Keisha Lance Bottoms Targets Rick Jackson’s Trump Ties While Promoting Plans to Lower Costs for Georgia Families
ATLANTA — Democratic gubernatorial nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms is sharpening her contrast with Republican opponent Rick Jackson, portraying the billionaire health care executive as a political insider while making affordability, health care and the cost of living central to her campaign for governor.
In a new television ad, Bottoms’ campaign discusses Jackson’s support for Trump and his promise to govern in a similar style.
“As governor, I’ll be like Trump, but with a southern tone,” Jackson says in the ad. In another clip, Trump says Jackson gave him “a couple of million dollars.”
Jackson donated $1 million to Trump in December 2025 and another $1 million shortly before Georgia’s Republican runoff. Trump initially endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones but backed Jackson after Jackson won the GOP nomination.
The Bottoms campaign uses those ties to challenge Jackson’s portrayal of himself as a political outsider, arguing that his history of campaign contributions, lobbying and contracts with the state places him much closer to Georgia’s political establishment than his campaign image suggests.
That argument comes as Bottoms increasingly centers her general-election campaign on a basic question facing many voters: what will make everyday life in Georgia less expensive?
Bottoms focuses on affordability
Bottoms has rolled out proposals aimed at reducing costs for Georgia families, including housing, health care, groceries and education.
Her CARE Plan for a Healthier Georgia calls for expanding Medicaid, providing targeted assistance for some Georgians facing higher Affordable Care Act premiums, protecting rural hospitals and creating a prescription-drug affordability board.
She has also proposed allowing local governments to temporarily reduce or eliminate local sales taxes on groceries, expanding affordable and workforce housing, increasing down-payment and renter assistance, and speeding housing construction.
On education, Bottoms supports guaranteed pre-K access for every Georgia 4-year-old whose family wants it and full-day kindergarten statewide.
Bottoms brings long public-sector résumé
A fifth-generation Georgian and Atlanta native, Bottoms is an attorney who has served as a judge, Atlanta City Council member, mayor of Atlanta and senior White House official.
She served as Atlanta’s 60th mayor from 2018 through 2021 and later served as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, Derek, and they have four children.
Businessman’s State Contracts Draw Scrutiny
Jackson, 72, is making his first run for elected office. He has said he entered Georgia’s foster-care system as a teenager after his mother struggled with alcoholism and later built a career in health care staffing.
He founded Jackson Healthcare in 2000, growing the Alpharetta-based company into a national health care staffing and technology business with more than 20 subsidiaries.
Jackson Healthcare’s extensive business with Georgia government has become an issue in the campaign. Subsidiaries of the company have received roughly $1 billion in state payments since 2020, including a no-bid COVID-era contract to provide medical personnel to hospitals and nursing homes.
The contracts have raised questions about potential conflicts if Jackson becomes governor and is overseeing a state that does business with companies he founded. Jackson has pledged that his companies will seek no new state contracts and that he will unwind existing agreements if elected.
Scrutiny increased recently when one Jackson Healthcare subsidiary extended an existing state contract during the campaign. Jackson said he would terminate the agreement if elected.