Mystery Money Shakes Up GOP Primary For Governor.
I assume Peach Pundit readers are like me, political junkies who have seen ads or received text messages from a group calling themselves “Georgians For Integrity.” These ads are critical of Lt. Governor Burt Jones and are causing quite a stir.
It’s not unusual for people or groups of people to organize against a candidate for office. It’s not strange that sometimes those people don’t want to be known. When the stakes are small, but the money is too, they can sometimes keep their anonymity. What’s interesting about Georgians For Integrity is that they are spending large sums of money and appear ready to spend even more, and nobody knows who is funding their effort. I’m not an expert on the finer points of campaign finance law, but what they’re doing might be legal, as Greg Bluestein explains:
Georgians for Integrity, however, is part of a growing subset of groups that operates as a tax-exempt nonprofit chartered in Delaware — a structure that keeps its backers secret.
My general principle is that the public has a right to know who is spending money to influence the outcome of an election. Thus, I’m sympathetic to the Lt. Governor’s complaints here. I’ve somewhat softened that view in recent years as we’ve seen more politicians use their elected position to punish their opponents, but the general principle remains true in my mind. We have a right to know!
During my time in politics, I’ve seen candidates for office skirt campaign finance rules and escape punishment. I’ve seen candidates for the Legislature or local office spend money but never file campaign disclosure forms, or not file until after the race is over, and then claim they loaned themselves all the necessary funds to cover their spending. These things grind my gears (The Georgia GOP should file ethics complaints against those people, too, but that’s another topic for another day).
As for Georgians For Integrity, they’re having a tangible impact on the race for the GOP nomination. I received a mail piece from LG Jones’ campaign over the holidays touting a couple of policies he supports and Trump’s endorsement. Perhaps it was planned all along, but I suspect it was moved up in response to the attack ads.
Who is behind it? Your guess is as good as mine, but let’s engage in some wild speculation. It’s clearly not AG Carr. He’s been running similar ads for a while now, under his own campaign banner. I doubt SOS Raffensperger is behind it either. I think he, too, would make these attacks under his own name.
My wild guess is that Georgians For Integrity is a person or persons who own businesses in direct competition with LG Jones’ family business interests. They fear that if he becomes Governor, their companies will lose out to the LG’s family interests. That’s the subject of these attacks, and Occam’s Razor is a maxim for a reason.
I’ve been wrong before, and I may be mistaken in this case, but one thing is for sure: Georgia politics is never boring.
