Republican Chris Carr Raises $1.25M More for 2026 Georgia Governor Bid
The Republican announced the fundraising totals to The Associated Press on Monday, although he hasn't yet filed an official report with the state Ethics Commission. Those reports are due Tuesday. Carr raised $2.2 million from November through mid-January but couldn't raise money while lawmakers were in session from mid-January until the end of March. He didn't immediately say how much he has spent of the nearly $3.5 million he has raised.
Carr is the only major GOP candidate who has announced for the race in Georgia, which saw titanic battles for the governor's chair between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams in 2018 and 2022. Abrams lost both races, and no Democrat has won a governor's race in Georgia since Roy Barnes in 1998. Republicans argue Georgia needs the stability of continued Republican control. Democrats are meanwhile trying to prove their successes in other races weren't a fluke. Former President Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020, and US Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were elected to the Senate in runoffs in January 2021. In 2022, Warnock beat Republican Herschel Walker in a runoff to claim a full six-year term.
Carr took the unprecedented step of announcing his run for governor in November, in part because he said he needed to get an early jump on fundraising. He could face Republican rivals with enough personal wealth to fund their own campaigns. Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, whose family has made a fortune running and supplying gas stations, is expected to announce his bid for governor in the coming weeks. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who sold a substantial engineering company, could also make a bid in the Republican primary.
Carr said in a statement that his numbers 'show that kind of energy can't be bought – it's earned, and we're ready to deliver.' Carr has aligned closely with Kemp but could face opposition from President Donald Trump and his supporters in a primary election. Jones has been close to Trump and would likely angle for his endorsement. Fueled by displeasure that Carr didn't back Trump's attempts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss in Georgia, Trump in 2022 endorsed a primary opponent who lost to Carr.
Last week, the two leading Democrats said they had each collected about $1.1 million in early fundraising. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said she loaned her campaign $200,000 and collected $900,000 from donors, while state Sen. Jason Esteves said he made a much smaller donation to his campaign, with the rest coming from donors.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
11 minutes ago
- Arab News
Thousands of Afghans face possible deportation after court refuses to extend their legal protection
VIRGINIA: Thousands of Afghans in the US are no longer protected from deportation after a federal appeals court refused to postpone the Trump administration's decision to end their legal status. A three-judge panel of the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia said in a ruling late Monday there was 'insufficient evidence to warrant the extraordinary remedy of a postponement' of the administration's decision not to extend Temporary Protected Status for people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. TPS for Afghans ended July 14, but was briefly extended by the appeals court through July 21 while it considered an emergency request for a longer postponement. The Department of Homeland Security in May said it was ending Temporary Protected Status for 11,700 people from Afghanistan in 60 days. That status — in place since 2022 — had allowed them to work and meant the government couldn't deport them. CASA, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, sued the administration over the TPS revocation for Afghans as well as for people from Cameroon, which expire August 4. It said the decisions were racially motivated and failed to follow a process laid out by Congress. A federal judge allowed the lawsuit to go forward but didn't grant CASA's request to keep the protections in place while the lawsuit plays out. A phone message for CASA on Tuesday was not immediately returned. Without an extension, TPS holders from Afghanistan and Cameroon face a 'devastating choice — abandoning their homes, relinquishing their employment, and uprooting their lives to return to a country where they face the threat of severe physical harm or even death, or remaining in the United States in a state of legal uncertainty while they wait for other immigration processes to play out,' CASA warned in court documents. In its decision on Monday, the appeals court said CASA had made a 'plausible' legal claim against the administration, and urged the lower court to move the case forward expeditiously. It also said many of the TPS holders from the two countries may be eligible for other legal protections that remain available to them. Temporary Protected Status can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people who face safety concerns in their home countries because of armed conflict, environmental disaster or other conditions. They can't be deported and can work legally in the US, but they don't have a pathway to citizenship. The status, however, is inherently precarious because it is up to the Homeland Security secretary to renew the protections regularly — usually every 18 months. The Trump administration has pushed to remove Temporary Protected Status from people from seven countries, with Venezuela and Haiti making up the biggest chunk of the hundreds of thousands of people affected. Homeland Security officials said in their decision to end the Temporary Protected Status for Afghans that the situation in their home country was getting better. Groups that help Afghan TPS holders say the country is still extremely dangerous. 'Ending TPS does not align with the reality of circumstances on the ground in Afghanistan,' Global Refuge President and CEO Krish O'Mara Vignarajah said in a statement. 'Conditions remain dire, especially for allies who supported the US mission, as well as women, girls, religious minorities, and ethnic groups targeted by the Taliban.' He called on Congress to provide Afghan TPS holders with a 'permanent path to safety and stability.'
