ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — Georgia’s candidates for governor took different paths on the campaign trail Wednesday, highlighting stark policy divides and trading sharp personal attacks as they toured metro Atlanta.
Republican nominee Rick Jackson stood at the State Capitol to pitch a zero-tolerance crackdown on human trafficking and online predators.
Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms rallied supporters inside a crowded Lawrenceville grocery store, proposing a plan to suspend local grocery taxes to ease inflation.
Jackson, a billionaire businessman who grew up in the foster care system, framed his child-safety platform as a deeply personal mission.
“I know what it feels like to be a child that has no control over where you sleep or who will care for you,” Jackson said.
Jackson’s child-safety plan relies heavily on codifying the child-safety protections won in Georgia’s recent Meta settlement, making them the standard for every major social media platform operating in the state.
Under Jackson’s proposal, all major platforms would be legally forced to adopt age assurance, nighttime blocks, school-day notification restrictions, limit social-comparison features, and provide practical parental oversight tools.
“Parents should be in charge of their children, not algorithms, predators or Silicon Valley executives,” Jackson said.
Jackson also pledged to direct Georgia’s share of the Meta settlement—which could reach nearly $135 million—largely toward protecting children, locating missing youth and helping survivors rebuild.
His five-step strategy includes establishing a statewide human trafficking strike force with subpoena power, cracking down on illicit massage businesses, implementing immediate trafficking-risk assessments for missing children and creating a public results dashboard.
RELATED: Atlanta News First to host gubernatorial town hall debate between Keisha Lance Bottoms, Rick Jackson
About 20 miles away in Gwinnett County, Bottoms spent her morning talking with shoppers inside Al Huda Grocery about the rising cost of basic necessities.
“People are talking about how expensive it is just to exist,” Bottoms said.
According to her campaign, Georgia families face the 11th-highest grocery costs in the nation, spending more of their budget on groceries than the average American.
Bottoms’ newly unveiled “Local Grocery and Family Essentials Tax Relief Plan” proposes allowing local municipalities the option to eliminate or temporarily suspend local grocery sales taxes.
Georgia does not tax groceries, but local municipalities do. Under Bottoms’ proposal, cities and counties would have the option to permanently eliminate local sales taxes on qualifying groceries and family essentials, or temporarily suspend them when grocery prices rise significantly.
Her plan would establish a $250 million Local Tax Relief Stabilization Fund to protect communities that rely on that sales tax revenue.
This fund would act as a state-level backstop for at least one budget cycle, giving both permanently eliminating and temporarily suspending localities a temporary cushion as municipal leaders work to balance their budgets.
Bottoms compared the proposal to the state suspending the gas tax or holding sales tax holidays, estimating the plan will save Georgia families hundreds of dollars a year.
Bottoms also launched a direct attack on Jackson’s ethics, calling him “Slick Rick” over controversial state contracts and past business lawsuits.
Bottoms highlighted a recent CNN report exposing a lawsuit against Jackson’s company, Avant Healthcare Professionals, which settled for $3 million on June 22, 2026, over allegations of luring and exploiting immigrant nurses.
“This is a man who is unethical,” Bottoms said. “He is untruthful. And he will stop at nothing to be the Donald Trump of Georgia.”
Jackson’s campaign is currently outspending Bottoms by orders of magnitude on television advertising.
Ben Taylor, a political analyst, said the stark visual difference in their campaign stops reflects a battle between Jackson’s massive bankroll and Bottoms’ drive for free attention.
“The Jackson campaign is lapping the Bottoms campaign [in advertising],” Taylor said. “And there’s just no two ways about that.”
Recent polling shows the race is a toss-up.
Taylor says no matter who wins in November, history is guaranteed: Georgia’s next governor will have zero state-level government experience, a first since Lester Maddox was elected in 1966.
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