Lt. Gov. Burt Jones announces run for governor
Jones posted his first campaign video on Tuesday morning.
'My journey — from walk-on football player to team captain at the University of Georgia — proves I know how to dream big and deliver results. Now, I'm ready to fight every day for your family and for the future of our state," Jones said in a statement.
Jones becomes the second Republican candidate to enter the race. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced his campaign last year.
On the Democratic side, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, State Sen. Jason Esteves, State Rep. Derrick Jackson and former church pastor Olujimi Brown have all announced their candidacies.
The Democratic Governors Association released the following statement.
'Today marks the first day of a nasty and divisive year-long battle for the Republican gubernatorial nomination between Burt Jones and Chris Carr — and potentially Marjorie Taylor Greene. Jones is an extremist who wants to undermine public education, champions Georgia's dangerous abortion ban, backs the mass firing of Georgians at the CDC, and has a long record of opposing Medicaid expansion. Jones' partisan, disastrous record could not be more out-of-touch with Georgians — and his campaign launch means that this primary will be a race to the right. No matter who wins, Republicans will be left with a deeply damaged and extreme nominee.'
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
North Texas mayor joins race for Fort Worth-area state Senate District 9
Another Republican has entered the race for Texas Senate District 9. 'It's official,' Keller Mayor Armin Mizani said in his post on X. 'I'm in.' Mizani will be on the ballot along with fellow Republican Leigh Wambsganss and Democrat Taylor Rehmet. Whoever wins in the special election on Nov. 4 will represent much of Northwest Tarrant County including North Richland Hills, Keller and White Settlement. The race will go into a runoff if a candidate doesn't get more than half of the votes. 'Texas is at a critical juncture in its long and proud history,' Mizani said. 'Now, more than ever, Texans deserve leaders with the experience and resolve necessary to offer solutions to the challenges we face.' The mayor's announcement for candidacy comes within two weeks of Wambsganss's, when Texas Rep. Nate Schatzline withdrew. 'My #1 goal was for SD9 to be represented by a true conservative, & with Leigh Wambsganss, that's exactly what you'll get,' Schatzline said in his June 27 post on X. 'She has my full support.' A day after Wambsganss entered the race, Mizani told his social media following that he was giving prayerful consideration to running. 'Senate District 9 is the Republican lifeblood of Tarrant County—our voters deserve a strong and principled conservative that is only beholden to the interests of the people of SD9 and not the whims and wills of the Austin political machine,' Mizani said in the June 28 post. As Keller's mayor, Mizani said he has been just that. 'Simply put, this campaign will be motivated by my family and yours, guided by our shared conservative values, and focused on offering solutions to the challenges we face as Texans,' Mizani said. As mayor of Keller, Mizani has been an outspoken supporter of Gov. Greg Abbott, the county commissioners redistricting and the near-split of Keller ISD. Mizani has less than a year remaining on his three-year term. He was first elected mayor in 2020 after serving as a city council member from 2014-18.


Politico
14 minutes ago
- Politico
Musk wants to create a third party. It won't be so easy.
