Kemp Endorses Burt Jones for Georgia Governor Days Before Runoff

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones for governor on Sunday, ending months of public neutrality two days before the state’s Republican primary runoff. The endorsement lands in a race where the latest polling already shows Jones trailing healthcare billionaire Rick Jackson by double digits.

Kemp made the announcement in a Sunday afternoon social media post, joining President Donald Trump, who endorsed Jones in August 2025. The governor’s statement pointed to an eight-year record with Jones at the Capitol, including tax cuts, school safety investments, and the return of $9 billion to taxpayers. It was a striking reversal for a governor who told 11Alive he was focused on helping former football coach Derek Dooley win the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Jones welcomed the endorsement on his own social media, saying he had been “grateful to work alongside [Kemp] for the past four years and it is my honor today to receive his full endorsement.”

Kemp Backs Jones Days Before the Runoff

“Over the last eight years, we’ve achieved historic wins for hardworking Georgians from all walks of life and made our state the best place to live, work, and raise a family,” Kemp said in the statement. He credited Jones as a “strong, trusted ally” in the work of raising teacher pay by nearly $10,000, securing school safety investments, and passing tort reform “for the first time in 20 years.” The governor closed the statement with a direct ask: “Marty, the girls, and I are proud to endorse Burt Jones to be the 84th Governor of the great state of Georgia and ask you to join us in supporting him on Tuesday.”

Jones returned the favor in his own statement, calling Kemp’s endorsement one that “comes because the person knows me, they know my proven conservative record, they know my work ethic, and they know when I say I’m going to do something, I do it.” He framed the moment as a closing argument. “It’s time we come together as a party, finish strong on Tuesday and look to November and keep fighting for all the principles, freedoms and values that make Georgia the best state in the nation,” Jones said. The pair have worked together for nearly 15 years, a timeline the governor cited as evidence of Jones’s readiness for the office.

Burt knows how to get things done as governor because that’s what he has done as state senator and as your Lt. Governor.

With Kemp on board, both the sitting governor and the president are formally behind the same candidate. Trump’s August 2025 endorsement of Jones, posted on Truth Social, said “Burt has proven he has the Courage and Wisdom to deliver strong results for the incredible people of his wonderful State and Nation,” per the rundown of the June 16 Republican primary runoff. Kemp’s late endorsement came on a Sunday afternoon that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution framed as a “surprise twist” in the most expensive Republican race for governor in Georgia history. Both runoff campaigns had spent the previous weeks running ads that implied the governor’s backing, even as Kemp refused to make a public choice. Sunday’s post ended the ambiguity for the first time.

Months of Public Neutrality, Then a Sunday Reversal

For most of the runoff, Kemp had no public position on the governor’s race. He told 11Alive he was focused on the Senate contest and spoke positively of both Jones and Rick Jackson, and both campaigns aired ads implying the governor’s support.

That posture made Sunday’s announcement a genuine pivot, not a continuation. Attorney General Chris Carr, who finished fourth in the May 19 Republican primary with 11.9% of the vote, had endorsed Jackson shortly after the primary, per Ballotpedia. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who finished third with 15.0%, did not make a formal endorsement before the runoff, though the original reporting on the contest noted that voters who supported him had been moving toward Jackson. The runoff that had looked like a Jones lead after primary day had drifted Jackson’s way by early June.

The governor’s neutrality was unusual in a race his party had treated as a referendum on the Trump wing of the Georgia GOP. Both Jones and Jackson stood with Trump during the fight over Georgia’s 2020 election results; Carr and Raffensperger, who refused to help overturn Biden’s narrow Georgia win, were eliminated in the primary. The runoff, then, was a choice between two Trump-aligned candidates, with the governor’s neutrality becoming a separate, lingering question. Kemp’s reversal on Sunday gave Jones the kind of establishment cover he had been missing for months. The decision to wait, however, also cost Jones the months of unified party support that an earlier endorsement would have produced.

The original eight-candidate primary field, which early-year reporting on the contest had framed as the most expensive open-seat governor’s primary in state history, narrowed to Jones and Jackson after May 19. A group called Georgians for Integrity has spent $19 million on ads opposing Jones, accusing him of using his office for personal gain, per Ballotpedia. Jackson’s self-funded campaign and the outside ad blitz appear to have moved the race past Jones in the polls by early June. The shift is sharp enough that Kemp’s reversal came as Jones was already down by double digits in the most recent survey. Both runoff campaigns had spent the previous weeks running ads that implied the governor’s backing, the original reporting on the contest noted, even as Kemp refused to make a public choice. Sunday’s post is the first time the governor has named a candidate in the race.

