Coastal Georgia’s congressman, Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, has made no secret of his ambition to run next year for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Jon Ossoff.
And until last week, Carter, the five-term GOP congressman from St. Simons, had the luxury of waiting for political dominoes to start falling before deciding whether to run — the main domino being whether the state’s top Republican, the term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp, is going to seek Ossoff’s seat himself.
But faster than you can say, “Jesus, guns and babies,” Carter’s political calculations were upended last week.
“Jesus, guns and babies” is, of course, the catchy, now renowned, political slogan of Kandiss Taylor, the Baxley Republican who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2020 and for governor two years later. The gubernatorial campaign featured a bus emblazoned with the slogan.
Appearing on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Tuesday, Taylor announced she’s running for office again, this time against Carter for Coastal Georgia’s seat in Congress.
Washington, she told Bannon, needed more “common-sense” lawmakers to advocate for people who are “sick” of inflation and can’t afford to buy gas and eggs or own a home.
In return, Bannon, who once served as Donald Trump’s chief strategist and helped lead his 2016 presidential campaign, lauded Taylor, calling her the kind of “grassroots fire-breather” the capital needed.
Sooner rather than later
During her two-minute conversation with Bannon, Taylor said she had spoken to Carter and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones earlier in the day to inform them of her plans to run for Congress. She did so with Carter, she said, as a “courtesy” and to “let him know that I would be running to honor him.”
Carter’s social media pages posted no comment about Taylor’s announcement, welcoming the primary challenge or otherwise. Her decision to run against him for the Republican nomination for Coastal Georgia’s seat in Congress was unlikely, however, to have been welcome news.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office, which oversees elections, hasn’t announced the date for next year’s primary elections or the filing deadline for candidates.
But if the past practice is anything to go by, filing deadlines and fundraising demands mean that the 67-year-old Carter now must declare sooner rather than later his intention to pursue the Senate seat or run for a sixth term in the House of Representatives.
Since first winning election to Congress in 2014, following stints as Pooler’s mayor and in both houses of the Georgia General Assembly, Carter has grown accustomed to easy elections.
Throughout most of his political career, the importance of “runnin’ scared”— not taking the votes of Coastal Georgians for granted — has been a staple of Carter’s campaign and fundraising speeches. But since his election to the House, he has faced primary opposition only once, in 2020.
If he chooses to seek reelection to the House, he’ll face in Taylor someone whose ultraconservative, Christian nationalist politics make outflanking her to her right almost impossible.
Taylor, who currently serves as chair of the 1st Congressional District Republican Party of Georgia, has said that both Republicans and Democrats will support her because she “represents” Jesus. She has urged the destruction of a stone monument in Elberton, Georgia, that has drawn comparisons to Stonehenge. She called it “satanic.”
It’s a primary that could well come down not to policies but to who can demonstrate they’re more loyal to the President Donald Trump, the party’s undisputed leader, and more authentically Trumpian.
Like Taylor, Carter is an ardent Trump supporter. Echoing the president’s talk of expanding the nation’s borders and relabeling the “Gulf of Mexico” the “Gulf of America,” he recently sponsored a bill authorizing the U.S. to acquire Greenland and to rename it “Red, White and Blueland.”
A bid for Ossoff’s seat by Carter would be a severe test of a Coastal Georgia politician’s ability to win statewide office.
As for the potential competition, waiting in the wings along with Carter should Kemp not run are Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, state insurance commissioner John King, and three of Carter’s colleagues in the House: Mike Collins of Jackson, Rich McCormick of Suwanee, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Rome.
Democrats buoyed
Coastal Georgia Democrats are no doubt pleased about Taylor’s announcement.
Democrats have lost five elections to Carter — he ran against a write-in candidate in 2016 — by an average of 19.25% of the vote.
So, they welcome the decision that Carter now faces.
On the one hand, a choice to enter the Senate race would create an open race for Coastal Georgia’s House seat in November 2025. On the other hand, a contested primary would force him to take even more extreme positions to win the support of the grassroots, pro-MAGA voters who will dominate primary voting.
It will also force him to tap into a campaign war chest that as of Dec. 31, 2024, totaled more than $3 million, according to financial reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Furthermore, under Georgia’s open primary system, voters can cast a ballot in any party primary. That means Democrats may be tempted to cross over and vote for Taylor, believing they’d have a better chance for victory against her, not Carter, in the general election.
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