Billionaire healthcare executive Rick Jackson wins Georgia GOP governor runoff

Rick Jackson turned a late entry, a personal story of hardship, and an unmatched spending surge into the Republican nomination for Georgia governor, defeating Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in the runoff. With more than 80% of the expected vote tallied, NBC News projected Jackson ahead 53% to 47% on Tuesday, closing one of the bitterest GOP primaries Georgia has seen in years.

The race had already become the most expensive primary in Georgia history before voters returned to the polls. Candidates and allied groups spent more than $110 million combined before the runoff, and Jackson alone pledged up to $50 million of his own money after entering the contest in February, six months after Jones launched his campaign. Television advertising swamped the airwaves, with Jackson’s campaign and allied spending topping $50 million on TV alone heading into the runoff.

Jackson, 71, built his pitch around the kind of biography that cut through Georgia’s partisan noise. He grew up in poverty, moved through five foster homes and 13 schools, and lived in Atlanta’s Techwood Homes before founding Jackson Healthcare in Alpharetta in 2000. The company now operates in all 50 states, serves more than 20 million patients a year, and generates more than $3 billion in revenue. That record also gave Jackson an opening to argue that he could run government like a business, even as analyses of government records found Jackson Healthcare and its subsidiaries received more than $1 billion in payments from Georgia state agencies. Jackson said he would stop doing business with the state and unwind existing contracts if elected.

The runoff exposed a larger fight inside Georgia Republican politics: whether voters want a Trump-aligned officeholder, a wealthy outsider, or a candidate who frames himself as a businessman above the usual culture-war skirmishes. Jones, who has served as Georgia’s 13th lieutenant governor since 2022 and spent more than a decade in the State Senate, entered as the frontrunner with Donald Trump’s backing. Trump reaffirmed that support in a tele-rally this month and had endorsed Jones since August 2025. Jackson, who ran ads comparing himself to Trump, ultimately won over enough Republicans to overcome that advantage. The campaign also produced two lawsuits, a defamation claim, and a mobile billboard circling metro Atlanta.

Jackson now moves into a general election against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who won the Democratic nomination on May 19. With Attorney General Chris Carr already in Jackson’s camp and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz adding an endorsement in the final stretch, the Republican contest became a test case for the party’s direction in battleground states: whether money, biography, and a business-first message can outrun the traditional loyalty networks that have long defined Southern Republican politics.