by Ty Tagami | Sep 18, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia Republicans who want to eliminate the state income tax vowed on Wednesday that they would not pay for it by taxing groceries and housing.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, secured agreement from a largely Republican study committee to neither impose a state tax on property or on grocery sales nor to increase the gasoline tax.
Tillery chairs both the Senate Appropriations Committee and a Senate committee that is studying how to abolish Georgia’s 5.19% income tax.
The move by Tillery, a candidate for lieutenant governor, illustrates the challenge. To eliminate the state income tax, lawmakers must either cut the budget or secure other sources of funding to maintain government services.
At their meeting Wednesday, senators heard from current and former officials from other states that do not have an income tax or are in the process of eliminating one.
Those states tend to rely on sales taxes, which take a proportionately larger bite out of the paychecks of consumers who earn less.
In Florida, for instance, three quarters of general revenues — $50 billion — come from a 6% sales tax, said J. Ben Watkins, the Sunshine State’s director of bond finance.
He told the senators at the Georgia Capitol that the absence of an income tax has driven population growth in Florida — and sales tax revenue along with it.
“People have flocked to the state — remote working, second homes, retirees,” he said. “Wy do people move to Florida? What is our secret to success in Florida? Warm climate and low taxes.”
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, one of three Democrats on the 11-member committee, pushed back, saying sales taxes place a relatively higher burden on low-income earners than an income tax.
But Sarah Hicks, a former budget director for the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, said businesses are attracted by the absence of an income tax. Those businesses create jobs that attract workers and grow the economy, she said.
“I think people go where jobs are, and they go where they know what to expect,” she said.
About half of Texas’ revenue comes from the state’s sales tax, Hicks said.
At a previous hearing, in August, the nationally known anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist recommended a gradual reduction in the income tax rate on the path to elimination.
Georgia is already going that direction. The General Assembly voted to reduce the income tax rate from 6% to 5.75% in 2022, gradually lowering it to 5.19% this year.
Tillery ended the meeting after securing the votes against offsetting taxes to groceries, property and gas. He said the next hearing will be in mid- to late-October.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 17, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Brad Raffensperger wants to follow the trail of Brian Kemp, who used his title as Georgia secretary of state to launch into the governor’s office.
Raffensperger joined the field of Republican contenders Wednesday, on a platform that includes more jobs, less taxation, immigration controls and other traditional GOP hallmarks, including guns, God and — these days — opposition to anything “woke.”
Like Kemp, he is focusing on voters who work hard for their money.
“Hardworking Georgians are struggling to put food on the table,” Raffensperger said. “Parents worry about their kids being indoctrinated in the classroom. Too many families live in fear of gangs, cartels, and violent criminals.”
Raffensperger earned the enmity of President Donald Trump by contradicting his claim that Georgia’s 2020 election results were inaccurate. Now, he must now try to win the 2026 GOP primary election against a Trump-backed candidate.
Trump has endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was already running against state Attorney General Chris Carr for the GOP nomination.
Jones is a longtime ally of Trump, whose voting base is driving state Republican politics. Their influence is so strong that they got the state Republican Party to adopt a resolution in June to bar Raffensperger from running as a Republican, though the party chief doubted it was legally enforceable.
Should Raffensperger win the GOP nomination, he will face the survivor of an increasingly crowded primary for Democrats.
There are standard Democrats in the field: Jason Esteves, who resigned from his Atlanta-based state Senate seat last week to focus on his campaign; former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; and Michael Thurmond, who has been elected statewide as labor commissioner, has served in the General Assembly, and recently ended his second four-year term as the elected CEO of DeKalb County.
And there is now an unusual contender who will be appealing to Democratic voters: Geoff Duncan, Jones’ predecessor in the lieutenant governor’s office.
Duncan was a Republican when he led the Senate in that role, but — equally reviled by the Republican Party due to his clashes with Trump over the 2020 election — he recently switched parties. Duncan entered the race for governor Tuesday as a Democrat with an anti-Trump platform, calling Trump’s attacks “a badge of honor.”
Raffensperger, a businessman who rose to state office after serving on the Johns Creek City Council and then in the Georgia House of Representatives, is not only following Kemp’s path but also his strategies.
Kemp has clashed with Trump, too, but has managed to remain popular with Republicans.
Raffensperger said he wants to build on Kemp’s legacy by taking on the radical left, “woke” corporate America, and criminal immigrants.
Raffensperger also vowed to eliminate special interest tax breaks while at the same time seeking to incentivize companies that are reshoring long-term jobs in Georgia and in poor areas.
In an appeal to Trump’s base, he also said he wants to purge “woke” school curriculum, protect girls from transgender athletes while banning puberty blockers and transition surgeries, fortify schools with more safety grants — and work alongside Trump and congressional leaders on the economy, immigration and policing.
