by Ty Tagami | Jun 2, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The final Republican gubernatorial primary debate revealed more about Lt. Gov. Burt Jones than it did about billionaire Rick Jackson, as the latter declined to attend.
Or maybe it revealed a lot about Jackson, Jones said, speaking next to an empty lectern in a Georgia Public Broadcasting studio in Atlanta.
“You show up if you want to show people that you actually care,” Jones said.
Jackson declined to attend the debate sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club on Monday ahead of the June 16 primary runoff. Instead, he hosted a campaign event in Kennesaw with U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican.
Jones fielded questions about election law, abortion and tax credits.
He characterized the state’s $30 million-a-year tax credits to various companies as “corporate welfare,” but he did not specify which he would eliminate. As governor, he said he would cut those that do not produce enough jobs. He added that the state’s film tax credit has been a good investment.
He said he still supports Georgia’s ban on abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which he voted for when he was a senator.
And he supports Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision to call a special legislative session on June 17, the day after the runoff, to redraw district lines. Kemp’s decision came after a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in April that invalidated a new majority-Black legislative district in Louisiana. Black lawmakers contend Republicans want to maintain their grip on power by redrawing lines in a way that dilutes the impact of Black voters.
Districts should be drawn from “a geographic standpoint,” Jones said, rather than by racial demographics.
He also supported the new state law that forced five Democratic-leaning counties in metro Atlanta to hold nonpartisan elections for offices such as district attorney and county commissioner starting in 2028.
“Those were brought forward by people in the local delegations that felt so inclined to bring that legislation forward and they were able to get it through both chambers and then it was signed by the governor,” Jones said.
He opposed a similar state mandate on Georgia’s other 154 counties, saying it should be up to local delegations whether they want such offices to be partisan or nonpartisan.
Jones’ reference to local delegations sounded like the traditional deference of the Senate and House to so-called “local” bills that affect only one county. If most lawmakers from that county approve of such a bill, the whole Legislature usually rubber-stamps it.
In this case, though, House Bill 369 started as a measure to regulate food trucks, and it was originally sponsored by a Democrat from Valdosta. But Senate Republicans commandeered it and reworked it into legislation modeled in part after Senate Bill 14 by five Republicans from three of the affected counties — Cobb, Fulton and Gwinnett. (Democratic lawmakers hold overwhelming majorities in the other two affected counties, Clayton and DeKalb.)
Democrats railed against the new law as a desperate attempt by Republicans to maintain some control in those counties as they shift Democratic.
Jones repeatedly hammered home the fact that his opponent had skipped the debate, using Jackson’s absence as an opportunity to attack him on ethics and on issues such as immigration.
At the last such debate, Jackson had stumbled in a response to an accusation by Jones that he had employed “illegals.” Jackson, who founded and leads a health care staffing and services company, responded that he did not know the answer because he had hired thousands of people, though he said he had always followed the law.
“Probably the reason why he’s not here now is he doesn’t have the answers for these questions,” Jones said. “It just shows a man’s character when he won’t show up and take questions and Q and A from journalists.”
That may have been a reference to a gubernatorial forum in April hosted by the Georgia Association of Manufacturers.
Every candidate for governor except Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms attended and answered formal questions from the hosts. Seven of the eight present then met up with reporters afterward for a round of informal questions.
Jackson was the only one who skipped that part.
One reporter asked each candidate to pick a word that best described them, and the public will never know what Jackson might have come up with on the spot.
Jones’ answer bent the one-word rule: “I like to win.”
by Ty Tagami | Jun 1, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Most of Georgia’s statewide primary races have been settled on either the Democratic or Republican ticket, but the race for leadership of the state Senate remains up for grabs on both sides of the aisle.
While not a senator, the lieutenant governor presides over the chamber and can control committee assignments and the flow of legislation. The lieutenant governor also fills in for the governor when necessary.
