ATLANTA – State Sen. Burt Jones has become the third candidate to enter next year’s Republican race for lieutenant governor.
Jones, R-Jackson, who runs an insurance business, filed paperwork Friday to seek the post being vacated by GOP Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who announced in May he would not run for a second term.
“Georgians deserve a proven business leader, consistent conservative, and champion for Georgia families with the courage to stand up and make our state a better place, and I’m running for lieutenant governor to do just that,” Jones said Tuesday in officially launching his candidacy.
“I’ll fight for the future of every Georgian by creating high-quality jobs and cutting taxes, reining in the cost of higher education and investing in more educational opportunities for our children, strengthening election integrity and restoring voter confidence, and standing with our men and women of law enforcement to keep our communities safe.”
Jones has been a key player during the last couple of years in the fight to legalize sports betting in Georgia, serving as chief sponsor of sports betting legislation introduced in the Senate last year.
More recently, he was among a group of Senate Republicans who asked Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special session of the General Assembly shortly after the November elections to consider changes to Georgia’s election laws.
The same group conducted hearings inside the state Capitol in December that lent ammunition to claims of election fraud spread by then-President Donald Trump and his allies, which were subsequently dismissed in the courts.
Jones, an early supporter of Trump in Georgia, and the other senators subsequently released a report calling the Nov. 3 election “chaotic” and that “any reported results must be viewed as untrustworthy.”
In January, Jones was stripped of a committee chairmanship by Duncan, who repeatedly pushed for the group to drop its election fraud claims and accept the election results as legitimate.
Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville, a Duncan ally, declared his candidacy for lieutenant governor in May and has gotten a head start on fundraising. Miller raised more than $2 million during the five weeks between entering the contest and the June 30 second-quarter reporting deadline.
The third candidate in the race is Republican activist Jeanne Seaver of Savannah. She had raised $17,432 through the end of June, according to a report filed with the Georgia Government Transparency & Campaign Finance Commission.