A new ad from a mysterious group is further upending the already chaotic and messy Republican gubernatorial primary in Georgia.
Last week, the secretive Georgians for Integrity launched a million-dollar new ad hitting Burt Jones for padding his own pockets while in office. At the heart of the ad – and the dispute it set off – is a law that Jones himself pushed which would give him and his family a massive pay day from the construction of 13 “mammoth” data centers. The project is immersed in controversy, with the Georgia Recorder reporting community members’ deep concerns over how much water and electricity it will use.
Now, the ad has become the latest flash point in the Republican primary. According to new reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the fight over who is behind the mysterious ad has the GOP campaigns “point[ing] fingers at each other”, with the Jones campaign attacking its Republican rivals, accusing them of “throwing hail Marys” and calling them “Never-Trumpers [who] can’t gain traction because they’re wrong on virtually every issue Republican voters care about.”
Talk about messy…
Read more from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the latest chaos in the Georgia GOP primary:
- A group called Georgians for Integrity spent roughly $1 million on a 30-second ad attacking Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the early front-runner among Republicans in the race for governor. But the intrigue is less about the content of the ad than who paid for it.
- Whoever is behind this has covered their tracks remarkably well. The paper trail appears to wind from Delaware to Utah to a post office box in Atlanta. One campaign finance expert told us she’s never seen the roots of an ad so thoroughly concealed.
- We’ve cast a wide net and still can’t figure out who did it. The campaigns of Jones’ top Republican rivals — Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — both insist they’re not involved. Their allies have both pointed fingers at each other. Some others have speculated about deep-pocketed outside donors stepping in.
- The ad accuses Jones of leveraging his office for personal gain, a charge he’s flatly rejected. Jones’ camp brushed off the ad’s timing, which lands just as many voters tune out for the holidays. His spokeswoman Kayla Lott blamed both rivals for “throwing Hail Marys.”
- “Brad Raffensperger and Chris Carr — two proud Never-Trumpers — can’t gain traction because they’re wrong on virtually every issue Republican voters care about,” she said. “Let them burn through their cash; we’ll stay focused on delivering common-sense solutions that actually move Georgia forward.”
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