Georgia governor: Keisha Lance Bottoms, Rick Jackson

Rick Jackson (R)

Jackson has pledged to cut the state income tax in half over the next four years – or he won’t run for reelection. That promise builds on a multiyear effort from GOP state leaders to make incremental cuts to the income tax rate, but Jackson’s proposal would take it further. Georgia’s income tax is a major source of revenue that supports about half of the state’s budget.

“I’m also going to have the most efficient government using current 21st century technology to make our government more efficient and working for you, so that we can cut the overhead and allow us to cut income tax,” Jackson said at the Atlanta News First debate, the only debate planned for the governor’s race.

He is also campaigning on curbing property tax increases, which has been another priority of Republicans in recent years. Property taxes are paid locally and help pay for essential services. And he says his administration will automatically suspend the state gas tax when prices spike.

“I’ll cut income and property taxes, eliminate the gas tax when prices spike and save you money on your utility bills. I will make your life more affordable,” Jackson said at a campaign stop the day before early voting started.

Keisha Lance Bottoms (D)

Bottoms has proposed giving local governments the option of suspending their sales tax on groceries.

She says she would push to extend that tax break to basic goods that are currently taxed, such as diapers and period products. She argues that those taxes are making it more difficult for people to afford groceries.

And she has said she also wants to target taxes on auto and homeowners insurance, which she says are being passed down to consumers.

Bottoms says she favors a more targeted approach to cutting the income tax, proposing to eliminate the income tax for Georgia educators specifically. She has expressed concerns about broader, more aggressive tax cuts leading to lost funding for vital services like hospitals, public safety and schools.

“We want to make sure that we are doing things responsibly. I don’t know of anybody who gets excited when they get a tax bill in the mail, but we want to make sure that our budget can absorb it,” Bottoms said at the Atlanta Press Club debate.

Rick Jackson (R)

Jackson, a healthcare executive, has proposed “intelligent” Medicaid expansion. Under his plan, families that are above 100% of the federal poverty line but below 138% – who would be covered by Medicaid under a full expansion – would still have access to federal subsidies to purchase Affordable Care Act plans. But he believes that he can work with the federal government to tap into the enhanced funding that is available to states that fully expand Medicaid.

“I am going to expand Medicaid to cover everybody … (but) what we need to focus on not only in expanding Medicaid. That doesn’t solve the cost. We need to come up with solutions that actually reduce the cost of healthcare, and that’s what I’m going to do, or I’m not going to run again,” Jackson said at the Atlanta News First debate.

Jackson also said he’ll crack down on insurance practices that deny or delay care and negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to bring down the price of prescriptions, as well as add 500 new inpatient psychiatric beds across the state and put more resources into prenatal and postpartum care.

Jackson also said at the debate that he “absolutely want(s) to expand our health services for all special needs children,” pointing to Medicaid in Georgia cutting payments for autism therapy to providers by 30% for children in foster care.

“I will not put up with that. Our children need to be taken care of … When I’m governor, the special needs children are going to go to the front of the line, not be in the back of the line,” Jackson said.

Keisha Lance Bottoms (D)

Medicaid expansion has been a cornerstone of Bottoms’ campaign, recently saying at an early voting event that “expanding Medicaid in the state is a number one priority.” She said that the state needs to scrap Georgia Pathways, which is a partial Medicaid expansion with work requirements that she has called a “complete disaster.”

“Right now, we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the Georgia Pathways program that is supposed to provide access to affordable healthcare for the people of Georgia. We are one of 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid in this country. Forty states have seen fit to expand Medicaid and have been able to avail themselves of 90% in federal funding,” Bottoms said.

Aside from Medicaid expansion, Bottoms pointed to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their Affordable Care Act coverage after Republicans in Congress allowed COVID-era enhanced subsidies to expire, saying that the state needs to look “at every available tool in the toolbox to help us lower healthcare costs in this state.”

“We’re going to look at best practices from states across this country and see who is doing it well. See who has created a sustainable program, and see what we can lift and replicate in Georgia. This is not one of these issues that I feel like we will have to recreate the wheel,” she said.

Bottoms recently elevated reproductive health in the Atlanta Press Club debate, pointing to Georgia’s “six-week abortion ban that has resulted in women who are experiencing miscarriages suffering needlessly … (and) in the deaths of women in this state.”

“We need to go back to the Dobbs standard, the standard that was in place for 50 years. The rights that my mother and her generation had access to should be the rights that women of reproductive age should have access to right now,” she said at a press conference on the first day of early voting.

Rick Jackson (R)

Jackson spent his childhood in and out of foster care, and he often invokes those experiences on the campaign trail.

“Having lived in five different foster homes, I bring a personal perspective to helping Georgia’s most vulnerable children succeed for generations to come,” Jackson said in a campaign video. “Reading is one of the strongest predictors of success in life. That’s why as governor, I’ll be laser-focused on making sure every child reads at grade level by third grade.”

In addition to emphasizing early literacy, Jackson has pledged to increase teacher pay and push for programs to expand career education pathways. He has also called for strengthening the state’s parental bill of rights, banning “ideological indoctrination” in schools and continuing to prevent transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports.

Jackson’s platform also includes streamlining the process to place foster children in permanent homes and to improve access to mental health care for foster kids.

Keisha Lance Bottoms (D)

Georgia offers free pre-K to all 4-year-olds, but availability varies by location and not every family is able to enroll their children.