The Polling Already Favors Jackson

The Cygnal poll, conducted June 5-7, 2026, gave Jackson 56% and Jones 44% among likely runoff voters, what the firm called “over a 10 point difference” in a memo released on June 8. The numbers mark a sharp move from the surveys that came out the week after the May 19 primary, when Jones still led. The two most recent surveys, Cygnal and JMC Analytics, both have Jackson ahead.

The four polls together describe a moving race. InsiderAdvantage and Quantus, both fielded the day after the May 19 primary, had Jones ahead, at 48% to 42% and 46.4% to 44.1% respectively. JMC Analytics, nine days later, had Jackson at 45% to Jones’s 43%. Cygnal, the most recent of the four and the only one published since Kemp’s endorsement, has Jackson at 56% to Jones’s 44%. Across the four polls, the lead moves from Jones ahead to Jackson ahead, with the margin widening in Jackson’s direction in the most recent survey.

Trump Picks Collins, Crossing Swords With Kemp on the Senate Side

Kemp’s Sunday announcement was not the only Republican endorsement of the day. Hours earlier, in a social media post that Politico reported was published at roughly 1 a.m. on the morning of Trump’s 80th birthday, the president backed U.S. Rep. Mike Collins in the Republican U.S. Senate runoff over Dooley, the candidate Kemp had personally recruited. The Trump endorsement of Mike Collins in the Senate runoff called Collins “a true friend, fighter, and WARRIOR” who “has been with me from the very beginning.” Collins, a second-term congressman from a suburban Atlanta district, has echoed Trump’s false claims about his 2020 defeat.

The endorsement put the president at odds with Kemp on the Senate side, even as the two men lined up together on the governor’s race. Trump dismissed Dooley in the same post. “I don’t know Derek Dooley, and neither does anyone else, but he seems like a nice person,” Trump wrote, while noting that Dooley did not vote in 2016 or 2020. Dooley responded on social media that Georgia voters did not want “typical D.C. politicians like Mike Collins.” With Kemp as his top surrogate, Dooley had been making the case that a political outsider had a better shot at unseating Sen. Jon Ossoff, the only Democratic senator facing voters in a state Trump won in 2024.

I don’t know Derek Dooley, and neither does anyone else, but he seems like a nice person.

Dooley and Kemp are childhood friends, and the governor recruited him to run, per the AP. Kemp has spent the spring appearing alongside Dooley at campaign stops, framing the race as a referendum on whether Georgia Republicans can win a Senate seat for the first time since 2016, when Trump was first elected. The governor has pointed to first-term Republican senators in Montana, Pennsylvania, and Ohio who won in 2024 as outsiders who still aligned with Trump. Collins pushed back at that framing, citing the Laken Riley Act, a 2025 law he sponsored that requires immigrants to be detained when charged with certain crimes. The Senate runoff, like the governor’s race, is set for Tuesday. The governor is scheduled to campaign with Dooley on Monday, the day before the vote, per the AP.

The Most Expensive GOP Governor’s Race in Georgia History

Money has poured into the governor’s race at a scale no Georgia primary has matched. Rick Jackson, the founder of Jackson Healthcare, raised $83.5 million, much of it self-financed, against Jones’s $4.6 million, per the Ballotpedia and Georgia Ethics Commission campaign finance reports.

The cost gap is the backdrop for Kemp’s late endorsement. Jackson, a healthcare executive who entered the race in February 2026 with no prior political experience, used the financial edge to build statewide name recognition that polling showed at near-zero when he announced. He founded Jackson Healthcare in 2000, a staffing and services company based in Alpharetta. Jones, the incumbent lieutenant governor, served in the Georgia State Senate from 2013 to 2023 and has held the No. 2 office since 2023. The runoff’s outside spending includes the $19 million from Georgians for Integrity, which has run ads accusing Jones of using his office for personal gain, per Ballotpedia. The two-candidate runoff in June follows a primary that opened with eight Republicans competing to succeed term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp.

• Jones’s May 19 primary vote share: 38.4%
• Jackson’s May 19 primary vote share: 32.5%
• Jackson campaign fundraising: $83.5 million
• Jones campaign fundraising: $4.6 million
• Georgians for Integrity outside spending against Jones: $19 million

The winner will face former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the November 3 general election. Bottoms cleared the 50% threshold in the May 19 Democratic primary and skipped a runoff of her own, ending the night with just over 56% of the vote, per the Savannah Now. Her Republican opponent will start the general election against a former mayor who had statewide name recognition from her single term as Atlanta mayor and a stint as a senior adviser in the Biden White House. The Senate runoff, between Collins and Dooley, is also on Tuesday’s ballot, the second of two runoffs the state will run on the same day.