Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson is proposing the creation of “micro-tech centers” across the state to bring jobs to rural communities, a policy he wants voters in these areas to be aware of as they head toward the November election.
“In rural areas, I plan on increasing a lot of jobs and a lot of opportunities,” he said. “I want to invest in our rural areas, invest in infrastructure processes and in agriculture, so that they can have better jobs.”
Jackson and his Democratic opponent, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, spoke at the 2026 Georgia Congressional Luncheon on Aug. 5. During the event, hosted by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and held at The Classic Center, the candidates shared their policies, focusing on Medicaid expansion and data centers.
A July poll from AARP shows Bottoms leading Jackson 48%-46% within the margin of error. Oglethorpe County voters favored Burt Jones in the May primary, but supported Jackson in the June runoff.
After the luncheon, Jackson and his campaign team met with The Oglethorpe Echo at the Synovus Bank on East Hancock Avenue in Athens to discuss how his key policies could impact rural communities.
When discussing micro-tech centers, Jackson said laid-off workers outside metro areas could attend technical colleges and transition into desktop support and software development jobs.
“These are $80,000 a year jobs,” he said. “We don’t have to have people in Atlanta to do that, and we all learned during COVID that you can actually do things online and so forth.”
Jackson’s platform also focuses heavily on freezing property taxes, a key topic for rural voters. He said property tax revenue rose 49% on average from 2019-24, while the cost of living grew just 23%.
Property taxes are the primary revenue source for local governments and school districts in Georgia. Oglethorpe County administrator Jason Lewis said they are expected to cover roughly $3 million of the county’s 2027 budget, and as of May 2026 they composed about 37% of the school budget.
“If they eliminate property tax … there’s got to be something that takes its place,” Lewis said. “The bills wouldn’t be able to be paid without that revenue.”
Jackson said he is opposed to a “one size fits all” approach to tax relief, seeking instead to provide incentives for property tax reduction.
To offset lost revenue, he suggested counties could increase local sales tax, shifting the tax burden. This is being done in Oglethorpe County with the Floating Local Option Sales Tax (FLOST), which is aimed at reducing property taxes and will contribute more than $500,000 to the upcoming budget.
“It’s not additional money, it’s not new money, it’s just money from a different source,” Lewis said.
Implementing this alternative could require state legislative action. Several counties, including Oglethorpe County, already sit at a 9% sales tax rate, which is the maximum permitted under Georgia law.
On healthcare access, an issue that affects rural communities, Jackson said he is opposed to traditional Medicaid expansion.
Georgia remains one of 10 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid under Affordable Care Act guidelines, which provides coverage to nearly all adults with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level.
Jackson, a healthcare executive, said expansion won’t increase access to rural facilities, pointing to lower Medicaid reimbursement rates. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that private insurers paid nearly double (199%) Medicaid rates for all hospital services.
“When you do business with something that pays 25% of your cost, doubling up does not mean you make more money. So, if every hospital in Georgia was on Medicaid, every hospital would be out of business,” Jackson said.
He’s advocating instead for what he calls “intelligent Medicaid expansion.” This involves a system that slowly reduces the amount of Medicaid coverage Georgians receive as they earn higher income, with the ultimate goal being to put people on commercial insurance.
“You don’t want people to say, ‘I can’t go and get another dollar an hour because I lose my Medicaid.’ That’s a perverse incentive,” Jackson said.
Jackson said his healthcare policy includes reducing the cost of commercial insurance, but he didn’t elaborate on the specific details of this plan.
“He’s convinced that he’s going to be able to make sure that more rural Georgians have health insurance that’s affordable and private,” said Brian Robinson, one of Jackson’s advisers.