Georgia state Rep. Derrick Jackson to join 3 other Democrats in run for governor
The metro Atlanta Democrat said he will launch his campaign Friday, emphasizing his work in business and politics and his 22 years of military service. The U.S. Navy veteran was elected to the state House in 2016 and worked as a marketing executive with General Electric.
As governor, Jackson said he would 'put Georgia families first," in part by expanding access to medical care and economic opportunities in rural areas.
'My Republican friends love to tout Georgia as the number one state to do business, but I'm going to campaign on making Georgia the number one place to work, to play, to have a family and for young professionals to realize that regardless of which of the 159 counties they live in, there's going to be opportunity there,' Jackson said in an interview with the Associated Press.
He plans to push for stricter gun regulations and to repeal Georgia's abortion law, which took effect in 2022 and effectively prohibited abortions beyond about six weeks of pregnancy.
Jackson will join former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta state Sen. Jason Esteves and Atlanta pastor Olu Brown in the Democratic primary. They will compete for the Democratic nomination in the race to replace the state's popular term-limited Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Democrat Stacey Abrams, who ran and lost to Kemp in 2018 and 2022, has not closed the door on a third run.
Jackson finished sixth in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor in 2022. After losing, he was reelected to the House in 2023 following the death of state Rep. Tish Naghise. He was defeated last year by Rep. Carolyn Hugley after running for House minority leader. Despite past losses, Jackson said his experience campaigning for statewide office will help him pull ahead of his competitors.
Inspired by civil rights icon John Lewis, Jackson said he has a 'moral obligation' to run because he saw state and federal policies that were 'not right, not fair, not just.' He wants to help Georgians who could be impacted by President Donald Trump's sweeping bill that Jackson said 'will devastate a lot of families' with provisions such as cuts to Medicaid funds.
U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, once the expected frontrunner known for her gun control advocacy, announced in March she wasn't running because she needed to focus on her husband's health after complications from cancer surgery. Former state Sen. Jason Carter, former President Jimmy Carter's moderate grandson and the Democrats' 2014 nominee for governor, said he would not run because his wife was diagnosed with cancer.
___
Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @charlottekramon.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
a few seconds ago
- The Hill
NYC mayoral candidates respond to shooting in Midtown Manhattan
Zohran Mamdani, Curtis Sliwa and Andrew Cuomo all moved to comment law enforcement after at least two people, including an off-duty New York City police officer, were shot and killed in the lobby of a major Manhattan office building. The three New York City mayoral candidates all condemned the shooting, which took place Monday night in a building that houses the offices of Blackstone, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan. The shooter, who is believed to have acted alone, also fatally shot himself. 'I'm heartbroken to learn of the horrific shooting in midtown and I am holding the victims, their families, and the NYPD officer in critical condition in my thoughts,' Mamdani, the Democratic frontrunner, wrote on X. 'Grateful for all of our first responders on the ground.' Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for re-election, said he had been briefed on the situation and appeared on the scene in a video posted to social media, telling occupants of the building to remain inside as law enforcement conducted a search. He also said multiple people had been injured. Cuomo, who is running on a third-party ballot line, said he was 'horrified' by the shooting.' 'I'm grateful for the courage of our NYPD and first responders, and my prayers are with the victims and their families,' he wrote on X. Sliwa, the Republican nominee for a second cycle in a row, said he was 'disturbed' by the shootings. 'Grateful to our first responders who run toward danger to keep us safe,' he wrote on X.
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
James Carville Urges Ex-Biden Official Not To Lose Focus On This GOP 'Gift' To Democrats
James Carville on Monday scolded Neera Tanden, who served as a senior adviser to former President Joe Biden, after she argued how Democrats could 'go on the offensive' and 'win' on the issue of immigration. Tanden, formerly the director of the Domestic Policy Council, wrote in an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday that Americans have been 'repelled' by Donald Trump's aggressive policies on the issue. She urged Democrats to take on the president through 'a credible plan to secure the border' and 'fix what's broken' in the immigration system. Carville — when asked by Fox News' Martha MacCallum what 'substantive thing' he'd like to see Democrats focus on — swiftly pointed to Trump passing his 'big, beautiful bill' into law. 'Cutting veterans' benefits, closing rural hospitals, raising $3.4 trillion on our national debt. I mean, when you have something simple in a gift like this to contrast yourself, you would be stupid to talk about immigration or talk about bathrooms or track meets or anything else,' Carville said. Carville has repeatedly called on Democrats to turn their attention toward Trump's tax and spending law, predicting that the legislation would mark a 'mass extinction event' for Republicans in Congress. In an op-ed for The New York Times last week, he wrote that Democratic candidates in next year's midterms should focus their messaging around a 'repeal' of the law, which slashes funding to Medicaid and federal food assistance. Carville — in his Fox News appearance — stressed that Democrats should define themselves around the argument that Trump's law doesn't lead America in the 'right direction.' 'But if we keep talking about this other nonsense, we're going to lose our focus,' Carville said. 'When you have a gift, take it. Take it!' H/T: Mediaite Related... James Carville Gives Fox News Viewers Uncomfortable Reminder About Jeffrey Epstein House Republican Wants To Rename The Kennedy Center After Trump Trump Wants Murdoch Swiftly Deposed Over Epstein Story Because Of Age And Health
Miami Herald
30 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Senators demand answers from Trump administration on ‘contradictory' Haiti policies
