Rick Jackson has a simple pitch for Georgia: he's so rich that nobody can buy him.

He's a self-funding candidate, and that's the centerpiece of his message — no special interests, no strings, no donors to answer to. The problem is what he's doing with all that money.

USA TODAY reported on July 28 that Jackson's team is putting another $87 million into ads — the largest buy so far in the race. That comes on top of an estimated $100 million-plus he has already spent.

With fewer than 100 days until the November 3 election, one man is spending nearly $200 million of his own fortune to talk to Georgia voters.

Even Republicans called it buying an election

This isn't a Democratic talking point. Jackson's own primary opponent said it first.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones — who had Trump's endorsement before Jackson entered the race in February — ran an ad with this line:

"Rick Jackson is everywhere spending over $100 million trying to buy our vote. But Georgia is not for sale."

Jackson beat him anyway. He entered late, poured in his own money, forced a runoff, and took the nomination in June.

Now Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor and his Democratic opponent, is making the same argument. At a recent town hall, she drew the distinction carefully:

"I'm not mad about his money. But I am mad about the way that he is manipulating the narrative with his money."

And, quoting a friend, she added a warning about everyone taking his checks: "If you can be bought, you can be sold."

Where the money came from matters

Here's the part that complicates Jackson's "I can't be bought" story.

Jackson made his fortune in health care. Jackson Healthcare brings in annual revenue over $3 billion, according to Forbes. And a meaningful share of that money came from the state of Georgia itself.

Bottoms campaign spokesperson TaNisha Cameron put it bluntly:

"Rick Jackson made a billion dollars off of taxpayer-funded contracts with the state for health care services, even while rural hospitals closed and Georgians lost health care coverage, and now he's trying to buy this election."

So the money being spent to win control of Georgia's government was earned, in part, on contracts with Georgia's government — while the state's rural hospitals were closing.

And Jackson's health care positions run directly against the Georgians who'd need those hospitals. He called "many parts" of Trump's budget bill "great" — the bill the Joint Economic Committee's House minority staff projects will cost 566,000 Georgians their insurance by 2034, 38,300 of them losing Medicaid under the law and 527,800 losing Affordable Care Act coverage as the enhanced premium tax credits lapse. He opposed the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion, in a state where more than 1.3 million people are on ACA marketplace plans.

He got rich in health care, some of it on contracts with the state. He is campaigning to take health care away from the people in it.

He already spent his money on Trump, and advertised it

The "I'm above the money game" argument has a specific hole in it, and Jackson dug it himself.

Trump endorsed Burt Jones in August 2025. Four months later, on December 10, Jackson sent $1 million to MAGA Inc., Trump's super PAC — his first money to Trump or a Trump-aligned group, after having funded two of Trump's 2024 primary rivals. Then he put it in his campaign announcement video: "I donated a million bucks to Trump, because Trump's success inspired me" to run.

It did not move Trump right away. In March, Axios reported that the president was still calling Jones "incredible" and bringing him onstage in Rome. The switch came in July, after Jackson had already won the nomination — and Trump then volunteered to a reporter that Jackson had given him "a couple of" million dollars.

A man whose entire brand is "nobody can buy my loyalty" spent seven figures courting the most valuable endorsement in Republican politics, and made sure voters knew it.

What $87 million of ads is actually saying

It's worth looking at what the money is buying airtime for.

Jackson's ads have ranged from his upbringing in the foster care system to a message telling immigrants they'd end up "deported or departed" if he becomes governor. More recently he's turned the money on Bottoms — one June ad called "Never Again" plays her quotes over sirens and images of burning cars and buildings.

That's the use of a nine-figure fortune: fear about immigrants, and footage of fires behind a Black former mayor's voice.

At the Marietta rally, Jackson also said Georgia's affordability problems were a business problem, not a political one, and vowed that if state legislators wouldn't match the federal $1,000 Trump Account contribution for children, he'd personally write the checks. More than 120,000 children are born in Georgia every year. He's proposing to solve a public policy question by paying for it himself — the same instinct that's driving the campaign.

The bottom line

Rick Jackson's argument is that his money makes him independent. Look at what the money has actually done: it carried a last-minute entry past the candidate the president had already endorsed, it went to Trump's super PAC seven months before Trump came around, and it is now buying $87 million worth of ads in a state that his opponent's campaign says paid his company a billion dollars for health care services.

His own Republican primary opponent said Georgia is not for sale. Jackson is spending nearly $200 million to test that. We deserve better.

Source

This post is based on reporting by USA TODAY: Jackson accused of 'trying to buy' election after $87 million promise by Irene Wright (Photo: Reuters).