directed him to seek aid “from any quarter,” including the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“I don’t think that there’s an interest in the state doing anything about it, but maybe our federal partners will help us, and that is the whole purpose of this,” said Carolyn Roddy, an appointee of the Georgia Republican Party.
It’s unclear what the federal agencies could do or how the administration would intervene, as the federal government doesn’t have direct control over Georgia’s electronic voting machines. But Trump has been fixated on the machines for years and the move comes as the administration has taken aggressive action to insert the federal government into elections.
The resolution cited a Sept. 2 letter in which Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin asked the Justice Department to examine whether voting equipment that uses bar codes or QR codes to count votes is suitable for “voter verification or manual audits.” The letter asked the DOJ if such voting systems are compliant with federal law.
The board’s sole Democrat, Sara Tindall Ghazal, and board Chair John Fervier, aKemp appointee, both opposed the measure.
Salleigh Grubbs, an appointee of Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, was wary of federal intervention, too. Still, she voted for it.
The U.S. Constitution grants states control over elections while giving Congress the power to pass election legislation. It doesn’t grant any explicit power to the president or the executive branch.
Today in Washington
Some happenings:
- Trump will make an announcement regarding a new federal website powered by artificial intelligence.
- The Senate will debate a resolution that aims to roll back Trump administration rules governing Affordable Care Act exchanges.
- The House is out until after the midterm elections.
Road to England
“All roads lead to England.” That was a frequently heard mantra at the state Capitol when former state Rep. Terry England chaired the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Now, it’s true again in Barrow County after state House leaders unveiled the newly named “Honorable Terry England Intersection” at the junction of State Route 211 and West Winder Bypass near England’s home.
In addition to his lengthy tenure in the state House, England was Burns’ chief of staff in 2025 when a farm accident left him seriously injured and temporarily disabled. England has since recovered after a lengthy stay at Atlanta’s Shepherd Center. He was on hand Monday as his former colleagues unveiled the sign.
Burns said England’s service to Barrow County and the state “has built a brighter future for Georgia, and our state is incredibly grateful for his continued commitment to serving his neighbors.”
Shoutouts
Today’s birthday:
- Former state Rep. Doug Stoner.
Transition:
- Annalise Morning, Kemp’s deputy press secretary, is leaving the office to the Georgia Department of Labor where she will work with the communications team. Her first day in her new role is Thursday.
Want a birthday shoutout in the Politically Georgia newsletter? There’s a form for that. It’s not just birthdays. We’re also interested in new jobs, engagements, birth announcements, etc.
Before you go
A federal judge in Atlanta ruled Georgia’s child welfare agency has been wrongly charging parents foster care fees for children no longer in state custody, Rosie Manins reports.
That’ll do it for us today. As always, you can send your best scoops, gossip and insider information to greg.bluestein@ajc.com, tia.mitchell@ajc.com, patricia.murphy@ajc.com and adam.beam@ajc.com.