One election, two sets of rules in Georgia governor’s race

Those laws passed in 2021 as a part of a bill that lets the governor, lieutenant governor, and leaders of the state House and Senate raise as much money as they can, including during the Legislative session, through so-called “leadership committees.” Jones, who was a state senator at the time, voted against the measure.

The new rules go back to Republicans’ efforts to help Gov. Brian Kemp prepare for his 2022 reelection race against Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee at the time who also was a known fundraising juggernaut.

Along with letting Kemp and other GOP leaders raise unlimited funds with their leadership committees, the new law also lets them coordinate with, and even direct, the leadership committee’s strategy and operations.

The law applies equally to Democrats and Republicans, so when Abrams became the Democratic nominee, the law said that she could create a leadership committee, too. But it meant that Kemp would not have to sit on the sidelines during the legislative session in 2022, while Abrams was already raising tens of millions of dollars to run against him.

At the time, campaign finance experts warned that the 2021 law would create an uneven playing field between incumbents and challengers, no matter their party. And that has happened.

But what was not anticipated was how the new rules would affect open races, including the first open race for governor since the law passed. That’s happening now as Democrats and Republicans jockey to replace Kemp, who is term-limited and will leave office at the end of this year.

The GOP primary features Jones and Carr, along with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Jones’ campaign for governor follows the 2021 law, since the lieutenant governor’s office was included in the bill creating leadership committees. He is able to raise unlimited campaign money, including during the legislative session, and use that for his GOP primary against Carr and Raffensperger on May 19.

But Carr and Raffensperger are still governed by the old campaign rules. They cannot raise money during the session and must follow strict limits on the amount they can take from individual donors. And they cannot coordinate with outside groups supporting them.

It’s one election for governor with two wildly different sets of rules. The system defies common sense or even basic fairness, all while doing Georgia voters a disservice in the process by giving one candidate a significantly deeper war chest heading into the primary.

Carr’s campaign filed a lawsuit to challenge the law last year, but a judge said Carr should have challenged the constitutionality of the law itself, not sued Jones just for following it.

An outside group supporting Raffensperger has sued over the law, too, arguing that all of the candidates should be able to raise unlimited sums of money, whenever they want to, just like Jones. If Jones doesn’t have to play by the old rules, why have rules at all, the thinking seems to go.

But that would essentially eliminate campaign finance limits altogether, a huge step in the wrong direction in a state where big money donors have more than enough power already, especially during the legislative session.

Speaking of campaign finance rules, that brings us to the mysterious case of the group — or person — that has spent more than $8 million in ads blitzing Jones in the last two months, all without disclosing their identity. The source of the money is the biggest riddle going in Georgia political circles, since anyone willing to spend $8 million by mid-January most likely has $100 million to plow into the race against Jones, too.

The ads blindsided Jones and could be coming from Democrats, a fellow Republican, a lobbyist with an ax to grind, or an out-of-state power player. Who knows?

As bad as the Georgia law is that is giving Jones’ and other leadership committees a boost now, its saving grace is the disclosure requirement it includes to tell Georgians who is supporting which candidates with their donations. (Of Jones’ $14 million raised so far, for example, $10 million is coming directly from him.)

Both Georgia and federal law make it possible for the $8 million anti-Jones sponsor to shield their identity, or identities (it could be a group of people), if they know how to write around the rules.

Along with having money to burn and a clear objection to the lieutenant governor, the only other thing we know about the secretive effort is that the person behind it knows how to write a political ad. “It’s hard to keep up with the Joneses, especially Burt Jones,” it says.

In reality, it’s hard keeping up with the Joneses, or the deep-pocketed mystery donor in question, if Georgia law makes it impossible in the first place. Lawmakers this session need to find a way to even the playing field.

For now, Carr, Raffensperger, and everyone else living by the old rules has had stop fundraising completely until April, while Jones and anyone with a leadership committee races ahead.