Raffensperger has tried to recover from his clash with Trump over his own handling of the 2020 election, with reassuring messages about security. He has routinely purged inactive voters and offered audits of the accuracy of election outcomes.
His departure from the secretary of state’s office was telegraphed earlier this month, when his former lieutenant, Gabriel Sterling, joined the campaign to succeed Raffensperger. Sterling promised that Georgia’s elections are safe and that he would keep it that way.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp joined other political leaders near Social Circle Tuesday to turn shovels at a ceremonial groundbreaking for the future Rivian electric automobile plant.
The government-subsidized project is expected to create 7,500 jobs by 2030, after construction begins in earnest next year and the first vehicle rolls off the line in 2028.
The company says it will eventually make 400,000 automobiles a year there.
Rivian paused construction last year but then inked a $6 billion loan with the U.S. Department of Energy and announced plans to move ahead in January.
Georgia taxpayers had already purchased and prepared the land that the state is leasing to the company through a quasi-governmental third party.
The unusual transaction was a way around local zoning that restricts the 2,000-acre property to agricultural uses.
Nearby landowners sued in Morgan County Superior Court, hoping to force the project through the normal zoning process.
But the state intervened and moved to compel the plaintiffs to pay its legal costs, asserting the lawsuit was frivolous.
A judge ruled for the nearby landowners last week, saying they raised an unanswered question about whether the state could bypass local zoning for a for-profit project.
One of the landowners, Alan Jenkins, held a protest sign at the edge of the property as Kemp and the others were digging.
Georgia “fouled” legacy farmland to prepare the land for the company, said Jenkins, whose sign called for protecting the local watershed.
“Rivian, a touted green company, is taking advantage of the state having done the dirty work for them,” he said.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday shut the door on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ election interference case against Donald Trump and his supporters.
The high court, in a 4-3 vote, declined to consider Willis’ appeal after the Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified her from prosecuting conspiracy charges against Trump and eight others. The appeals court found an appearance of impropriety in her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she had assigned to the case.
Three of the judges in the Supreme Court majority concurred that the Willis case was so unique that her appeal was “a poor vehicle” for establishing precedent on when to disqualify a prosecutor for misconduct. (Two of the nine justices did not vote in Tuesday’s decision.)
The state Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council could take over the cases, as it did in a related one involving Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Willis had targeted Jones along with Trump and the other co-defendants, but a judge disqualified her from that investigation. A special prosecutor took up the Jones investigation and decided not to prosecute him.
The court decision sidelining Willis from investigating Jones came after she hosted a fundraiser for a Democrat who was running against Jones for lieutenant governor.
Jones is now running to be the Republican nominee for Governor, with Trump’s endorsement. Jones accused Willis of weaponizing the justice system for political gain.
“The Supreme Court just shut Fani Willis down. Her political circus is OVER,” Jones’ campaign said in a statement. “Today justice is served for Georgia, and justice is served for President Trump.”
Jones and fellow Republicans are now pursuing Willis, setting up a Senate committee to investigate her investigation of election interference.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Geoff Duncan, Georgia’s former Republican lieutenant governor, is running for governor as a Democrat, putting financial security and political moderation at the center of his campaign.
Duncan says in a brief YouTube video that he wants “to make Georgia the front line of Democracy and a backstop against extremism.”
He puts President Donald Trump in the extremist camp.
Duncan has been jabbing at Trump for years, attracting the president’s ire by rejecting his assertions that he had won the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
In 2021, Duncan published the book, “GOP 2.0,” which urged a pivot from Trump’s brand of politics.
Since then, he has shared his anti-Trump message as a commentator on CNN and as a columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In January, after he had endorsed Kamala Harris’ failed campaign for president, the Georgia Republican Party expelled him.
“By his pattern of conduct, Duncan has forfeited any claim to being even a nominal ‘Republican,’ ” the state GOP’s executive committee wrote in a resolution that was passed unanimously by its members.
In his YouTube announcement, which appeared on the platform Monday, Duncan welcomes attacks from Trump, calling them “a badge of honor.”
Duncan also focuses on family finances. He says he wants to help moms who cannot return to work because of skyrocketing child care costs and families that must choose between paying for medicine and food.
He will be contesting three leading Democrats for that party’s nomination: Jason Esteves, who announced last week that he was stepping down from his Atlanta-based state senate seat to focus on his campaign; former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; and Michael Thurmond, who has been elected statewide as labor commissioner, has served in the General Assembly, and recently ended his second four-year term as the elected CEO of DeKalb County.
Whoever emerges from the Democratic primary will face the winner of the Republican nomination, where state Attorney General Chris Carr is campaigning against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was recently endorsed by Trump.
