Burt Jones

We've been tracking this with Rick Jackson.

We've been following the breadcrumbs really since his first speech after he won the runoff against Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, where he didn't mention Trump's name once.

But this was the clearest indication yet of that recalibration, of that pivot, um, of that break in a, in a sense with Donald Trump, not even mentioning the president's name once during the debate, as you said, Patricia.

Let's listen to both Keisha Lance Bottoms and Rick Jackson take up the Trump issue.

This is the upgrade website, uh, uh, uh, excuse me, article from 2023.

Secretary of State, uh, Raffensperger said, has said the state must wait until 2025, but critics continue to pile on while Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones and the state Republican Party joining the chorus in recent days.

They say waiting until next year's presidential election would leave the voting equipment open to attack.

I mean, it, it's, it's ...

and he wasn't

because remember Trump backed Burt Jones and now that we have the national ads what Keisha's doing I know

but Rick Jackson out Trumped even though he didn't have Trump's endorsement during the primary you remember the commercials here he talked a lot about Trump so he out Trumped Trump to get that nomination and probably Burt Jones didn't run a very good campaign I would think

but Kemp did that too he went down the Trumpian lane in the primary and then that was gone

Yeah, kind of.

They like to pay, play pundit, so does this factor into how they kind of think about who they wanna throw their support behind? And then the other part that is worth mentioning, too, is the election certification part of this.

This has always been what Democrats have been so anxious about, about this race, is they kind of dodged a bullet with Bert Jones, who's another Republican that was running in the primary, lost the primary.

He's, like, a crazy election denier.

Rick Jackson's not that much better, but, like, it, it's just a very, very scary race with enormous 2028 implications for Ossoff, and then, like, do the actual election results get certified properly?

There were five to six other formidable candidates in that race.

Ray Jackson spent an enormous amount of money, um, beating Chris Carr, Raffensperger, and then went on to defeat Bert Jones in the runoff, and so his name recognition increased with that level of spending.

But for him to still be tied with Keisha Lance Bottoms when she has literally a 10th of what he has as far as on television, I mean, you know, the campaign is getting outspent sometimes 12 to 1 in a week.

But for her to be tied statistically, and these are outside polls and internal polls, shows that Georgia voters want change.

There's another way that the state could offset some of these tax cuts, and that is, of course, slashing the incentives for big industries, right? And you've written a lot about the debate over the years.

That's how Burt Jones actually aimed at his plan to eliminate the state income tax would be offset by slashing Georgia's special interest tax breaks that go to industries like the film tax credit that was so popular in building Georgia's film industry, but also smaller industries, bigger industries, you know, you name it, there's billions of dollars.

of corporate tax breaks that critics call corporate welfare.

Lawmakers said that this was the year they'd actually start doing that.