Governor
Keisha Lance Bottoms
Democrat
Rick Jackson
Republican
COST OF LIVING & AFFORDABILITY
Keisha Lance Bottoms
Bottoms applauded the 23 attorneys general who filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration to protect Georgia’s SNAP benefits, with cuts on the horizon. More than 1.3 million Georgia families were set to lose SNAP benefits, including 640,000 children.
Bottoms has called for a continued suspension of Georgia’s gas tax as prices surged past $3.83/gallon, over a dollar more than in February.
Bottoms wants to end the state income tax for teachers and guarantee pre-K for every child.
Bottoms: Keisha for Governor, 6/1/2026; AAA, accessed 8/3/2026; GPB, 3/5/2026; AJC, 8/27/26; WABE, 6/29/26; Keisha for Governor, 10/28/2025; Atlanta Journal Constitution, 10/28/2025; News from the States, 6/29/2026; WGXA, 5/14/2026.
Rick Jackson
Jackson said bringing back the state gas tax would be the “right, prudent thing to do,” and told the AJC he “couldn’t name a single White House policy he disagrees with.”
Jackson made cutting the income tax the condition of his candidacy, pledging in his launch video: “if we can’t cut the state income tax in half and freeze property taxes, I won’t run again.” That builds on Gov. Kemp’s 2025 law already lowering the rate from 5.19% toward 3.99% — with no accounting for what a further 50% cut would take out of schools, health care and public safety.
JOBS & WAGES
Keisha Lance Bottoms
During Bottoms’ tenure as mayor, Atlanta had four years of balanced budgets with no property tax increases, no layoffs, and no furloughs of city employees. Bottoms introduced Premium Pay legislation that would deliver roughly $500 a month in extra pay to the city’s frontline and essential infrastructure workers.
As mayor, Bottoms banned the salary history box on city job applications to close the gender pay gap and stop wage discrimination: “Too often, salary history can trap employees in an unfair earnings cycle based on history rather than their skill set.”
Rick Jackson
Jackson built his multibillion-dollar fortune running one of the country’s largest health care staffing firms — a company that places more than 20,000 contract clinicians nationwide while employing roughly 2,600 direct associates.
Jackson faced a major lawsuit from thousands of foreign-born nurses who accused one of his companies of paying them less and subjecting them to coercive labor practices. The company settled for $3 million.
Quality Health Care
Keisha Lance Bottoms
Bottoms wants to expand Medicaid so 300,000 more Georgians can get covered and keep rural hospitals open; notes that over 500,000 Georgians have lost coverage since January, 1.4 million are facing skyrocketing premiums, and roughly 240,000 Georgians fall into the coverage gap — earning too much for Medicaid but too little for Affordable Care Act marketplace subsidies. Campaigned outside a shuttered hospital in Commerce, warning that more rural hospitals will close if Republicans keep refusing expansion.
Bottoms says Jackson has made more than $1 billion from Georgia health care while opposing the same Medicaid expansion that would help the system he profited from.
Rick Jackson
Jackson opposes Medicaid expansion; he would keep Georgia one of the 10 states that refuse it. His rally platform includes a pledge to ‘drive down the cost of health care’ without a specific mechanism identified.
Jackson’s company, Jackson Healthcare, has received over $1 billion from the state since signing a no-bid contract during COVID. A subsidiary of his company, Jackson Healthcare, agreed to pay $700,000 in 2024 to resolve federal allegations that it participated in a Medicare kickback scheme involving unnecessary equipment billing — a civil settlement resolving allegations against the company, not a personal criminal charge against Jackson.
U.S. Senate
Jon Ossoff
Democrat
Mike Collins
Republican
COST OF LIVING & AFFORDABILITY
Jon Ossoff
Ossoff co-sponsored the UFCW-backed Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act, which would ban electronic shelf labels in large grocery stores, bar corporations from using your location and browsing history to charge you a different price for the same item, and force stores to disclose when they are using facial recognition on shoppers. He also wrote the Fresh Food Act to bring grocery stores to Georgia communities that don’t have one, and pressed Gov. Kemp to reverse his refusal of federal summer food funding for Georgia children.
