by Ty Tagami | Sep 30, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — With gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon less than two weeks ahead of early voting, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms pledged to cut driving-related taxes.
Standing outside a BP gas station near Georgia Tech on Wednesday, Bottoms said that if voters choose her as the state’s next governor over Republican Rick Jackson, she will seek to eliminate the state’s 2.25% auto insurance premium tax and roll back the state motor fuel tax to 28 cents a gallon for gasoline and 31.3 cents for diesel.
She also blamed President Donald Trump and the war in Iran.
“This war that Trump projected would last just a matter of days or a couple of weeks, or whatever it was that came out of his mouth at that time, has continued and it’s only getting worse,” Bottoms said.
Her policy rollout came two days after Gov. Brian Kemp, who is backing Jackson, declared a state of emergency to suspend the motor fuels tax for 30 days. The state excise tax is 33.3 cents per gallon of gasoline and 37.3 cents per gallon of diesel.
Bottoms’ new policy proposals came amid a battle for voters’ hearts and minds on one of the top issues in this election: the rising cost of living.
The Jackson campaign fired back, noting that Jackson had already laid out an affordability plan weeks ago. Jackson had said he would cut the state income tax in half and eliminate the state tax on tips and on energy for residential and small-business consumers. He also had said he would push local governments to reduce their property taxes and to reduce building permit delays that can increase housing construction costs.
And Jackson had said he would suspend the motor fuel tax during price spikes.
At the BP with Bottoms, state Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, attacked Jackson over his investment in a recently announced Texas oil refinery.
Jackson had revealed at a town hall in Blakely that he was the “largest outside investor” in the refinery, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in March. Then, on Wednesday, the publication reported that India’s Reliance Industries had a deal to buy the proposed refinery’s products. The article said Trump had identified Reliance as a project investor while Jackson had said in an unrelated deposition that a company from India was planning to buy the company’s output.
Bottoms used the investment against Jackson.
“He is sending this diesel fuel out of this country while our prices rise,” she said.
(The Jackson campaign on Wednesday repeated its own line of attack on personal finances, calling on Bottoms to disclose the clients of her consulting firm.)
Bottoms said her insurance tax cut would save the average two-car family about $140 a year while the fuel tax rollback would save that family nearly $80 a year. She said she was considering offsetting the revenue loss with “branding opportunities” at Georgia visitor centers.
Other states are scrambling to address rising fuel prices, with political leaders in California, Ohio and Texas seeking ways to lower costs, Politico reported Wednesday. The publication attributed the rising prices to hostilities in Iran and Ukraine, quoting Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, as saying that until those issues are resolved, “you’re just putting Band-Aids on a gaping wound.”
Bottoms urged voters to imagine that Trump is on the ballot, just as he asked his supporters to do at a South Carolina rally in August.
Fearing low turnout in a year when he was not on the ballot, Trump said, “pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot. Just come and vote, it’s so important.”
Early voting starts Oct. 13, and the Bottoms campaign is betting that Trump’s endorsement of Jackson will help her campaign.
“Donald Trump says he wants us to imagine that he is on the ballot,” Bottoms said. “Well, let’s do that.”
by Ty Tagami | Sep 29, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — When Republicans running for office rallied with Gov. Brian Kemp south of Atlanta this week, they rarely mentioned President Donald Trump but repeatedly targeted Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms.
The event at the Monroe County Conference Center in Forsyth Monday night featured GOP candidates up and down the ballot, with gubernatorial nominee Rick Jackson as the headliner.
Before the event started, Kemp signed an executive order suspending the motor fuel tax to offset rising prices, blaming “unstable” global markets.
Both Bottoms and Jackson have said they want to help farmers deal with the rising cost of diesel.
Bottoms has blamed the increases on President Donald Trump and the war in Iran. She mentioned him repeatedly at an event in Atlanta Sunday.
But his name came up only a couple of times at the GOP event, according to a video feed provided by C-SPAN in a partnership with Capitol Beat.
U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, running for re-election, thanked voters for sending him to Washington to stand with Trump against Iran and that country’s efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon. And Lauren “Bubba” McDonald, vice chairman of the state Public Service Commission, mentioned the president when he said Republicans needed to turn out and vote to show that Georgia is a “Bulldog red” state.
Far more speakers mentioned Bottoms’ name even though Jackson is the only candidate running against her.