Here are five challenges Musk will face in creating the aspirational 'America Party,' according to leaders of third parties and the operatives who have worked for them. Getting on the ballot is, by far, the biggest hurdle that experts identified. Third parties have to navigate a set of complex laws, each of which differ by state, to simply obtain a place on the ballot. Then they have to work to keep it. The process entails amassing a large number of signatures from voters who back your party in a short amount of time — and, to make matters more complicated, some deadlines overlap in different states. 'Stepping in as a third party is difficult and it's not just difficult due to name recognition and everything else. It's mostly due to ballot access,' said Steven Nekhaila, chair of the Libertarian National Committee. 'Ballot access is something that takes decades to accrue because you need the state party infrastructure to facilitate it, you need to get tens of thousands of signatures to meet the thresholds, and oftentimes you only have a few months to do it.' Musk is going to get sued and sued some more. Larry Otter, an election law attorney who advised Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 campaign, said Musk's party will 'definitely be viewed as a spoiler' by Republicans and that they will work hard to prevent him from winning a line on the ballot. Musk should be prepared to have the signatures his team collects challenged to the hilt, Otter said. Looking at just one state, Pennsylvania, he said, there is typically a '30 percent error rate' there in petitions for ballot access. Recruiting candidates and building party infrastructure takes time. As the richest man in the world, Musk could easily fund a wide-ranging party operation in 50 states. But will he stay interested in his new cause for long enough to see it through? 'The greatest challenge for him is not money but finding petitioners, finding people and fighting lawsuits,' Nekhaila said. 'It's more time that's going to be a precious resource than money.' Musk has floated the possibility of initially zeroing in on 'just 2 or 3 Senate seats' and '8 to 10 House districts' in the 2026 midterm elections. Narrowing his focus would make it a 'totally different strategy,' and more doable, Nekhaila said. Few experts are familiar with starting a new party — and some less-than-professional characters abound in the third-party strategist world. 'One of the things that independents rely on are professional circulators,' said Otter, referring to operatives who are paid to collect signatures. 'I've seen stuff go really bad with those people.' Sometimes, circulating companies bring in inexperienced workers and people from out of state who are unfamiliar with local laws, he said. And then there's Musk. First Musk torched his reputation with Democratic (and Tesla-buying) voters. Now that he's feuding with Trump, he's frustrating many in the GOP. Will candidates want to associate themselves with his party? Will staff — especially those who want to stay involved in the Republican Party? Musk could keep a distance by funding independent candidates through a super PAC, but does he have the discipline to not get personally involved? Like this content? Consider signing up for POLITICO's West Wing Playbook: Remaking Government newsletter.


Politico
22 minutes ago
- Politico
Senate Judiciary eyes next week for votes on two contentious judicial nominees
House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington says Republicans shouldn't give up on advancing certain priorities that were cut out of their 'big, beautiful bill' for not complying with Senate rules, telling reporters Tuesday that lawmakers will try again in follow-up budget reconciliation packages. 'There may be a longer list of things that were kicked out by the Senate parliamentarian as non-compliant with the Byrd rule — I think we should make another run at that and look for ways to structure the provisions so that it's more fundamentally budgetary in impact and policy,' the Texas Republican said during the press call Tuesday afternoon. 'I suspect that's why they were kicked out.' The so-called Byrd rule limits what provisions can be included in a bill moving through Congress through the reconciliation process, which allows lawmakers to skirt the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate. Arrington specifically pointed to one provision stripped in the Senate from the House-passed megabill that would have prohibited Medicaid coverage for gender affirming surgeries, and another that would have banned noncitizens from tapping into Medicaid resources. 'I think those — we need to spend more time' crafting the provisions to pass muster with the parliamentarian, Arrington said. 'I don't think we spent enough time to look for a pathway to success on them, and that's sort of the landscape, as I see it, of the opportunities in another reconciliation bill.' Echoing Speaker Mike Johnson 's recent comments, Arrington said he suspects GOP leaders will attempt to do two more party-line packages in the 119th Congress, with the next one slated for the fall. Arrington added members would likely demand that those additional measures be drafted under circumstances where both chambers adhere to the same budget framework, avoiding a repeat of the most recent scenario where House and Senate Republicans each gave their committees different deficit reduction targets. He lamented the fact that the Senate did not comply with the House's aggressive instructions for writing iits version of the megabill, but credited fiscal hawks for helping secure $1.5 trillion in savings in a final product, and noted that it was not 'feasible' to expect the full magnitude of cost savings would be acheived in a single reconciliation bill — 'politically, at least.' As it currently stands, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law over the weekend, is 'front loaded with costs and back-end loaded with savings,' which Arrington said should compel Republicans to make sure the administration follows through in 'mak[ing] sure the savings actually happen.' 'That was a concern among conservative budget hawks,' Arrington said. 'When I think about the Budget Committee's role going forward, one of the things that we need to do … is keep the pressure on the Senate, on the House and the administration to be diligent in implementation and enforcement.'