AJC Report: “Chris Carr Steps Up Criticism of Burt Jones as Governor’s Race Heats Up”

AJC Report: “Chris Carr Steps Up Criticism of Burt Jones as Governor’s Race Heats Up”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today on how the already-nasty feud between Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidates Chris Carr and Burt Jones just keeps getting messier — this time behind closed doors.

During a Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals meeting yesterday, Carr accused Jones of “using public office for gain” over Jones’ 2023 push to overhaul Georgia’s hospital system to benefit his family’s own business interests — “one of the harshest attacks yet” in their months-long dispute. Not to be outdone, “Jones’ campaign hit back hard” and called Carr an unserious candidate.

While they continue to jab at each other, the Republicans running have been more focused on mudslinging and defending Donald Trump instead of addressing one of Georgians’ top priorities: health care. Carr, Jones, and Brad Raffensperger all have a history of opposing Medicaid expansion in Georgia and supported Trump’s extreme budget law that rips health care away from hundreds of thousands of Georgians, raises health care costs for 1.4 million people, and has already closed one maternal health care unit in the state. Carr and Jones have also backed D.C. Republicans’ push to shut down the government rather than address the roughly 295 percent premium price hike Georgia families face under Trump’s budget law.

Read more from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the mudslinging in Georgia’s GOP primary:

• The feud between Attorney General Chris Carr and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones keeps escalating.

• At a gathering of the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals on Thursday, Carr delivered one of the harshest attacks yet, accusing the lieutenant governor of using public office for gain.

• “If you honor me by allowing me to be your next governor, unlike the lieutenant governor I will promise you this: I will not change the rules or rig the system to enrich myself or my family on your backs or the backs of our fellow Georgians,” Carr said.

• The jab referred to Jones’ 2023 push to rewrite Georgia’s certificate of need laws, which regulate where hospitals can be built. That could have paved the way for a proposed 100-bed private hospital that was to be built on his father’s land near his hometown in Jackson.

Read the entire story at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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