The partisans who survived last month’s primary election for the job will face each other in a June 16 runoff. On Sunday, they squared off in person in a studio at Georgia Public Broadcasting in Atlanta, for what will likely be their final debate.
It can be difficult to find daylight between candidates from the same party, so in the first debate the remaining two Republicans attacked each other’s leadership skills, pitching themselves as best able to execute on policy.
The Democrats followed a similar script in their subsequent debate.
Both Republicans, Sen. Greg Dolezal of Cumming and former Sen. John F. Kennedy of Macon, said they want to cut taxes further than the GOP-controlled Legislature did this year.
Dolezal said that could be done without reducing services.
“For far too long, the Republican Party has been the party of crony capitalism,” said Dolezal, blaming his own partisans for approving budget-eating tax giveaways. “And if we get rid of these crony capitalist tax cuts, we can reduce and ultimately eliminate the state income tax here in Georgia.”
Kennedy resigned in early December because Georgia bars lawmakers from raising campaign funds during the legislative session. So he did not have to shoulder responsibility for the Senate’s failure to abolish income taxes as planned or the House’s similar failure to eliminate property taxes.
Kennedy said he could reduce taxes further if he were lieutenant governor.
“The Legislature was not able to get relief to hard-working Georgians,” he said. “I come in with a good reputation of working with all people, working with folks across the aisle, excellent relationships with those in the House and the governor’s office. And that’s what it takes.”
Kennedy noted that he was elected Senate president pro tempore, the highest leadership office for a senator.
Dolezal never made it into one of the top six Senate leadership spots for Republicans after serving a similar amount of time.
Dolezal described himself as a loyalist to President Donald Trump, noting that he was among a handful of senators who called for a special legislative session to investigate Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
“If a close friend came to you and said, ‘I’m looking for a conservative fighter,'” Dolezal said. “Who would you recommend? The one who goes along to get along or the one who has a record of standing and fighting?”
He echoed fears voiced in Texas where some Republicans contend that parts of the state are at risk of falling under Islamic legal influence.
“I’m fighting to ban Sharia law,” Dolezal said.
The Democratic debate featured bitter exchanges between Sen. Josh McLaurin of Sandy Springs and Nabilah Parkes, a former state senator from Gwinnett County.
Parkes had initially planned to run for insurance commissioner, but she abruptly changed course in March to join the contest for lieutenant governor.
Like Kennedy, she resigned her seat in the Senate so she could raise money for her campaign.
Unlike Kennedy, she waited until the legislative session had already started, leaving her seat vacant from mid-March into the busiest period of lawmaking.
Kennedy was succeeded by a Republican in February after a special election. A special election to fill the remainder of Parkes’ term is set for June 16, the same day as the primary runoff in the race to succeed her next year.
McLaurin called Parkes a quitter, and she called him a feeble campaigner, an insult he returned. Parkes, who is Muslim, has pointed to Dolezal’s campaign ads about Islam as her reason for breaking ranks with Democratic leaders to run for lieutenant governor.
Parkes described herself as a fighter from a working-class family who attended public schools and qualified for the free and reduced-price meals there before she attended Georgia State University.
McLaurin attended a private K-12 school in Buckhead, then the University of Georgia and Yale Law School, though he said his parents came from hardscrabble backgrounds.
McLaurin described himself as a “skillful” operator, able to ridicule Republican lawmakers for supporting Trump while earning enough of their respect and trust to pass legislation. He cited a bill to regulate car booting and one another for therapies for veterans.
Parkes attacked McLaurin as a Democrat who “coddles” Republicans.
“We don’t need a candidate that goes along to get along, like my opponent,” she said.
McLaurin said the Senate would likely remain under GOP control after the November general election and that Republicans would almost certainly strip the lieutenant governor of power if a Democrat were to win the office.
He characterized Parkes as ineffective, noting that scores of Democratic lawmakers have endorsed him, as has Stacey Abrams, who twice won Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination. On Monday, Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock added his endorsement.