Most of them attacked her handling of public unrest during her term as mayor of Atlanta, when Black Lives Matter protests intersected with frustration over COVID-19 disruptions.
State Rep. Tim Fleming, R-Covington, the GOP candidate for Georgia secretary of state, was Kemp’s chief of staff in that era, when, he said, “riots and violence hit the streets of Atlanta, while Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms allowed civil unrest to spiral.”
State Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, noted that police cars burned, businesses were looted and a Wendy’s restaurant on Atlanta’s south side was set ablaze after police fatally shot a man named Rayshard Brooks there.
“Things got so out of control that Governor Kemp had to call in the National Guard — twice,” he said.
Insurance Commissioner John King, running for re-election, is a former police chief.
“Get used to burning patrol cars” if Bottoms wins in November, he warned. “Complete disorder. That’s what they’re trying to get us to forget,” he said of Bottoms’ campaign.
All of this set the stage for Jackson, who talked of cutting taxes, holding government accountable and continuing Kemp’s policies. Jackson is endorsed by Trump, but he did not mention the president. Instead, Jackson focused on his opponent, repeating the criticism of Bottoms’ handling of public safety as Atlanta mayor.
“Leadership stepped back and lawlessness stepped in. That Wendy’s is a symbol of failed leadership,” Jackson said. “As governor, I will back the blue. I will make public safety a daily responsibility.”
With polls reporting approval numbers for Trump dropping, Bottoms has reminded voters that Jackson allied himself with the president.
Jackson said at an April debate that “there’s nobody that supports President Trump more than I do now” and that “I’ll be just like him, with a Southern tone.”
Bottoms said Sunday that she had watched Jackson respond in a C-SPAN interview to a question about how he would help homeless veterans.
“His response was telehealth for homeless veterans would be a solution and then he said it’s an untapped marketplace,” she said. “So that tells you where his mindset is: everything is a business proposition for him. So when he says he wants to be just like Donald Trump with a Southern tone, he’s projecting that.”
Bottoms has repeatedly attacked Jackson over his business dealings, including the contracting his company has done with the state of Georgia and a Texas data center he has invested in.
Much of Jackson’s presentation Monday revisited a story he frequently tells about his childhood. Raised by an alcoholic single mother, he said he wound up a ward of the state, in foster care. As an adult, he became wealthy through a business he founded in the healthcare sector.
He called it “God’s money,” and he talked about how he had helped children in foster care, giving them college scholarships and helping them succeed.
“The state gave me a chance. Now I feel a responsibility to take everything I have lived, everything I have learned and everything I have built and put it to work to help others,” Jackson said. “I’m not running because I have something left to prove. I’m running because I have something else to give.”
by Ty Tagami | Sep 28, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — For the third time this year, Gov. Brian Kemp ordered a suspension of Georgia’s fuel tax, as prices at the pump keep rising with no sign of relief.
The 30-day suspension order, which Kemp signed Monday, goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday and runs through Oct. 29.
“Global markets remain unstable and are subjecting Georgians to unpredictable price shocks on basic goods and services,” said Kemp’s executive order, issued under his authority to declare a state of emergency.
The “inherently unpredictable” market shifts have been making it “difficult, if not impossible” for Georgians to manage their budgets, prompting the suspension, the order said.
The state motor fuel excise tax is 33.3 cents a gallon for gasoline and 37.3 cents a gallon for diesel.
The average price for a gallon of regular gas in Georgia is $4.19, according to Kemp’s office. Diesel averages $6.24 a gallon.
Diesel prices have more than doubled in recent weeks, state Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper said in a statement, hitting farmers.
Kemp, in a statement explaining his decision, said he and lawmakers have been committed to helping Georgians and small businesses “fight through the tough times” with billions of dollars in relief.
Prior motor fuel tax suspensions cost the state about $200 million a month.
In March, Kemp signed a 60-day gas-tax-suspension bill after it passed the state House 163-4 and the state Senate unanimously.
Then, in May, he issued a state of emergency and extended the suspension a couple of weeks, into early June. The General Assembly retroactively approved the extension in a special session in June.
A spokesman for Kemp’s office said lawmakers can approve the new suspension whenever they next convene, noting that prior fall suspensions were ratified during the regular session, which starts each January.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 28, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms pitched more proposals to help Georgians cover major expenses in her bid to be the state’s next governor.
Last week, the Democrat and her Republican opponent, businessman Rick Jackson, touted their affordability plans for farmers.
