It’s been a month since billionaire Rick Jackson unexpectedly entered the Republican primary for governor in Georgia.

He’s quickly shaken things up.

Jackson, a health care executive, is pumping millions of dollars of his own money into an already crowded race and aggressively courting supporters of Donald Trump — even though the president has backed a different candidate.

Prior to Jackson’s late entrance, the May 19 primary had seemed to be shaping up as a three-way race among Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is the Trump-endorsed front-runner, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and state Attorney General Chris Carr.

But after launching his campaign in early February with a pledge to spend at least $50 million, Jackson has vastly outspent his opponents on the airwaves and has rapidly seen dividends in some early public polling. He’s even leading in some of them, though most of those surveys also show a plurality of voters undecided.

It’s all scrambled the contest to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in the battleground state into a slugfest for MAGA voters as Jackson attempts to paint himself in the mold of Trump against a field of better-known rivals and maintain his early jolt of momentum.

“You can’t get into the race promising to spend $50 million and not see a significant impact, which is exactly what has happened,” said Katie Frost, an Atlanta-based Republican political strategist not currently working with any of the campaigns. “This effort means he thought there was an opening.”

Another X-factor in the race is that the primary would head to a runoff between the top two vote-getters if no one gets 50% of the vote — an outcome that is likelier now that it’s a four-way race.

Since Jackson’s Feb. 3 campaign announcement, he has spent nearly $16 million on ads, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact — almost six times as much as Jones and nearly twice the amount of the next closest spender in the race. An outside group called Georgians for Integrity, which has spent nearly $9 million over the same time span, has been running attack ads targeting only Jones for month.

During that period, Jones’ campaign has spent $2.7 million on ads, according to AdImpact, with a Jones-aligned outside group spending another $900,000. The Raffensperger campaign spent $12,000 on ads over the same time period, while Carr’s campaign dropped only $1,500.

Jackson’s ads have mostly leaned into introducing himself to voters, while also making overt comparisons between himself and Trump.

The spots with the most money behind them mostly feature him talking about his experience in his youth in the foster care system, after having fled abusive parents before becoming a business owner. He so draws on Trump’s background as a political outsider and businessman, while also taking a veiled jab at the experienced statewide officials he’s running against.

“Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians,” Jackson says in one TV ad. In another, Jackson casts himself as “the straight-talking, Trump-supporting self-made outsider” who “tells it like it is.”

Another ad — part of a much smaller buy — rips into Raffensperger, who as Georgia’s secretary of state rejected Trump’s plea to overturn the 2020 election results after Joe Biden won, accuses him of having “turned on his own kind” and invokes the word “Judas.”

Unlike Jackson’s other ads, which ran almost entirely in Georgia markets, this spot also ran in media markets in Washington, D.C., and West Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home is located.

It’s part of a broader strategy, GOP operatives said, to flatter Trump while also not crossing him by going after his preferred candidate in Jones. At his campaign launch event, Jackson even descended to the stage in a glass elevator, drawing comparisons to Trump’s escalator entrance to announce his 2016 presidential bid.

“He clearly is trying to get the attention of the Trump administration and the president himself,” Frost said.

In an interview, Carr said Jackson’s entrance was more of an issue for Jones than him.

“It hasn’t changed things for me,” Carr said, “but it’s been disruptive and devastating to the lieutenant governor, because they are fighting for the same voter. The lieutenant governor’s whole pitch was, ’I’m going to have the most money and I’m going to have one endorsement, and that’s all I need.’ Well, that was a flawed argument.”

Jackson declined an interview request, but campaign spokesperson Mike Schrimpf further leaned into comparisons between Jackson and Trump.

“I think Republican primary voters were eager for a businessman and an outsider to enter the race, and Rick Jackson, like President Trump, is a businessman outsider,” he said. “This is their response to that message of being an outsider and fighting,” he added, referring to Jackson’s dent in recent polling.

Schrimpf declined to say whether the campaign’s strategy was to split Trump-aligned Republican voters in Georgia to force a runoff with Jones, noting only that, “that is not how I would think about it — the strategy is to appeal to all Republican primary voters.”

Jones declined to be interviewed, but campaign spokesperson Kayla Lott highlighted Trump’s endorsement, which the president doubled down on last month during a visit to a Georgia steel plant. Jones’ own ads have focused almost entirely on Trump’s endorsement.

“Trump-endorsed Lt. Governor Burt Jones is the only common-sense conservative in this race fighting for the issues Georgians care about,” Lott said in a statement. “Georgians have a clear choice — a Trump-endorsed proven workhorse with a record of results, or a bunch of Never-Trump RINOs pretending to be something they’re not.”