“I imagine that my bipartisan work probably does look like coddling Republicans to somebody who hasn’t done any of it,” McLaurin said. “So, the bottom line is this: I am a fierce fighter. I have stood up to MAGA Republicans. I’ve called them narcissist coddlers to their face, but I get stuff done, and that’s why I can win in November.”
Watch the debates online at https://www.gpb.org/election/press-club-debates.
by Ty Tagami | May 29, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Things were looking grim for Georgia’s wild pigs during this year’s legislative session, but they found partial salvation in lawmakers who larded their own budget with too much pork.
Gov. Brian Kemp, in his effort to balance the budget, cut hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending when he signed it earlier this month.
He highlighted some of the major cuts at that time but did not mention the pig eradication projects nestled deep within the 171-page document.
A $1 million public-private pilot program to manage feral hogs was a victim of his line-item veto, as was a $200,000 wild pig eradication program.
The latter sounded like a bounty program to Nick Atwood, an Atlanta volunteer with a loose-knit group called Rooting for Pigs.
Studies have shown bounty programs are ineffective at wildlife control, whether for prairie dogs, raccoons or feral hogs, Atwood said. His group sent Kemp a letter in mid-April explaining all this and suggesting that cutting the programs could save taxpayers some money.
Atwood does not know whether the message led to Kemp’s line-item vetoes, but he thinks it might have.
Asked about this, Kemp’s office did not want to engage in the specifics, referring instead to Kemp’s comments on May 12 when reporters gathered in his office to watch him sign the budget.
The governor said then that he had to fix a “structural deficit” that had left a roughly $1 billion hole in the budget. He said he could have left it alone but that he did not want to leave “a mess” for whoever succeeds him as governor next year, or for the next Legislature.
“So what we’re doing now is making some tough choices,” he said.
The eradication programs had been something of a priority for lawmakers, especially in the House.
Owing to limited time (and attention spans), Rep. Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, could only detail a small number of items in the $38.5 billion fiscal year 2027 budget when he presented it on the House floor on March 10.
Hatchett, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, talked about money for big issues, such as education, health care, prisons and poverty.
But he left time to talk about wild pigs, and the money in the budget to get rid of them.
“Feral hogs are wreaking havoc statewide,” he said, “causing millions of dollars of damage to crops and farms each year.”
The next week, the Senate sent House Bill 946 to Kemp, a measure that authorizes the use of drones to locate feral pigs while hunting them and allows their capture without a hunting or trapping license if they are killed on site.
The measure passed the Senate unanimously, after Sen. Lee Anderson, R-Grovetown, implored his fellow lawmakers to help farmers.
“I just ask each and every one of you vote green so we can go kill some hogs this afternoon,” he told them.
Kemp signed it earlier this month.
So wild hogs still have some worries.
Atwood said they do not deserve the treatment, describing them with words one might use for the teenagers next door (or in your home).
“Pigs are intelligent, curious, adaptable animals that are often misunderstood,” he said.
by Ty Tagami | May 28, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia Power customers will see a slight reduction in power bills after the state agency that regulates the monopoly utility approved rate changes Thursday.
The Public Service Commission, an elected body with five members, had previously frozen the company’s electricity rates for three years. But that decision in early 2025 did not apply to rate adjustments to cover the changing cost of fuel and storm damage.
Rather than raising rates, the agreement Georgia Power made with the commission will cut typical residential customer bills by about $4 a month, or about $285 million collectively per year.
“After recent rate increases caused by inflation, the war in Ukraine and other global phenomenon, it’s great to be able to offer some relief to Georgia Power ratepayers,” Chairman Jason Shaw said in a written statement after the vote approving the changes.
Georgia Power is reducing the rates in part by using federal tax credits for nuclear power production.
Although the vote for approval was unanimous, two new Democrats on the panel voted unsuccessfully to amend the rate agreements, with the three Republicans opposed.