Ossoff wants to protect Social Security and Medicare for Georgia retirees.
Ossoff has used his Appropriations seat and his investigative authority to go after companies whose practices cost Georgians money, from out-of-state corporate landlords to price setting in the grocery aisle.
Ossoff: U.S. Senator for Georgia Jon Ossoff, 5/4/2026; UFCW endorsed it and launched the Affordable Groceries and Good Jobs campaign the same day (Grocery Dive, 3/17/2026; Civil Eats, 5/19/2026); U.S. Senator for Georgia Jon Ossoff, 9/19/2024; U.S. Senator for Georgia Jon Ossoff, 8/9/2024.Ossoff: Forbes, 6/27/2026; WRIC, 7/18/2026; National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare, 4/7/2026.The Red & Black (UGA student newspaper), 7/13/25; Rutgers, 5/9/2026; U.S. Senator for Georgia Jon Ossoff, accessed 8/13/2026.
Mike Collins
Collins has no plan to help Georgia families pay less at the grocery store, and voted for the law that cut food assistance. Voted for the 2026 farm bill, which solidified SNAP cuts and failed to address critical issues facing workers.
Collins is a staunch defender of the 2025 tax law that benefited corporations and high earners most.
While co-owning his family’s trucking company, Collins voted to overturn stricter truck emissions standards, opposed speed-limiter and automatic-emergency-braking requirements that safety experts say save lives, and has pushed to reduce trucking companies’ financial obligations.
Collins: H.R.1, Roll Call 145, 5/22/2025; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 8/5/2026; H.R.7567; H.Con.Res.89, Roll Call #282, 7/23/2026; Collins quote: NBC News, 6/16/2026; NRSC: American Journal News, 6/15/2026; ProPublica, 5/11/26 (‘Mike Collins’ Own Truckers Have Been Involved in Deadly Crashes as He Vows to Make Roads Safer’), ProPublica found that Collins’ trucking company has a higher rate of unsafe driving and speeding violations per mile than most similar companies.
JOBS & WAGES
Jon Ossoff
Ossoff cosponsored the PRO Act to protect workers fighting for fair wages, better benefits, and safer workplaces.
Ossoff signed on to the UFCW-backed bill to stop price gouging and keep automated pricing technology from replacing grocery workers’ jobs.
Mike Collins
Collins is currently under a House Ethics Committee inquiry over allegations that he misused congressional funds to pay a former aide’s girlfriend for work she didn’t do.
Collins used more than $400,000 in taxpayer money meant for his congressional office on campaign-style TV ads.
Collins: Reuters, 1/5/2026: House Ethics Committee inquiry into Collins over payments to former chief of staff Brandon Phillips and his girlfriend; Collins has called the allegations ‘bogus.’ Georgia Recorder, 1/6/2026: chief of staff Kip Talley’s participation in a group chat with Fuentes and Spencer to help free Holocaust denier Charles Johnson; Talley said he acted ‘solely in my personal capacity.’ Slate, 5/28/2026: Talley was replaced as chief of staff (Collins’ third in about a year) after this reporting. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 7/9/2026; Substack, Popular Information, 7/1/2026; The House Communications Standards Manual bars office-funded mass communications containing campaign content.
Quality Health Care
Jon Ossoff
Ossoff voted against legislation that will result in the loss of health coverage for 10 million Americans, puts rural hospitals at risk, and cuts millions of dollars in funding that families relied on to buy groceries.
Ossoff wants to protect the Affordable Care Act and lower prescription drug costs for Georgia families. Cosponsored the Protecting Health Care and Lowering Costs Act.
Ossoff: U.S. Senator for Georgia Jon Ossoff, 7/1/2025; U.S. Senator for Georgia Jon Ossoff, 10/27/2025; WALB, 7/1/2025; Newsweek, 5/29/2026; Senator Jon Ossoff, 7/6/2026; Senator Jon Ossoff, 1/13/2026; S.2556.
