State Senator Burt Jones was among 16 Republicans serving as alternate electors in an attempt to help then-President Donald Trump overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
While Jones’ role in that effort occurred almost two years ago, the episode is the focus of this year’s lieutenant governor’s race between Jones and Democrat Charlie Bailey.
“You can’t be more un-American than to come in and say that the people of Georgia can’t choose who represents them,” said Bailey, who made an ill-fated attempt to change the outcome of the election on a campaign ad issue.
Jones dismisses the compilation of a December 2020 list of alternate voters as a “procedural” move, essentially a space-saver prompted by a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits challenging Georgia election results.
“The replacement voters would only carry weight for them if the court cases progressed,” he said. “When I walk around the state, ordinary Georgians don’t ask about it.”
Trump’s attempt to rally supporters for his attempt to overturn the Georgia election is responsible for who gets on the lieutenant governor’s ballot. Acting Lt. gov. Geoff Duncan, who has become the most outspoken Republican critic of Trump’s Georgia strategy, then decided not to seek a second term.
That paved the way for a spirited GOP open-seat primary last May, in which Jones defeated Georgia Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller and two other opponents to win the Republican nomination.
Bailey, who originally intended to rerun his 2018 candidacy for attorney general, instead ran for lieutenant governor. With a crowded Democratic primary campaigning, he had to survive a June runoff to win his party’s nomination for former Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall.
While Jones’ role after the presidential election is a unique element in the running for lieutenant governor, the two candidates take typical positions of their respective parties on issues such as taxation and spending, abortion, guns, voting rights and Medicaid expansion.
Jones goes further than some Republican leaders in his call for abolition of the state income tax. Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, and others expressed concern that eliminating the tax altogether would leave a hole in the state budget.
Jones noted that the General Assembly is already on track to phase out the tax. This year, lawmakers passed legislation backed by Gov. Brian Kemp that will gradually reduce the state income tax rate from 5.49% to 4.99% over six years, beginning with tax year 2024.
“I never said you could do it in a year,” Jones said. “We need to work on that”
Bailey said 20 years of Republican leadership in Georgia has resulted in a reduction in the government’s core services. Examples include a starting salary for teachers that is lower than their Mississippi counterparts and a growing forensic testing backlog that is hampering criminal investigations, he said.
“I don’t think the people of Georgia get what they put into their tax dollars,” Bailey said.
Regarding abortion, Jones said he supports the “heartbeat” law that lawmakers passed in 2019, which bans the procedure after a fetal heartbeat is detected, typically around six weeks into the pregnancy.
“There are exceptions: rape, incest, and a woman’s health,” Jones said.
Bailey said if elected he would push to repeal the Heartbeat Act, citing public opposition to an abortion ban that has emerged in recent polls.
“People in Georgia don’t believe that,” he said. “It is dangerous.”
Likewise, Bailey opposes a law the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed this year allowing Georgians to carry concealed firearms without a license.
“There are now dangerous people who have guns who wouldn’t have it without this law,” he said. “It makes our communities less safe.”
Jones, who voted for the bill, said criminals would carry firearms regardless of what the law dictates.
“[The law] makes it easier for law-abiding citizens to protect themselves,” he said.
The two candidates also disagree on the electoral reform bill passed by the General Assembly last year.
Jones balked at the bill, which it described as additional “restrictions” on mail-in voting. He said “verification” is the purpose of the law.
The legislation requires photo ID to cast a ballot-by-mail and limits the number of ballot boxes counties are allowed to set up to collect ballot-by-mail.
“We wanted to verify that the people who asked for absentee ballots were those people,” Jones said.
Bailey described the new law as “a solution in search of a problem” that doesn’t exist.
“We have no voting problems in Georgia,” he said. “[Republicans] have put the government in the way of the people and their right to vote.”
Bailey said it was high time for Georgia to expand Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act, passed by a Democratic congress in 2010. Not doing so simply means that Georgians, through their federal taxes, help fund expanded health care in other states without receiving anything in return.
“Not only do we have 600,000 Georgians without health insurance…. In the last 12 years, we’ve had to close eight rural hospitals,” Bailey said.
Jones said Kemp tried to expand Medicaid coverage with a Georgia-focused plan but was turned down by the Biden administration. The governor has rejected the Obamacare version of the Medicaid expansion as too expensive.
“Just throwing money into something without a plan isn’t helpful,” Jones said. “That’s what the Democrats want.”
The two candidates largely agree that funding for education needs to be increased by updating the decades-old formula of student-per-student funding and the need to increase law enforcement salaries.
In particular, Jones called for an end to free bail. Bailey said Georgia needs more prosecutors, judges and public defenders.
Libertarian Ryan Graham is a third contender in the running for lieutenant governor.
This story is available through a news partnership with the Capitol Beat News Service, a Georgia Press Educational Foundation project.
