You can’t exactly say that having the way cleared so that he could get an endorsement from the Republican National Committee is the worst thing to happen to Lt. Gov. Burt Jones this year.
After all, it’s been a rough patch. Long the comfortable frontrunner in the upcoming Republican primary for governor, Jones has fallen behind the late-arriving Rick Jackson. Worse, in a Rasmussen poll conducted Feb. 11-12, he has dropped into third, behind Jackson and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
In another blow, U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash ruled in a temporary restraining order last week that Jones can’t use his leadership committee, where he has the lion’s share of his campaign money, in this race. He was also directed to cancel any ads purchased since Feb. 10.
Then there’s the day job. With the passage by the Senate of either-or plans aimed at the elimination of personal income taxes by 2032, Jones was able to claim he’d delivered on a central campaign promise, but there’s no guarantee either Senate plan will win final passage. This has been characterized as a situation in which everybody wants to cut taxes, and nobody knows exactly how. Meanwhile, every day he’s wielding a gavel during the session is a day he’s not on the campaign trail.
So, no, the dustup over the rules being waived so that the RNC could endorse him doesn’t rank as the worst thing the lieutenant governor has had to contend with, but it makes all the other stuff look worse. And this wound was, presumably, self-inflicted.
If he already had the endorsement of President Donald Trump, why did Jones need the RNC endorsement? Because it would have enabled the RNC to pour even more money into his campaign. But if he already had the nearly $16 million leadership committee account and $3 million in his campaign account, why was he still thinking about money? All these questions seem to circle around a core of insecurity.
For all the trouble it has caused, Jones still might not get the RNC endorsement, especially now that he’s fallen behind in more than one poll. All the fuss so far has been over the state chair and the two Georgia RNC members agreeing without fanfare to waive a party rule against taking sides in primaries to enable that endorsement. At least three congressional district-level party executive committees have passed resolutions condemning that action.
“The use of Party rules or national authority to advantage or disadvantage particular candidates undermines voter confidence, suppresses grassroots participation, and contradicts the Republican Party’s stated commitment to freedom of association and fair process,” the 12th Congressional District resolution said in part.
This isn’t directly about Trump’s endorsement of Jones. All the Republicans who signed those resolutions no doubt voted for Trump. But like the failed effort to impose a redistricting plan in Indiana, the blowback over the waiver here in Georgia is another example of the difficulty of forging a top-down structure on a party full of people who prize their independence.
It’s worth noting that both Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr unsuccessfully challenged the law, which allows Jones to raise unlimited amounts of money whether the legislature is in session or not, before Jackson’s attorneys tried a different strategy and got the opinion some thought was long overdue.
Maybe it was beginner’s luck. Jackson has used a lot of money to great effect, and with the ruling locking up the leadership committee money, at least for now, he has dealt a serious blow to Jones’ campaign finances.
Jones still has the Trump endorsement, and Rick Jackson hasn’t had to face him or anybody else in a debate yet. If Jones takes a majority of the 40-odd percent of the Republican electorate who say they haven’t made up their minds, he still wins. But from here on, it’s an unexpected uphill race.