In early September, Bottoms rolled out her plan to encourage local sales tax cuts on groceries, then Jackson rolled out an expansive plan that offered everything from tax cuts to expedited building permits and a tuition freeze at public colleges and universities.
On Sunday night, Bottoms said she would expand access to affordable housing with a special fund.
“I want to create an affordable housing trust fund statewide,” she said at an Atlanta event hosted by Courier Georgia, a new online publication focused on Democratic priorities.
Bottoms also said she wanted to help students pay for two years of college.
“I want to create a pathway for free technical and community college in this state,” she said at the event, which was moderated by Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor. “If you are a college student or a young person who wants to go to college, but you want two years of it free, we want to make sure that we can provide that for you.”
The Technical College System of Georgia already offers tuition-free study in 18 programs for high-demand career fields, such as precision manufacturing, welding and joining, and practical nursing.
And Bottoms said she would create a division of state government to help what she called “microbusinesses” grow.
Also at the event at Atlanta’s Loudermilk Conference Center was state Rep. Tanya Miller, D-Atlanta, the Democratic nominee for Georgia attorney general, the state’s chief legal officer.
Miller said she would crack open data center deals, using subpoenas to ensure transparency in utility contracts.
The GOP-led Georgia Public Service Commission has said its regulations require that electricity contracts require data centers to pay their share of the costs to build the generation and transmission capacity to serve them.
But critics such as the Southern Environmental Law Center say contractual secrecy makes it difficult to confirm those promises, noting that some related costs, such as for new natural gas pipelines, are excluded.
And Democrats and some Republicans were critical when the GOP-led General Assembly failed to approve legislation that would have prohibited electric companies from passing on data center costs to other ratepayers.
“I think this would be one way to make sure that when the utility companies try to raise your rates, they are doing it in comportment with the law,” Miller said. “They can’t tell you that if they do this, it won’t raise your rates and then turn around and raise your rates. So, we need someone with subpoena power to be constantly checking that math.”
Miller’s opponent, state Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, has said local governments should get to choose whether to let data center companies build.
But as attorney general he also said he would vet those decisions.
“We are the lawyers for the environmental protection division,” he said in an interview with 11Alive a month ago. “Our job as attorney general is to say, OK, this was approved by this local government, but are you protecting our waterways, are you following our environmental laws, are you actually getting the permits that are required? … That’s such an important role that I want to double down on.”
by Ty Tagami | Sep 28, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The public high school on-time graduation rate continued its nearly nonstop rise last school year, reaching an 88.5% statewide rate, the Georgia Department of Education announced Monday.
That is more than a percentage point higher than the statewide “four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate” for 2025, which was 87.2%.
Under that federal method of calculation, schools must count all students who enter into their class year during high school, either by enrolling in ninth grade or transferring in later. Officials can only subtract students who transfer out after confirming they reenrolled at another school.
The grad rate has climbed nearly every year since that calculation was mandated in 2011, when 67.4% graduated on time. The one exception was the class of 2021, which experienced the spring semester of junior year and all of senior year during the disruptions of COVID-19. The rate for that class fell a tenth of a percentage point from the prior year to 83.7%.
Since then, has Georgia been inching toward a 90% statewide rate.
But the vast majority of school districts have already met that bar. Of 180 city and county districts, 141 had a graduation rate at or above 90%.
Four districts, Ware and Warren counties and Chickamauga and Trion cities, graduated every student. In that group, only Ware, with a graduation class size of 318, had more than 100 seniors though.
Among metro Atlanta districts, where class sizes are larger, the city systems for Atlanta, Decatur and Marietta and the county systems for Cobb and Fulton all exceeded 90%, with Decatur leading them at 96.7%.
Fulton, the largest in that bunch, graduated 93.4% of the 7,718 students in the graduating class. Mike Looney, the superintendent, attributed it to hard work.
Richard Woods, the state school superintendent, also attributed the rising rate to students who see value in a diploma. Over the years, the state has increased diploma options, with school-to-work “pathways” such as the accelerated career diploma.
“Today’s news is a testament to our shared efforts to ensure Georgia students see the relevance of their education and are connected to opportunity in the future,” Woods said in a statement.
Even so, several state specialty schools gave diplomas to fewer than a third of their graduating class, and one county school district, Jenkins County, had a 65% rate.
Three dozen other city and county districts had rates in the 80s, including some with thousands of seniors, such as Clayton, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties in metro Atlanta.
