King Louis the XIV once said, “I am the state,” an utterance that denoted absolute power.
With Donald Trump, it might as well be, “I am the party.” That’s because it’s rare that any Republican will even whisper that the emperor is often buck nekkid.
The leaders of Georgia’s Republican Party went all in on this notion, and it seems this line of thinking has gotten themselves into a pickle with their own ilk.
The state GOP recently waived its neutrality rule, which keeps the party from backing one Republican candidate over another in its May primary. The rule is to prevent party elites from putting their thumbs on the scale, and lets the voters decide for themselves.
Bending the rules allows the Republican National Committee to pour funds onto a favored politician.
In this case, that favored pol is Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is running to remove the Lt. from his title.
The party elders waived this rule because President Donald Trump has endorsed Jones and they figured: “If the big guy wants it, who are we to argue?”
Credit: AJC file photo
Credit: AJC file photo
Party chair Josh McKoon said as much in an interview with Politico, calling the move a “no-brainer.”
“From my perspective, I was going to remove any barriers to working with the RNC from a candidate that the president has clearly signaled as the candidate he wants to be the next governor,” he said.
I mean, why even bother with a primary?
Well, the GOP’s unwashed masses didn’t like that, especially since other Republicans are running for governor, like Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The party’s grassroots made it known they don’t like taking orders from the top when it comes to candidate support. In fact, at least four state GOP chapters wrote letters in opposition to the scheme.
McKoon quickly backpedaled, going to social media to say: “This waiver permits the RNC, if it chooses, to engage on behalf of a candidate in a contested primary.
“The waiver is not an endorsement of any candidate by the Georgia Republican Party.”
I tried to contact McKoon for further elucidation, but he did not respond.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
The reason the party agreed to waive the neutrality rule was to beat back the hated Raffensperger. Remember, Trump and many other Republicans think of him as a traitor for having a backbone and pushing back on the president’s effort to undo his 2020 election loss.
The worry was that Raffensperger might sneak into the probable runoff and beat back Burt, who has been the leader in the polls so far.
That calculation was before the recent entry into the race of a health care mogul, and billionaire, named Rick Jackson who vows to spend $50 million of his own cash to become governor.
He has carpet-bombed the airwaves with ads, which are so omnipresent that I can’t watch bobsledding without seeing his face.
Jackson has a gripping backstory — coming from foster homes to forge himself into a wildly successful businessman. But he’ll have to overcome a reptilian gaze that comes across on TV.
He has come out blasting Jones, trying to knock him from the perch of being Trump’s guy.
“I saw a so-called front-runner who is weak as can be and lazy as the day is long,” Jackson said in his campaign rollout last week, after descending from a glass elevator at his company’s HQ.
I called some Republicans and several didn’t like the state party’s move to help Jones.
“It’s all Trump; it’s 100% Trump,” behind the effort, said Jason Shepherd, former chair of the Cobb County Republican Party. “McKoon is trying to curry favor with the president.”
“I don’t like it; parties shouldn’t take sides in primaries,” said conservative talk show host Martha Zoller, who supports Carr but thinks he’s been hurt by Jackson’s entry into the race.
But the real casualty in the race, she says, is Jones, the front-runner who has dumped $10 million of his own family money into the campaign.
“Burt has to be terrified of Rick Jackson getting in,” Zoller said. “Rick has an incredible story and his ads have been clever and mean.”
Team Raffy took the occasion to take a shot at Jones, not the rich newcomer, saying: “In Georgia, we respect leaders who stand on their own two feet. Brad Raffensperger always has. Burt Jones should try it.”
Jones’ campaign launched an ad calling Jackson, a “never Trumper,” noting that he contributed to Trump opponents Jeb Bush in 2016 and Nikki Haley in 2024.
In an email, Team Burt noted that “Burt Jones has supported President Trump for a decade, while Rick Jackson has supported him for a few weeks after deciding to run for office. He may think Georgia voters are blind to the facts, but they’re not — and they will see through his charade.”
Credit: Jim Galloway
Credit: Jim Galloway
Debbie Dooley, a founder of the Tea Party and a Jones supporter, repeated those talking points, telling me, Jackson “has a Wizard of Oz campaign. They don’t want to see the man behind the curtain.”
Dooley added that “the Trump White House was lobbying for it pretty hard. The RNC was encouraging people to allow the Georgia Republican Party to accept the funds” to benefit Jones.
Buzz Brockway, a former GOP state senator, said Trump’s endorsement in Georgia politics isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
Remember David Perdue getting trounced by Gov. Brian Kemp or Bulldog legend Herschel Walker losing a winnable U.S. Senate seat to Sen. Raphael Warnock? Both had Trump’s endorsement.
Brockway, like others, now thinks the RNC might back off from the race.
“It seems foolish,” he said. “Jackson could bankrupt the RNC.”
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