Billionaire Skips Georgia Governor Debate, Gets Replaced by a Podium

The Podium Did Not Rebut Anything

Here are the facts, courtesy of Fox News Digital. The Atlanta Press Club hosted its gubernatorial debate forum Monday. Bottoms came. Jackson did not. The result was a candidate for governor of the eighth-largest state in the country answering voter questions while a lectern stood there looking like a witness who took the Fifth.

"Rick Jackson is the first gubernatorial candidate not to stand here in 32 years," Bottoms said during the forum. Thirty-two years. Through recessions, scandals, a pandemic, and a Georgia runoff cycle that became national news, every major candidate managed to find the time. Jackson could not be bothered.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that organizers say he is the first major-party gubernatorial candidate to skip an Atlanta Press Club general election debate in the history of the outfit's series. The only prior wobble came in 1994, when the club tried to set up a debate and neither the Democratic incumbent nor the GOP challenger could make it work. Both sides, in other words. Not one guy deciding the voters can go ask a podium.

Hiding Behind the Billions

Bottoms did not let the empty stage go to waste. She said Jackson would "rather hide behind his billions than explain to you his record of making billions off the taxpayers of Georgia." Then she added the closing argument: "While he is running to enrich himself, I am running to be your governor."

That is a rough line, and it is rougher because Jackson handed it to her gift-wrapped. When you skip a debate, you do not get to control the story. The other candidate does, and she gets to narrate your absence in real time with a visual aid.

This is the oldest trick in the opposition playbook, and it works because it requires no research. You do not have to dig up a single document. You just point at the empty space where the candidate should be and let the crowd do the math.

Nobody Asked Him, Apparently

Jackson's explanation came Monday. He said he has "not had one voter ask me a question about debate. That's not what's important to them. What's important to them is affordability and gas prices going up."

Look at that answer carefully. A debate is where candidates explain, in front of voters, what they plan to do about affordability and gas prices. The thing voters supposedly care about is the exact subject a debate exists to address. Jackson is arguing that he cannot attend the event where he would discuss the issue because voters want him to discuss the issue.

Also, no voter asked him about a debate? He is a billionaire running for governor. The people he is meeting are not exactly a random sample of folks hanging around outside a Waffle House. The questions that reach him are filtered through a campaign that has every incentive to keep him off a stage where someone can follow up.

He Did Show Up Once

In fairness, and we do try to be fair when the facts demand it, Jackson did not dodge every encounter. He and Bottoms took part in an Atlanta News First town hall-style debate event on Oct. 6, where they fielded questions from voters. So the man can physically be in a room with his opponent. He has done it.

Which makes Monday worse, not better. This was not a candidate hiding from the concept of public questioning. This was a candidate who picked which public questioning counted, and the one run by the longstanding Atlanta Press Club, the one with 32 years of every major candidate showing up, did not make the cut.

Fox News Digital said Jackson's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shocking, a campaign that skipped the debate also skipped the explanation.

A Trump Endorsement and a Very Large Wallet

Some context on who Jackson is. He is a businessman and philanthropist, in the words of the Fox report, who beat Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in the Republican primary and runoff. Jones was the candidate Trump backed in both contests. Trump then endorsed Jackson after he won anyway. That is the kind of loyalty you get from a man whose endorsement is a weather vane, pointing wherever the wind blows hardest.

Bottoms, meanwhile, is a former Atlanta mayor and a former senior advisor to President Biden for public engagement. The contrast the Jackson campaign seems to be banking on is simple: outsider billionaire versus Washington insider. Fine. That is a legitimate argument to make. It is just a bit harder to make from the far end of an empty stage.