Two Republicans who stood with Donald Trump during the fight over Georgia’s 2020 election will face each other in a June 16 runoff for governor. The two who refused to help him overturn that result went home Tuesday night without a runoff slot.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the president’s endorsed candidate, finished first with 37.2%. Healthcare entrepreneur Rick Jackson, who poured more than $83 million of his own money into a campaign that started in February, took 34.5%. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr, the two Republicans who certified Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 win in Georgia, finished third and fourth and were eliminated. On the Democratic side, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won outright and will represent her party in November.
What Tuesday’s Numbers Showed
Eight Republicans appeared on the ballot to replace term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp. The top four took roughly 98% of the vote between them, leaving the rest scattered across minor candidates. Jones and Jackson cleared 71% combined, but neither came close to the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff under Georgia law.
| Candidate | Role | Vote share | 2020 stance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burt Jones | Lieutenant governor | 37.2% | Alternate (fake) elector for Trump |
| Rick Jackson | Founder, Jackson Healthcare | 34.5% | Aligned with Trump in campaign messaging |
| Brad Raffensperger | Secretary of state | 14.9% | Refused Trump’s request to overturn results |
| Chris Carr | Attorney general | 11.3% | Defended certified results in court |
Bottoms cleared the majority threshold on the Democratic side and avoided a runoff of her own. She was the only candidate in the Democratic field with statewide name recognition coming out of her single term as Atlanta mayor from 2017 to 2021 and her stint as a senior adviser in Joe Biden’s White House.
It’s time to finish the drill.
That was Jones’s line in a statement released after the race was called by the Associated Press, paired with a swipe at Jackson’s self-funded campaign and the message that Georgia voters had rejected attempts to buy the nomination outright.
The 11,780-Vote Call, Five Years Later
On January 2, 2021, the sitting president called Georgia’s secretary of state and asked him to find 11,780 votes, the exact figure needed to flip the state. Raffensperger said no. The Washington Post released the recording the next day, and the complete fact check of the Trump-Raffensperger call became the most-cited document of the early post-election period.
Jones was on the other side of that fight. He served as one of 16 Republicans who signed an unofficial elector certificate at the Georgia State Capitol in December 2020, declaring themselves Trump’s electors despite Biden’s certified win. Federal prosecutors investigated him and ultimately declined to charge. Special prosecutor Pete Skandalakis ruled in September 2024 that Jones had relied on the advice of attorneys and that further prosecution was not warranted, closing the case after four interviews and a lengthy review.
Carr, as attorney general, defended Georgia’s certified outcome in court. His campaign branded him a “Brian Kemp Republican,” a reference to the governor’s repeated clashes with Trump over the 2020 result. Tuesday’s primary turned every one of those positions into a campaign credential or an electoral liability, depending on which Republican primary voter was holding the ballot.
How Jackson’s $83 Million Reshaped the Field
Jackson founded Jackson Healthcare, an Alpharetta-based staffing and services company, in 2000. He entered the gubernatorial race in February with no political history and an open checkbook. By primary day, his campaign had spent more on television ads than any other in Georgia history, with reported personal contributions topping $83 million. Jones, who comes from a wealthy family in his own right, kicked in roughly $19 million.
The spending bought Jackson four things in three months:
- Statewide name recognition that polling showed at near-zero when he announced
- A 35% finish that displaced two statewide elected officials with combined 12 years in office
- A direct line to the Trump-aligned primary electorate despite no formal endorsement from the president
- A self-styled “fellow billionaire” identity message that ran in heavy rotation through April and May
For context on how aggressive that spending looks against other 2026 Republican primaries, Riverdale Standard’s coverage of Trump’s $34 million bet against Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky sketches the upper bound of what an endorsement-driven race typically costs. Jackson outspent that figure roughly two and a half times over, on his own.
The Two Republicans Who Wouldn’t Bend
Raffensperger and Carr together drew 26.2% of the Republican primary vote. That is a meaningful slice of the GOP electorate, but not enough to put either man in the runoff against a field where the Trump-aligned lane was split between two well-funded campaigns.
Carr’s pitch was institutional continuity. He had Kemp’s quiet support, ran ads casting himself as the candidate of the current governor’s wing, and kept his distance from any direct argument over 2020. Raffensperger ran on his record, including the certified election results he refused to revisit. Both men finished with fewer votes than Jackson spent dollars per ballot in the final two weeks.
The Trump-skeptic lane inside Georgia’s GOP has not disappeared, but Tuesday’s result confirmed that as a primary force it now polls in the mid-teens. Kemp himself remains popular among independents and a meaningful share of Democrats, which is part of why his successor’s politics matters for the general election as much as for the runoff.
Bottoms Banks the Biden Wing
Bottoms’s path to the nomination was open by spring. Polling through April showed her leading the Democratic field by double digits, and the Insider Advantage survey released two weeks before the primary had her above the 50% threshold that would let her skip a runoff. She cleared that line on Tuesday.
Her platform on the Bottoms for Governor campaign site leans on her record running Atlanta during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 racial-justice protests, and the city’s recovery period. She did not seek re-election as mayor in 2021 and joined the Biden White House as a senior adviser on public engagement. Biden’s endorsement, his first since leaving office, came in February and effectively cleared the field of any Democratic challenger with comparable national reach.
For Democrats, the upside of Tuesday is that Bottoms moves into the general election with eight weeks of head start while the Republican nominee is still being chosen.
The Senate Primary Splits the Same Way
The Republican U.S. Senate primary in Georgia ran on the same night and produced the same kind of split. Rep. Mike Collins finished first and advances to the June 16 runoff. The second slot went to former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley, who campaigned with Gov. Kemp through the spring. Rep. Buddy Carter, who sought to occupy the Trump-aligned lane alongside Collins, was eliminated.
The winner faces Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who was unopposed for his party’s nomination and entered May with more than $31 million on hand. Ossoff is the only Democratic senator on the 2026 map who represents a state Trump won in 2024, which is why national Republican groups have treated Georgia as their top pickup opportunity and why a bruising runoff worries the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Two simultaneous June 16 runoffs, one for governor and one for the Senate, mean Republican turnout operations in Georgia will be measured against themselves in real time, a stress test of the post-2020 voter file the state party rebuilt after Trump’s defeat.
The Runoff Math Before June 16
The four-week sprint to the runoff turns on roughly 26% of the Republican primary vote that went to Raffensperger and Carr. Those voters skew older, more suburban, and more skeptical of the 2020 election-denial frame than either Jones or Jackson supporters. Whoever consolidates the larger share of that bloc wins the nomination. Jones has the formal Trump endorsement and the statewide office. Jackson has the personal fortune and a billionaire-versus-establishment narrative that played well with primary voters who do not love Jones’s Capitol record.
The general election context tightens the stakes. Georgia has a Republican-controlled state government and two Democratic U.S. senators, the closest split of any major battleground state. Trump won the state by about 2.2 percentage points in 2024 after losing it by less than 12,000 votes four years earlier. Bottoms starts the November campaign with a unified Democratic base, the Biden endorsement, and an opponent the runoff will hand her in late June. Riverdale Standard’s pre-primary preview of the crowded Kemp-replacement field laid out the runoff scenarios that have now arrived.
If Jones rolls up the Raffensperger and Carr voters who default to the candidate with statewide office credentials, the runoff is over before late May fundraising reports drop. If Jackson can convince that 26% that an outsider billionaire is a safer general-election bet than a lieutenant governor who once signed a fake elector certificate, the spending edge starts to matter again. Either way, the Republican who walks into a debate with Bottoms in September will be the candidate Georgia’s GOP voters chose with the 2020 fight as their first filter.
