ATLANTA (AP) — It’s the biggest mystery in Georgia politics right now: Who’s paying for the attacks on Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones?
Someone operating under the name “Georgians for Integrity” has poured about $5 million into television ads, mailers and texts. The attacks claim that Jones, who already has the endorsement of President Donald Trump in his candidacy for governor next year, has been using his office to enrich himself.
For any Georgian who sits down to watch a football game, ads have been almost unavoidable since Thanksgiving. They are the beginning of the public battle for the Republican nomination that will be resolved in the May primary election. But the ads also show how dark money is influencing politics not only at the national level but in the states, with secret interests dropping huge sums seeking to sway public opinion.
The Jones campaign is going crazy, threatening legal action against television stations if they don’t stop airing ads that a lawyer calls “provably false” and defamatory.
So far, the ads are still on air.
“They want to be anonymous, spend a lot of money, and create a lot of lies about myself and my family,” Jones told WSB-AM in a Dec. 16 interview, calling the ads “fabricated garbage.”
Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Jones’ top rival for the Republican nomination, said they were not involved in the attacks. All three want to succeed Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who cannot run again due to term limits. There are also several Democrats vying for the state’s highest office.
The dark money moves on
The Republican Party of Georgia filed a complaint with the State Ethics Commission. The GOP alleges the ads violate Georgia’s campaign finance law against spending on an election without registering and disclosing donors.
“I think there are far-reaching consequences for letting this activity go unchecked,” state Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon told The Associated Press. “And the consequences are much broader than the outcome of the May primary.”
It’s a further trickle down of the US Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which led to dramatic increases in independent spending in US elections, said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel for the Washington, DC-based Campaign Legal Center, which seeks to reduce the influence of money in politics.
“Dark money is increasingly becoming the norm in races, up and down the ballot, and in early times,” Ports said.
Claims that Jones engaged in self-dealing are nothing new —- Carr has been making similar attacks for months. But things escalated after Georgians for Integrity was incorporated in Delaware on Nov. 24, according to that state’s corporate records. The entity identifies itself as a nonprofit social welfare organization under the federal tax code, a popular way to organize campaign spending that allows a group to hide its donors.
Jones’ campaign says the ad falsely leads viewers to believe Jones allowed the government to take land through eminent domain to help support his family’s interest in a massive data center development in Jones’ home county south of Atlanta. As a state senator, Jones voted for a 2017 law that carved out a narrow exception in Georgia law that prohibits governments from conveying property seized through condemnation proceedings to private developers. But eminent domain is not being used to benefit the $10 billion development that government filings show could include 11 million square feet (1 million square meters) of data centers.
The group’s records are a dead end
Georgians for Integrity lists his local address as a PO box at an East Atlanta office supply store on some paperwork submitted to the television stations. A media buyer named Alex Roberts, with a Park City, Utah address, is also listed on those papers, but did not respond to an email from the AP. Nor is Kimberly Land, a Columbus, Ohio, attorney listed in the incorporation papers. After weeks of heavy spending, no one has proven who is providing the cash.
The Republican Party maintains that Georgians for Integrity is an independent committee under Georgia law. This means that he can raise and spend unlimited sums, but he must register before accepting contributions and must disclose his donors.
But that law identifies such committees as spending “funds either for the purpose of affecting the result of an election for any elected office or to promote the election or defeat of any particular candidate.” And the ads targeting Jones never identify him as running for governor or mention the 2026 elections, instead encouraging viewers to call Jones and “Tell Burt, stop profiting off taxpayers.”
But McKoon said these are “semantic games” and that regular voters must think the ads are designed to sway them.
“If you’re funding a message that’s designed to impact an election — and I think it strains credulity to argue that’s not the case here — then you have to comply with the campaign finance laws that the legislature saw fit to pass,” McKoon said.