Mike Collins
Collins voted for legislation that cuts health care and food assistance, then called the day it cleared Congress a moment of history, posting “The Golden Age of America is here, and we’re not looking back.” The law cut Medicaid, let Affordable Care Act subsidies expire, and pushed roughly 460,600 Georgians off food assistance — more than any other state.
Collins has said nothing about what he will do to lower prescription drug prices.
Collins: H.R.1, Roll Call 145, 5/22/2025; The Red & Black, 7/13/2025; Portside, 5/26/2026; H.R.1/OBBBA — Collins’s roll-call vote on Congress.gov.
Attorney General
Tanya Miller
Democrat
Brian Strickland
Republican
COST OF LIVING & AFFORDABILITY
Tanya Miller
Miller has pledged to investigate the grocery supply chain for illegal price gouging and anti-competitive practices, challenge “unfair and unjustified rate hikes” from power and utility monopolies as the ratepayer’s advocate before the Public Service Commission, and enforce Georgia’s price-gouging laws during emergencies.
Miller has pledged to prosecute robocall operations, identity thieves, and online scammers targeting Georgians, fight predatory lending and illegal debt collection practices that trap families in debt, and protect seniors from elder fraud and financial abuse.
Miller has pledged to establish a Small Business Protection Unit within the AG’s office and to “challenge monopolistic practices that drive up prices for consumers and block small businesses from competing fairly.”
Miller: Campaign Website (‘Issues’); Capital B Atlanta, 5/1/26; Campaign website (‘Issues’). Gap for Strickland. Miller: Capital B Atlanta, 5/1/26; Campaign website (‘Issues’).
Brian Strickland
Strickland wrote Georgia’s 2025 child care tax credit expansion, which created a new $250 state credit for every child under six and raised the child and dependent care credit to a 50% match of the federal credit, plus a credit for employers who cover employees’ child care costs.
He has no grocery, utility-rate or corporate-pricing platform.
Strickland: BallotReady, Brian Strickland; HB136; press release, 5/13/25.
JOBS & WAGES
Tanya Miller
Miller was raised in Cleveland by her mother, “a proud union worker,” an upbringing she credits with instilling the belief that “every person, regardless of their background, deserves a real chance to succeed.”
Miller: Campaign website (‘About’); Campaign website (‘Endorsements’).
Brian Strickland
Strickland remained silent on protecting the rights of workers to fight for fair wages, better benefits, and safer workplaces.
Quality Health Care
Tanya Miller
Miller has made expanding health care access central to her campaign, pointing to Georgia’s ranking among the worst in the nation for maternal mortality and uninsured residents, and citing hospital closures and gaps in care as urgent issues.
Miller: CBS News Atlanta, 4/8/26.
Brian Strickland
Strickland has not said what he will do to lower health care or prescription drug costs.
Secretary of State
Penny Brown Reynolds
Democrat
Tim Fleming
Republican
COST OF LIVING & AFFORDABILITY
Penny Brown Reynolds
Brown Reynolds has pledged to use the office’s regulatory authority to investigate and prevent fraudulent licensing and elder exploitation, partner with law enforcement and nonprofits on a Statewide Fraud Protection Campaign, and expand public education on cybersecurity and scam prevention.
Brown Reynolds has pledged to cut red tape for small businesses, streamline business formation, launch mobile business fairs in rural counties, and create a “Business Access Georgia” digital dashboard with live support for first-time entrepreneurs and farmers.
Reynolds: Campaign website (‘Priorities’); Campaign website (‘Priorities’); Instagram post, 4/22/26; LinkedIn post, 7/9/26.
Tim Fleming
Fleming claims credit for helping “return billions of dollars to Georgia taxpayers,” though it is not clear what legislation or efforts he is referring to.
Fleming: Campaign website (‘Home’)