Despite Jackson’s early momentum, Georgia Republicans emphasized that it’s too early in the race to draw any lasting conclusions and that the state’s runoff system has produced unexpected results in recent election cycles.

For example, in the run-up to the Republican gubernatorial primary election in 2018, Kemp trailed his competitors in many major polls. But he managed to advance to the runoff, which he won with the help of a Trump endorsement and a secret recording that sank his opponent.

And Trump’s endorsements and big spending by self-funders haven’t always guaranteed victories in Georgia — a fact cited by both Carr and Raffensperger.

In 2022, former Sen. David Perdue, who partly self-funded his campaign, lost his gubernatorial primary challenge to Kemp, while Rep. Jody Hice failed to defeat Raffensperger in the secretary of state primary. Both Perdue and Hice were backed by Trump.

“We’ve had people that have had a lot of money. We’ve had people with a Trump endorsement — and they didn’t win,” Carr said in an interview, referring to both Jackson and Jones in the current race.

Carr said that “self-funders have a terrible win-loss record in the state of Georgia” and that he remained optimistic about his chances of advancing to a runoff. He added that Jackson has “totally cut the legs out from Lt Gov. Jones in this race.”

Raffensperger also said there will “probably” be a runoff. Asked about the attack ad from Jackson, Raffensperger said that “some of the folks in this race are just obsessed with the past, and I’m solely focused on George’s future.”

Battery company SK Battery America Inc. laid off nearly 1,000 workers at a manufacturing plant northeast of Atlanta on Friday amid automakers’ changing electrification plans and uncertain consumer demand for EVs.

The company said Friday marked the last working day for 958 plant employees, about 37% of its workforce, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, notice filed by human resources chief Chuck Moore. Impacted workers will be paid through May 6. The plant will continue to employ about 1,600 workers.

SK opened the $2.6 billion battery plant in Commerce, Georgia, in January 2022. The Korean company notably supplied the Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck. Ford announced plans to cancel the fully electric version of the truck in December.

The news comes as the U.S. electric vehicle market is at a standstill amid the Trump administration steering federal support away from electrification in favor of more lax automotive emissions policies and a broader agenda supporting the oil and gas industries.

SK Americas spokesperson Joe Guy Collier said in a statement that the workforce reduction was made to align operations to market conditions.

“SK Battery America remains committed to Georgia and to building a robust U.S. supply chain for advanced battery manufacturing,” Collier said. “We are pursuing a range of future customers, including the Battery Electric Storage System arena.”

The City of Commerce and the Jackson County commission chair did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ford said in December that it would scrap the fully-electric version of its iconic pickup truck and opt for an extended-range version of the vehicle. A Ford spokesperson said it could not comment on supplier personnel actions.

SK and Ford had together previously invested $11.4 billion in joint battery plants in the U.S. The battery maker ended the joint venture in December.

SK is also a supplier to Volkswagen.

“Let’s be clear: these were battery manufacturing jobs and now they’re gone,” Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, said in a statement. “As predicted, Trump’s war on electric vehicles is hurting Georgia’s economy. We were booming and building new plants. Now Georgians are losing their jobs.”

SK has invested significantly in Jackson County in Georgia in recent years as automakers shored up plans to spend billions to develop and build EVs and the federal government under former President Joe Biden supported efforts to build out a domestic EV supply chain.

It had also announced in June 2020 plans to pour $940 million to expand its battery manufacturing presence in Atlanta. At the time, Gov. Brian Kemp’s office said the expansion would create 600 jobs.

SK and Hyundai are still jointly building a $5 billion battery factory near Cartersville, northwest of Atlanta.

The state has also attracted other massive EV manufacturing investments; Rivian’s $5 billion factory and Hyundai’s own $7.6 billion factory complex among them.

Few states benefited more than Georgia from Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which accelerated a rush of green energy projects. The 33 additional projects announced by the end of 2024 were the most nationwide, according to E2, an environmental business group. Exact figures differ, but projects in Georgia topped $20 billion, pledging more than 25,000 jobs. Some of those companies are still pushing on. Qcells, a unit of South Korea’s Hanwha Solutions, said Friday that it had resumed normal production. The company had temporarily reduced hours and pay for some workers last year because U.S. customs officials had been detaining imported components needed to make solar panels.

EV demand, while still growing, has not met automakers’ ambitious expectations in recent years. EVs accounted for about 8% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2025, much the same as a year earlier.

