Rick Jackson, who is the Republican nominee for governor, has made his difficult childhood the centerpiece of his campaign. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
By now, anybody who owns a TV set in Georgia knows that Rick Jackson came up the hard way.
He’s proud of his rise out of poverty, and he has every right to be. His story of personal triumph – and the hundreds of millions of dollars that came with that triumph – have been central to his climb out of political obscurity and his victory in the Republican primary for governor.
“When you grow up the way I did, you never forget where you came from,” Jackson told us repeatedly on the campaign trail and in TV ads. “You never forget the families that are working harder than ever but are still falling behind.”
That’s a popular sentiment, but what does it mean? How does that translate into policy, into governance, into actual assistance for those families? I ask, because the policies embraced by Jackson so far would seem to contradict his promise to remember those who are still falling behind. Maybe that will change now that he has won the primary and has more freedom, but based on what we’ve seen so far I doubt it.
For example, Jackson supports the Georgia Republican Party’s refusal to expand Medicaid coverage, making Georgia one of only a few states to do so. It’s a stance that has denied health insurance to the very families to whom Jackson pledges loyalty and support. Most Georgians who would be covered by expanded Medicaid are working families, families with a breadwinner who is employed but not in a job that offers health insurance. Jackson refuses to help them.
Jackson’s tax proposals also favor those Georgians who are already doing well, at the expense of those struggling as he once did. He proposes to cut the state income tax in half and cap property taxes, which would save a lot of money for the Rick Jackson who is now a billionaire, with a 40,000-square-foot home on a 72-acre estate. But such proposals are usually financed by increases in the sales tax, which disproportionately hit the people who Rick Jackson used to be. It’s a tax shift away from those doing well, and onto those who are still struggling.
As governor, Jackson wouldn’t play a significant role in setting federal policy, but his stance on those issues gives us additional insight into how he sees the world and what policies he might push here in Georgia.
For example, Jackson has lauded the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which significantly cut taxes for the wealthy while drastically undercutting “the families that are working harder than ever but are still falling behind.” As Jackson himself has noted, that legislation cut his federal tax burden by 40%.
Did it cut your taxes by 40%?
To pay for those tax cuts, the bill mandates cuts of $536 billion in Medicare by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It cuts Medicaid by $1 trillion, including $155 billion to support rural hospitals. (According to the American Hospital Association, rural hospitals in Georgia will lose $540 million.)
It also cuts $186 billion from the food stamps program. It cut Section 8 housing vouchers by $770 million, stripping housing support from an estimated 230,000 low-income households and putting them in danger of homelessness.
Jackson, who speaks often of his own family’s reliance on public housing while he was growing up, apparently finds such tradeoffs acceptable.
Again, we don’t know for sure whether Jackson will pursue similar policies as governor of Georgia. All we have is conjecture. Conjecture, and Jackson’s own words.
“I know I’m going to be Trump’s favorite governor, I guarantee you,” he said during the campaign. “That’s because I’m going to be doing things just like he would do it — just with a Southern tone.”
Unfortunately, I think we should take his word for it.