A group of Democratic senators are calling out the Trump administration on what they call its 'increasingly inconsistent' policies toward Haiti, demanding answers on both its stance on immigration and the presence of U.S. private military contractors in the country helping the government go after armed gangs with weaponized drones. A letter signed by nine senators, including Massachusetts' Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is addressed to both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The two have until Aug. 15 to answer lawmakers' questions on how the administration can include Haiti on a list of banned countries under a travel ban, yet deem the Caribbean nation safe enough to end Temporary Protected Status for its nationals living in the United States. 'How does the Administration reconcile the security justification for Haiti's inclusion in the travel ban with its simultaneous assessment that Haiti's TPS status should be terminated because it is safe for Haitians to return home?' the senators ask. The letter comes on the heels of a visit by Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé earlier this month to Washington and ahead of a scheduled leadership change on Haiti's Transitional Presidential Council next week. It also comes amid a lack of clarity on the part of the Trump administration on what its policy regarding Haiti will be. Under the previous administration, the United States supported a Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission to help the Haiti National Police take on the gangs. The Trump administration, while thanking the Kenyans for stepping forward, has said it cannot continue to shell out the lion's share of the cost for the mission, which officials now say has cost the United States nearly $1 billion. This has left the mission and Kenya uncertain about what will happen when the United Nations' one-year mandate comes up for renewal in September. Senators mention the Kenya-led mission in their letter, but their main concern is about a private military contractor the Haitian government has hired to help fight gangs. Last month, Fritz Alphonse Jean, the head of Haiti's Transitional Presidential panel acknowledged that the government had signed a contract with foreign contractors. But Jean declined to provide details about the deal with Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide, which senators are now demanding from Rubio. 'These reports raise urgent questions about compliance with U.S. arms export laws, the risk of U.S. complicity in gross violations of human rights, and fundamental contradictions in current U.S. foreign and immigration policy toward Haiti,' the letter, spearheaded by Sens. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Raphael Warnock of Georgia says. They describe Prince's armed operations as the 'unchecked deployment of a U.S. private military contractor with a troubling history.' Prince was brought on earlier this year to assist Haiti with a gang task force operating out of the prime minister's office. The force has been using weaponized drones and is expected to soon beef up operations, raising concerns about non-gang casualties in heavily urban Port-au-Prince. The lack of transparency around the operation doesn't sit well with them, senators say. Public sources, they say, confirm that arms have already been shipped to Haiti for use by the private military contractors, and 'such operations risk undermining the legitimacy and effectiveness of the U.N.-sanctioned and U.S.-supported Multinational Security Support mission, which is intended to stabilize Haiti through a transparent, accountable multilateral framework.' Blackwater was implicated in a 2007 massacre of civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad, Iraq, where 17 Iraqi civilians, including children, were killed while scores of others were wounded. The incident became a symbol of the dangers posed by mercenaries. Though Blackwater is no longer in existence, neither Prince nor Haitian authorities have publicly provided the name of the company his reported 150 security contractors are operating under in the country. The subject has become thorny for many reasons. To begin, Haiti is under a U.S. arms embargo, which means that U.S. nationals are prohibited from exporting defense items or providing military services to foreign entities without prior authorization from the State Department of State, which until recently had been reluctant about greenlighting military contractors in Haiti. 'In this case, weaponized drone operations, arms shipments, and deployments of U.S. mercenaries unquestionably constitute activities requiring export licenses,' the letter states. There have been questions not just about the private military private contractors' presence in respect to U.S. laws, but also in respect to a global arms embargo the U.N. Security Council has also imposed on Haiti in hopes of controlling weapons flows into the country. U.N. experts have said that the existence of the contractors are a gray area and the global entity has been cautious about publicly criticizing them due to the building frustrations among Haitians with gangs that have already killed more than 4,000 people this year and now control up to 90% of the capital. 'What accounts for the contradiction between State's support for armed stabilization operations in Haiti and DHS's determination that TPS protections should end?' the letter asks. Senators also want to know whether expert licenses have been given to any private military contractors in Haiti, and whether the police units involved in the drone operations been vetted. 'The Haitian national police, which reportedly receives U.S. assistance, has a well-documented record of human rights violations and abuses, including credible allegations of extrajudicial killings,' the letter said. If police units units are operating in coordination with private military contractor, 'that may expose U.S. security assistance' to violations put in place by Congress, the lawmakers note. The senators also raise concerns about what they are calling the contradictory and inconsistent U.S. policy in regards to immigration. According to recent U.N. briefings, more than 1.3 million people have been displaced from their homes in Haiti; more than half are children. Nearly half the population faces crisis-level hunger, and 42% of health facilities in Port-au-Prince are not functional, the letter emphasizes. Given this reality, the lawmakers say they need clarification on the decision to terminate immigration protections for Haitians who are temporarily in the U.S. and Haiti's inclusion in a sweeping travel ban targeting countries deemed security threats. 'These two actions are contradictory: The Administration claims Haiti is safe enough to deport Haitians back to, but, at the same time, is so dangerous to block Haitians from seeking refuge in the U.S. It cannot be both,' the lawmakers wrote.