Commissioner Peter Hubbard, one of the Democrats, said his four amendments would have saved ratepayers another $50 million.
“Instead, the majority put the company first,” he said in a statement.
Hubbard said he voted for the unamended agreements to lock in “as much relief as possible” ahead of summer, with the revised rates taking effect in June.
During the hearing, critics said Georgia Power was still getting a deal because the company secured authority to purchase more coal than usual at above-market prices.
Under Georgia law, the company can pass along fuel prices to customers if they are “just and reasonable.”
Commission staff said during the hearing that Georgia Power had historically purchased about a tenth of its coal at above-market rates. The deal approved Thursday allowed it to purchase up to 15% at higher prices.
Environmentalists had wanted the limit set at 5% but acknowledged the commission staff had negotiated a better deal for ratepayers than Georgia Power had first offered.
The company’s initial rate proposal earlier this year would have saved customers only about $1.30 a month.
Georgia Power will make another fuel rate adjustment request in less than three years, in February 2029.
The storm damage portion of the costs being passed to consumers was mostly from Hurricane Helene. Georgia Power has said the historic hurricane caused $800 million in damage to about 12,000 power poles, 1,500 miles of power lines and more than 5,000 transformers.
The Republican-led commission has become a target for angry voters after allowing Georgia Power to make a half dozen rate increases in recent years. The commission also approved a 10 gigawatt expansion in December, largely to serve anticipated demand from data centers.
In a special election last year, Hubbard unseated Republican Fitz Johnson. Johnson is back on the ballot and will try to retake the seat from Hubbard in the November general election.
Likewise, Democrat Alicia Johnson unseated a Republican last year, winning a spot on the commission through 2030. Another seat is in play after Republican Tricia Pridemore opted not to run for reelection, creating the possibility of Democratic control next year.
by Ty Tagami | May 27, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Voters recovering from the long list of candidates that greeted them on their primary election ballots last week will have to return to the polls soon for runoff elections.
The Atlanta Press Club will help voters make informed choices with a final round of livestreamed debates Sunday and Monday.
It is the latest installment in a two-decade tradition that “provides the most comprehensive, timely and widely viewed series of political debates during every election year in Georgia,” according to the press club, which has been hosting the forums with Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Their forums in late April featured crowded fields, with each candidate receiving minimal airtime. Now, with some primary races decided and others whittled to two candidates from each party, each office seeker who accepts an invitation to debate will get more time.
Sunday’s schedule features the remaining two Republicans vying for U.S. Senate and hoping to contest incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in the November general election, along with the two Republican candidates for Public Service Commission District 5 to succeed Tricia Pridemore, a Republican who did not seek reelection.
Also on Sunday, the press club will host forums for the two surviving candidates from each party running for lieutenant governor and secretary of state.
Monday’s schedule features the governor’s race. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson were the top vote-getters in last week’s GOP gubernatorial primary.
The winner of their June 16 runoff will run against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat. She won her primary outright last week.
Also on Monday are two Republicans for state school superintendent, one of them incumbent Richard Woods, and the final two GOP candidates for the 11th Congressional District in north metro Atlanta, where incumbent Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Republican, is retiring.
On the Democratic side Monday are debates for candidates seeking their party’s nominations for labor commissioner and insurance commissioner; the winners will face the Republican incumbents in November. Also on the schedule is a debate for the remaining two Democratic candidates for the 1st Congressional District, a coastal post held by Rep. Buddy Carter, a Republican who lost his bid for U.S. Senate last week.
The forum lineup also includes the Fulton County Commission chair race, in which Democratic incumbent Robb Pitts was invited to debate his remaining Democratic challenger, Mo Ivory.
No runoff was required for attorney general, agriculture commissioner, Public Service Commission District 3 or for the congressional races in the 10th, 13th and 14th districts.
Debate times and streaming information are available on the Atlanta Press Club website: https://atlantapressclub.org/debates/.
