It\u2019s been a month since billionaire Rick Jackson unexpectedly entered the Republican primary for governor in Georgia<\/a>.<\/p>\n He\u2019s quickly shaken things up. <\/p>\n Jackson, a health care executive, is pumping millions of dollars of his own money into an already crowded race and aggressively courting supporters of Donald Trump \u2014 even though the president has backed a different candidate. <\/p>\n Prior to Jackson\u2019s late entrance, the May 19 primary had seemed to be shaping up as a three-way race among Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is the Trump-endorsed front-runner, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and state Attorney General Chris Carr. <\/p>\n But after launching his campaign in early February with a pledge to spend at least $50 million<\/a>, Jackson has vastly outspent his opponents on the airwaves and has rapidly seen dividends in some early public polling. He\u2019s even leading in some of them, though most of those surveys also show a plurality of voters undecided. <\/p>\n It\u2019s all scrambled the contest to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in the battleground state into a slugfest for MAGA voters as Jackson attempts to paint himself in the mold of Trump against a field of better-known rivals and maintain his early jolt of momentum.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t get into the race promising to spend $50 million and not see a significant impact, which is exactly what has happened,\u201d said Katie Frost, an Atlanta-based Republican political strategist not currently working with any of the campaigns. \u201cThis effort means he thought there was an opening.\u201d<\/p>\n Another X-factor in the race is that the primary would head to a runoff between the top two vote-getters if no one gets 50% of the vote \u2014 an outcome that is likelier now that it\u2019s a four-way race.<\/p>\n Since Jackson\u2019s Feb. 3 campaign announcement, he has spent nearly $16 million on ads, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact \u2014 almost six times as much as Jones and nearly twice the amount of the next closest spender in the race. An outside group called Georgians for Integrity, which has spent nearly $9 million over the same time span, has been running attack ads targeting only Jones for month<\/a>.<\/p>\n During that period, Jones\u2019 campaign has spent $2.7 million on ads, according to AdImpact, with a Jones-aligned outside group spending another $900,000. The Raffensperger campaign spent $12,000 on ads over the same time period, while Carr\u2019s campaign dropped only $1,500.<\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s ads have mostly leaned into introducing himself to voters, while also making overt comparisons between himself and Trump. <\/p>\n The spots with the most money behind them mostly feature him talking about his experience in his youth in the foster care system, after having fled abusive parents before becoming a business owner. He so draws on Trump\u2019s background as a political outsider and businessman, while also taking a veiled jab at the experienced statewide officials he\u2019s running against.<\/p>\n \u201cLike President Trump, I don\u2019t owe anybody anything, and like you, I\u2019m sick of career politicians,\u201d Jackson says in one TV ad<\/a>. In another, Jackson casts himself<\/a> as \u201cthe straight-talking, Trump-supporting self-made outsider\u201d who \u201ctells it like it is.\u201d<\/p>\n Another ad \u2014 part of a much smaller buy \u2014 rips into Raffensperger<\/a>, who as Georgia\u2019s secretary of state rejected Trump\u2019s plea to overturn the 2020 election results after Joe Biden won, accuses him of having \u201cturned on his own kind\u201d and invokes the word \u201cJudas.\u201d <\/p>\n Unlike Jackson\u2019s other ads, which ran almost entirely in Georgia markets, this spot also ran in media markets in Washington, D.C., and West Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago home is located.<\/p>\n It\u2019s part of a broader strategy, GOP operatives said, to flatter Trump while also not crossing him by going after his preferred candidate in Jones. At his campaign launch event, Jackson even descended to the stage in a glass elevator, drawing comparisons<\/a> to Trump\u2019s escalator entrance to announce his 2016 presidential bid. <\/p>\n \u201cHe clearly is trying to get the attention of the Trump administration and the president himself,\u201d Frost said.<\/p>\n In an interview, Carr said Jackson\u2019s entrance was more of an issue for Jones than him.<\/p>\n \u201cIt hasn\u2019t changed things for me,\u201d Carr said, \u201cbut it\u2019s been disruptive and devastating to the lieutenant governor, because they are fighting for the same voter. The lieutenant governor\u2019s whole pitch was, \u2019I\u2019m going to have the most money and I\u2019m going to have one endorsement, and that\u2019s all I need.\u2019 Well, that was a flawed argument.\u201d<\/p>\n Jackson declined an interview request, but campaign spokesperson Mike Schrimpf further leaned into comparisons between Jackson and Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Republican primary voters were eager for a businessman and an outsider to enter the race, and Rick Jackson, like President Trump, is a businessman outsider,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is their response to that message of being an outsider and fighting,\u201d he added, referring to Jackson\u2019s dent in recent polling.<\/p>\n Schrimpf declined to say whether the campaign\u2019s strategy was to split Trump-aligned Republican voters in Georgia to force a runoff with Jones, noting only that, \u201cthat is not how I would think about it \u2014 the strategy is to appeal to all Republican primary voters.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones declined to be interviewed, but campaign spokesperson Kayla Lott highlighted Trump\u2019s endorsement, which the president doubled down on last month during a visit to a Georgia steel plant.<\/a> Jones\u2019 own ads have focused almost entirely on Trump\u2019s endorsement.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump-endorsed Lt. Governor Burt Jones is the only common-sense conservative in this race fighting for the issues Georgians care about,\u201d Lott said in a statement. \u201cGeorgians have a clear choice \u2014 a Trump-endorsed proven workhorse with a record of results, or a bunch of Never-Trump RINOs pretending to be something they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Jackson\u2019s early momentum, Georgia Republicans emphasized that it\u2019s too early in the race to draw any lasting conclusions and that the state\u2019s runoff system has produced unexpected results in recent election cycles.<\/p>\n For example, in the run-up to the Republican gubernatorial primary election in 2018, Kemp trailed his competitors in many major polls. But he managed to advance to the runoff, which he won with the help of a Trump endorsement and a secret recording that<\/a> sank his opponent. <\/p>\n And Trump\u2019s endorsements and big spending by self-funders haven\u2019t always guaranteed victories in Georgia \u2014 a fact cited by both Carr and Raffensperger. <\/p>\n In 2022, former Sen. David Perdue, who partly self-funded his campaign, lost his gubernatorial primary challenge to Kemp, while Rep. Jody Hice failed to defeat Raffensperger in the secretary of state primary. Both Perdue and Hice were backed by Trump. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had people that have had a lot of money. We\u2019ve had people with a Trump endorsement \u2014 and they didn\u2019t win,\u201d Carr said in an interview, referring to both Jackson and Jones in the current race. <\/p>\n Carr said that \u201cself-funders have a terrible win-loss record in the state of Georgia\u201d and that he remained optimistic about his chances of advancing to a runoff. He added that Jackson has \u201ctotally cut the legs out from Lt Gov. Jones in this race.\u201d <\/p>\n Raffensperger also said there will \u201cprobably\u201d be a runoff. Asked about the attack ad from Jackson, Raffensperger said that \u201csome of the folks in this race are just obsessed with the past, and I\u2019m solely focused on Georgia\u2019s future.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2026-03\/260304-Georgia-Burt-Jones-ch-1327-5d65af.jpg\")
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