HOMER, Georgia — The last few players of the day were finishing their rounds at the Chimney Oaks Golf Club when a steady wind picked up by the practice putting green. Pin flags bent to a near snap. A sleek helicopter slowly descended onto the manicured lawn.
Rick Jackson had arrived.
The billionaire health care executive turned GOP gubernatorial candidate was making his grand entrance as a headliner for a recent event hosted by the Banks County Republican Party. In many ways, it mimicked the same disruptive force with which he entered the race two months earlier: loud, ostentatious and out of nowhere.
He rose from being a virtually unknown contender to a frontrunner in the polls by spending $50 million of his own money to flood the airwaves, social media and mailboxes with ads — nearly double the amount of all the candidates in both primaries for governor combined, according to an AdImpact analysis. He’s cutting into Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ margins with ultra-conservative voters and he’s complicating Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger’s path to making the June run-off.
An already crowded race has become all about Jackson.
“Anytime you’ve got somebody spending $100 million on TV and mailers and everything else, obviously you’re forced to talk about him,” Jones said in an interview with POLITICO.
As Jackson has upended the governor’s race, he’s also taking up so much of voters’ attention that Georgia Republicans in other races are worried about their own chances of breaking through.
Voters and strategists alike say they just can’t avoid Jackson’s presence anywhere, not even at home. His media blitz is alarming fellow Republicans, half a dozen of whom told POLITICO that Jackson is endangering Republicans in down ballot races — and a critical Senate contest — that will likely be decided by razor-thin margins.
“Down the ballot, it’s going to be extremely difficult for candidates for the other constitutional offices to get any kind of media attention, which creates a scenario where many of these races are essentially crapshoots,” said Spiro Amburn, a longtime Georgia Republican strategist and statehouse official who is neutral in the race.
A Georgia-based Republican operative involved with the governor’s race suggested that Jackson is partly the reason for the GOP’s messy Senate primary because the candidates are struggling to “get traction” and make headway with paid media. Another GOP strategist said Jackson’s spending, particularly in a primary, has far surpassed any precedent: “I watched 30 minutes of TV the other day and had six Rick Jackson ads. It’s just on a different level.”
“He’s sucked up so much oxygen that it’s really hard for any other Republican to operate right now,” said a third GOP strategist involved in races up and down the ballot in the state.
Jackson, in an interview, said he had not considered how his spending might be affecting other races and said he’d ultimately help them across the finish line when he’s the GOP nominee.
“Anytime you have a lot of money on TV, it’s going to raise the bar for everybody. Unfortunately, it’s just a necessity,” he said unapologetically. Speaking with POLITICO after the Banks County event last week, Jackson shrugged off any concerns about his money and said he will do “whatever it takes” to win.
“When I win, that’s when I’m done,” he added.
Rick Jackson’s money vs. Burt Jones’ Trump endorsement
Perhaps the biggest target in the face of Jackson’s onslaught is Jones, who used to lead the governor’s race by most standards. He now finds himself neck and neck with the billionaire in recent polling, as Jackson sells himself as another Trump-aligned candidate — even though he and the president don’t have much of a close, personal relationship.
“He’s not portraying himself as what he really is,” Jones told POLITICO. “He’s not this hard-nosed conservative guy. He is somebody who’s dependent on state and federal contracts to make his living, and he’s trying to make himself out to be some outsider and doesn’t know how the political process works.”
Other Jones allies have been leaning hard into attacking Jackson as a big-spending outsider. At a fish fry last week in rural Atkinson County, state Rep. James Burchette encouraged voters to question why a candidate would spend so much money to “take control of the state of Georgia.” Sen. Russ Goodman warned that “all this stuff that you see in the mailbox — it’s nothing but a bunch of lies.”
But even with Jackson’s big-spending approach, Trump’s stamp of approval still holds immeasurable power with the MAGA base.
The president has reaffirmed his support for Jones: “All these guys are coming in now loaded up with some money. Who the hell knows how much money he’s got? But Burt Jones has been here and been with you and been with me right from the beginning,” the president said at an event in Rome, Georgia in February.
Parked outside the fish fry, Jones’ campaign bus was emblazoned with that reminder: “Trump Endorsed.”
Jackson is betting on voters like Bruce Brooker, a 72-year-old farmer from Atkinson County: intrigued by Jackson, but ultimately sticking with the lieutenant governor out of loyalty to the president.
“I would probably vote for [Jackson] if Trump had not endorsed Burt,” he said. “I like the fact that he started with nothing and crawled and climbed through like any. He knows what hard work is. I’m not being critical of him. I admire him.”
Jackson, meanwhile, is trying to prove his MAGA credentials to Georgia Republicans to siphon off enough of Jones’ voters to win. Over in Homer, where Jackson was addressing a crowd of about 200 voters at the country club, attendees peppered him with questions about his relationship with Trump.
One man in the crowd asked Jackson to explain why he had donated to former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — a longtime Trump critic who voted to impeach the president during his first term. Another questioned why he had only donated to the president after the 2024 election.
“Just like JD Vance and Marco Rubio, I will admit I was late to the Trump Train. There’s no question about it,” Jackson responded. “But I gave a million dollars to him. That’s not an insignificant concept of supporting somebody.”
The non-MAGA candidates say they have an opening
Others in the governor’s race who are less interested in wooing the MAGA masses — including Raffensperger, who has rebuked efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and Attorney General Chris Carr — are not as concerned about Jackson undercutting their campaigns.
Carr campaign spokesperson Julia Mazzone said in a statement that Jackson’s entry into the race “devastates Burt Jones’ campaign, but it does not change the fundamentals for us.” The attorney general has a long-shot chance of advancing out of the primary, however, as polls show him in a single-digit fourth place.
A March 30 memo penned by Raffensberger’s campaign manager and obtained by POLITICO claimed that the Jackson-Jones cagefight has created an opening for other candidates to lead on policy substance. The secretary has avoided injecting himself into the MAGA mêlée, instead keeping his profile comparatively low as he travels the state to speak with voters.
“I have my own lane, and I feel good where we are,” Raffensberger said in an interview. “We travel all over the state, reaching voters, talking to people, making sure that people understand my message is about making sure we keep Georgia affordable and safe, and I’m best positioned to do that at the end of the day.”
After all, Raffensperger has a history of overcoming Trump-backed challengers and cruising to a general election victory.
“I’m going to be in the runoff,” he added, deflecting any and all concerns with finality.