Al Arabiya
41 minutes ago
- Al Arabiya
Prominent Chicago defense lawyer Thomas Durkin, a zealous advocate for clients, has died at 78
Thomas Anthony Durkin–a nationally prominent criminal defense attorney who for five decades was a fixture in Chicago's courthouses and who was known for his relentless advocacy for a roster of notorious clients–has died. He was 78 years old. Durkin died Monday after a brief battle with cancer, said a daughter, Alanna Durkin Richer, an Associated Press journalist in Washington. Durkin participated in some of Chicago's highest-profile court cases, but his influence spanned beyond the city through his representation of Guantanamo Bay detainees, lectures at law schools across the country, and legal essays and news media interviews in which he sounded the alarm about the perils of unchecked government power. His career was driven by a conviction that all defendants–no matter their alleged crime or society's perception of them–were entitled to a rigorous defense and to the protection of their constitutionally afforded civil rights. So committed was he to the defense of the unpopular that the headline of a 2016 Wall Street Journal article described him as a 'terror suspects' best hope in court.' 'I don't do this because I think my clients are wonderful people who should be exonerated,' he was quoted in the story as saying. 'I do it because I think I have a role in the system.' Durkin was born on the South Side of Chicago to a steel mill worker who saved enough money to put his son through the University of Notre Dame, where he graduated in 1968 and whose home football games he rarely missed. He later received a law degree from the University of San Francisco, where he was exposed to criminal defense by serving as a student adviser at a local public defender's office. Returning to Chicago, he clerked for Judge James Parsons of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois before entering private practice with a specialty in federal criminal cases. From 1978 through 1984, he served as a federal prosecutor in Chicago. Over more than 40 years in private practice, he cultivated a reputation as one of the country's foremost advocates of defendants other attorneys would pass on representing. 'He took on the most challenging, controversial, and complex cases that other lawyers would run away from,' said Joshua Herman, an attorney who worked on national security matters with Durkin. 'Above all, he valued the rule of law the most and raised his strongest objections to what he saw as abuses of power.' Durkin's clients included Adel Daoud, who was accused in a plot to bomb a Chicago bar, and Mohammed Hamzah Khan, who as a teenager was arrested on charges of conspiring to provide support to ISIS. He won an acquittal on terrorism charges for Jared Chase, one of the so-called 'NATO 3' defendants accused of plotting to bomb the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago, and he represented Matthew Hale, a white supremacist leader accused of domestic terrorism offenses for soliciting the murder of a federal judge. 'I used to tell him he was my favorite cause lawyer,' said Dan Webb, a former US Attorney in Chicago who said he had known Durkin for more than 40 years and spoke to him just a week ago for a case they were working on together. 'When he got committed to a cause, he would not stop until he accomplished his goal.' He also was a go-to lawyer for numerous local elected officials who found themselves in legal trouble. The work, Durkin said, appealed not only to his commitment to civil liberties but stimulated him intellectually and spiritually as well. 'I think these are the cases of our day. They point out all the problems that terrorism has spawned with the reaction on our side, both good and bad. I find them fascinating,' he said in a 2014 Chicago Reader piece. 'There are some days I find it hard to believe that people are paying me to be involved in what I'm involved in. There's a tremendous amount of history you have to learn, which I enjoy. There's a lot of theology you have to understand, which I enjoy.' Beyond Chicago, he did legal work for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including helping represent Ramzi bin al-Shibh, an accused facilitator of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and representing others who have since been returned to their home countries. His experiences there, he said, helped show him the dark side of American intelligence. 'I think I've been involved in some pretty wild stuff around here, but I've never been involved in anything as wild as this,' he said in a 2009 Chicago television interview. Since 1984, he operated a law practice, Durkin & Roberts, with his wife, Janis Roberts, whose own legal career he was proud to pay tribute to. 'Without Roberts,' he has said, 'there is no Durkin.' Besides his wife and his daughter Alanna, he is survived by five other children: Erin Pieplow, Krista Mussa, Catherine Durkin Stewart, James Stewart, and Matthew Stewart, and 15 grandchildren.
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
Justice Department wants to interview Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell
WASHINGTON : The Department of Justice wants to interview Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, who was convicted of helping the financier sexually abuse underage girls and is now serving a lengthy prison sentence, a senior official said Tuesday. If Ghislaine Maxwell 'has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,' Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a post on X, adding that President Donald Trump 'has told us to release all credible evidence.' A lawyer for Maxwell confirmed there were discussions with the government. The overture to attorneys for Maxwell, who in 2022 was sentenced to 20 years in prison, is part of an ongoing Justice Department effort to cast itself as transparent following fierce backlash from parts of Trump's base over an earlier refusal to release additional records in the Epstein investigation. As part of that effort, the Justice Department, acting at the direction of the Republican president, last week asked a judge to unseal grand jury transcripts from the case. That decision is ultimately up to the judge. Epstein, who killed himself in his New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial, sexually abused children hundreds of times over more than a decade, exploiting vulnerable girls as young as 14, authorities say. He couldn't have done so without the help of Maxwell, his longtime companion, prosecutors say. The Justice Department had said in a two-page memo this month that it had not uncovered evidence to charge anyone else in connection with Epstein's abuse. But Blanche said in his social media post that the Justice Department 'does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead.' He said in his post that, at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, he has 'communicated with counsel for Ms. Maxwell to determine whether she would be willing to speak with prosecutors from the Department.' He said he anticipated meeting with Maxwell in the coming days. A lawyer for Maxwell, David Oscar Markus, said Tuesday in a statement: 'I can confirm that we are in discussions with the government and that Ghislaine will always testify truthfully. We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case.'