Automakers have been reevaluating their multibillion-dollar electrification plans as financial losses mount and demand shifts.

Manufacturers including Ford, General Motors, Stellantis and others — along with others across the EV supply chain — have reneged on factory, investment and product plans, laid off workers and, instead, pivoted some of those efforts to hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Hybrids and more efficient gasoline-powered vehicles are seemingly more palatable for mainstream buyers concerned about EV driving range and charging infrastructure availability.

Under President Donald Trump, meanwhile, Congress has eliminated tax credits of up to $7,500 for consumers’ purchases of new or used EVs.

The administration has also announced plans to weaken fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions rules for automakers, essentially eliminating any federal incentive for auto companies to make their vehicle fleets cleaner.

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St. John reported from Detroit.

ATLANTA — Georgia Republicans are getting antsy. As U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff dominates the nation in fundraising and makes his case to voters, three Republicans who want his spot are still competing among themselves for their party’s nomination.

This week’s election frenzy in Texas didn’t help. After President Donald Trump declined to help clear the field with an endorsement, Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton are primed for a bitter and expensive runoff that could sap resources needed in more competitive states.

Trump has since promised to choose between the two of them, but he hasn’t said when he’ll make an announcement or whom he’ll support. And there’s no sign that the president is ready to get involved in Georgia’s primary on May 19, meaning Republicans there could be on course for a similar predicament.

“I’d like to have as many days as I can to focus the public’s attention on the choice between our nominee and Sen. Ossoff,” said state party chair Josh McKoon. “Assuming that President Trump does not weigh in, it seems like it is more likely than not that we will have a runoff.”

Each of Georgia’s three main Republican contenders — Rep. Mike Collins, Rep. Buddy Carter and former football coach Derek Dooley — has positioned himself as the best person to help Trump in Washington. Trump could almost certainly anoint a winner if he wanted to use his influence.

“It is the gold standard of the party,” said Faith & Freedom Coalition chairman Ralph Reed. “It’s the strongest endorsement I’ve ever seen in my career.”

Ossoff sees political advantage in the competition for Trump’s support.

“My opponents have already made clear they will be Donald Trump’s puppets,” Ossoff said in a speech this week at Georgia’s capitol.

The non-endorsement looms over race

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, warned in an interview with The Washington Examiner last month that the wide primary field could end in a general election loss in Georgia.

“We need to get it down to one candidate as soon as possible,” Scott said. “And if we are able to do so, we have a chance to be successful there. But as long as we have three candidates, it’s going to be tougher for us.”

Republican strategist and Collins ally Stephen Lawson warned that Ossoff “continues every day going unscathed.”

“I do think there has to be some sense of urgency on settling on a candidate and clearing the field sooner rather than later,” he said.

Collins has a long list of endorsements in the state, and he’s backed by the Club for Growth, a nationally influential conservative advocacy group. He describes himself as the “America First MAGA candidate.”

However, he also facing an ethics complaint from a congressional watchdog accusing his policy adviser and former chief of staff of improperly hiring his girlfriend as an intern even though she didn’t complete assigned work. Collins has called the complaint “bogus.”

Carter said in an interview this week that “I’m the one without any baggage.”

A political fixture in southeast Georgia, Carter says he’s a “MAGA warrior.” He has called for expanded immigration enforcement in the state despite criticisms of aggressive tactics elsewhere.

As Republicans compete with each other, Ossoff has been boosting his cash advantage. The senator has over $25.5 million on hand. Meanwhile, Collins has $2.3 million, Dooley has $2.1 million, and Carter has $4.2 million, including many of his own dollars.

However, McKoon said he’s confident Republican donors will coalesce around a winner and help them catch up.

Trump ‘wants to win’

Trump has a mixed track record on endorsements, particularly in Georgia. In 2021, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler lost to Ossoff and Sen. Raphael Warnock. In 2022, Warnock beat football star Herschel Walker.

Carter noted that Republicans have a narrow majority in the House, including Collins and himself, and guessed that Trump doesn’t want to jeopardize that.

“The president really is probably going to sit this one out,” Carter said.

Collins flattered Trump’s endorsement record, saying he has “always had the impeccable ability to put his name on someone at the right time to get the most bang for his buck.”

Candidates aren’t just trying to convince voters they align with Trump — they’re also trying to convince the president that they would come out on top in November. That’s what matters most to Trump, Reed said.

“The only thing that drives Trump more than finding candidates that are loyal both philosophically and personally is identifying and getting behind candidates that can win,” Reed said. “He wants to win.”