Bottoms said she wants to expand pre-K to include every 4-year-old who wants a spot. She has proposed using money from the Georgia Lottery’s $2 billion unrestricted reserves and by allowing casinos to operate in Georgia if voters approve a ballot measure. Bottoms said approving casinos in Georgia could bring up to $500 million per year in revenue.

“If we can be the best in business in this state, we can also be the best in education in this state,” Bottoms said during a recent education forum. “We need to make sure that we are fully funding education, that we are fully training our early learning providers, that we are providing the resources to make sure that our children are going into safe environments where they are able to learn.”

Bottoms’ education platform also includes focusing on early literacy and financial literacy for older students. She has called for eliminating the state income tax for teachers and creating a path to free technical and community college.

Rick Jackson (R)

Jackson’s plan for affordability calls for income and property tax cuts and emphasizing jobs that pay higher wages.

“The inflation rate we all experienced was 23% over the 2019-2024, but property taxes went up 49%, which is completely insane. I’m going to freeze and then reduce the property taxes as well,” he said at the debate.

Jackson has also called for a freeze on tuition, room and board at Georgia’s colleges and technical schools and to use technology and artificial intelligence to find and eliminate wasteful spending.

“My focus is creating jobs,” he added. “I’ve been creating jobs my entire life. I have created so many jobs in Atlanta and all over the United States. My focus is to get new jobs that pay higher and to have workforce development. We need to use our high school students to show them the ability to do things like farming and electrical and plumbing and so forth in our technical schools, because all of these jobs come out with a minimum of $25 an hour plus benefits.”

Keisha Lance Bottoms (D)

Bottoms often touts Medicaid expansion as a way to make life more affordable for many Georgians.

In addition, she has called for the creation of an Affordable Housing Trust to provide grants and low-interest loans for prospective homeowners.

“We can provide grants, we can provide low-interest loans, and also make sure that we crack down on corporate landlords who are raising prices throughout this state,” she said at an Atlanta News First debate.

Her affordability platform also includes creating the ability for local leaders to suspend local sales taxes on groceries and other home essentials like diapers and feminine hygiene products, raising the state’s Homeowner Tax Relief Grant from $18,000 to $25,000, raising the state’s homestead exemption from $2,000 to $5,000 and eliminating the state tax on homeowner’s insurance.

She has called for cutting the state gas tax from 33.3 cents per gallon to 28 for gasoline and from 37.3 cents a gallon to 31.3 cents a gallon for diesel.

Rick Jackson (R)

Jackson, who has invested in a data center in Texas that has faced local opposition, has argued that local elected officials should have the authority to welcome or reject these projects. Jackson pitched his plan as an opportunity for local governments to bolster the tax base and decrease – or even eliminate – residential property taxes.

At a debate hosted by Atlanta News First and Gray Media, Jackson said that he doesn’t support data center construction unless they meet three requirements: They must have approval from local officials, meet “strict EPA standards” and lower energy bills and property taxes as a result of their development.

“If you don’t want a data center, I will stand up and defend it and make sure you don’t get it. But if you want a data center that can help you individually and economically, I will be there to negotiate the best deal because this should benefit our citizens and no one else,” Jackson said.

He also recently told reporters that he disagrees with President Donald Trump’s position when it comes to data centers. Trump, who has endorsed Jackson, has opposed attempts to curb data centers and the advancement of artificial intelligence the facilities help support.

Keisha Lance Bottoms (D)

Bottoms has proposed a “pause” on new data center construction to allow the state time to study the strain these facilities could have on local communities and develop guidelines and regulations for their development. She has said that Georgians across the state are concerned about the potential impact the massive facilities have on local resources, but has also acknowledged that their development can bring benefits to communities.

She has also said she wants to end the tax incentives currently offered to data centers.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars are going to data centers (and) people don’t know how they are impacting the environment. They don’t know the long-term impacts on communities,” she said at the Atlanta Press Club debate.

Bottoms also co-signed proposals by Democratic Public Service Commissioner Peter Hubbard, who is running for reelection, that are aimed at regulating data centers. Those plans call for requiring data centers to be powered with clean energy sources and to pay for that infrastructure, operate with full transparency without the use of nondisclosure agreements, enact safeguards that protect the local community and natural resources and mandate the use of union labor when possible.

Rick Jackson (R)

On the ANF debate stage, Jackson denied suggesting in audio obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Gov. Brian Kemp would call up the National Guard to monitor the election.

Jackson expressed optimism in the state’s election system following a 2021 GOP-led overhaul.

“We never should give up on making sure that our software is safe and that it’s secure, and that we have the safest. People need to feel comfortable that the elections are fair, and I will always make sure that we continue to improve, but right now, I am comfortable that Gov. Kemp has passed a law that is working. In fact, I think there’s more Democrats that’s voted in the last two elections than any time in history.”

Keisha Lance Bottoms (D)

Bottoms has pledged to push back against what she calls efforts from the federal government to interfere in elections.

“I am deeply concerned about Donald Trump’s rhetoric around our elections,” she said at the ANF debate. “We already know that there are FBI agents on the ground in Georgia right now in Fulton County monitoring or tampering with our elections. We all saw the raid of the Fulton County election office.”

Bottoms has called for a state level voting rights act named after the late Congressman John Lewis that would make Election Day a state holiday and expand the number of days for people to vote as well as the types of ID voters could use to cast their ballots. Bottoms’ plan also includes expanding the languages ballots are printed in, making it easier to challenge potentially discriminatory practices and cracking down on voter intimidation or misinformation.

Bottoms also calls for the elimination of the State Election Board, which she has characterized as openly partisan, and replacing it with an independent body.