Rick Jackson, the Republican candidate for Georgia governor, has spent nearly $200 million of his own money on his campaign — a sum that places the 72-year-old healthcare magnate and investor among the largest self-funding candidates in the history of American elections. He insists the fortune financing his first campaign is not really his own, describing it instead as “God’s money.”

Jackson is hardly the first billionaire to promise working-class voters he will fight for them in public office, and he has at times compared himself to the real estate mogul who reached the Oval Office. But his path differs sharply from Donald Trump’s. Where the president was born to wealth, Jackson spent his early years bouncing through foster homes before launching his first company as a young man. Now he is trying to leverage both his similarities to and his differences from the president, a challenge he is tackling with buckets of his own campaign cash and a personal story that anchors his appeal to voters.

“I have lived in poverty,” Jackson says. “When you have not eaten, you never forget that, and you don’t forget the people that are struggling.”

Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor, disputes Jackson’s altruistic pitch. That sets up the Nov. 3 election as a test of whether an alternate, softer version of conservative billionaire politics can complement — or even counter — Trump’s pugilistic populism in a key swing state, one that Joe Biden carried by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020.

From foster care to billionaire

“My father left me at nine months old. My mother was a sixth-grade educated waitress with a severe alcohol problem,” Jackson said in the only debate of the general election campaign. “I had seven stepfathers before I was 12. I lived in the projects, went to 13 different schools, and lived in five different foster homes.”

He left college at 21 to start a business. That venture grew into Jackson Healthcare, a behemoth based in Alpharetta, Georgia, that ranks among the largest healthcare staffing companies in the United States. It supplies contract nurses and other workers to hospitals and health systems, including public entities whose taxpayer money has helped fuel Jackson’s fortunes.

Rags-to-riches narratives are not uncommon in politics, and Jackson’s has produced his campaign motto: “From foster care to billionaire.” At events with supporters, he gets personal. “I have, because of my background, severe abandonment issues,” he told hundreds of voters in Cleveland, a conservative enclave in the north Georgia mountains. He converts the acknowledgment into a promise: “Let me tell you one thing: I will never abandon you.”

“It’s not my money”

The scale of Jackson’s self-funding is eye-popping — an outlay matched by only a handful of candidates in American history, among them Michael Bloomberg, who spent roughly $1 billion of his own money on his 2020 presidential bid, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has self-funded more than $300 million across his two winning gubernatorial campaigns. But on that score, too, he works to soften the caricature of the billionaire executive.

“It’s not my money,” he said during a stop in a northern suburb of Atlanta. Jackson calls his fortune “God’s money” and says his job is to have “kingdom impact” with it. The reason he has spent so much money on the race, he said, is to “help 11 million Georgians, to keep them from struggling.”

A late entrance and a Trump-embracing primary

Jackson launched his bid as a relative unknown, though insiders at the state Capitol knew him through Jackson Healthcare, its lucrative state contracts and his lobbying on healthcare, business and tax policy. The Republican primary field featured a trio of statewide elected officials, including Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who won Trump’s endorsement in August 2025 — before Jackson entered the race.

During the primary, Jackson embraced the president even though he was not Trump’s choice. He sometimes promised to “be like Trump, but with Southern tone,” and he pledged to “deliver for Georgia the same type of business solutions that President Trump is bringing to our country.”

Largely aligning himself with Trump on immigration, Jackson vowed to make Georgia a national leader in deportations. “I don’t care if you’re Muslim or Mongolian, you don’t have the right to force your culture on our country,” he said in one ad, promising that “criminal illegals” who “commit sick, violent crimes” would “end up deported or departed.”

Soon after defeating Jones in a runoff, Jackson shelved the immigration ad — but not before recycling it into a spot featuring his grandchildren. “Granddad, why do you look so mean in these ads?” one asks after watching the “deported or departed” clip on her phone. The children and teenagers then coach their grandfather on how he can “look cool” with a pickup truck, a dog and a hipper wardrobe. “Let’s make Georgia better together,” the redressed Jackson concludes.

He has since circulated an ad featuring several young adults who benefited from the millions he has spent helping foster children who age out of the Georgia system when they turn 18. “I am so proud of you,” he tells them, choking up.

Traditional Republican positions behind the softened image

As he softens his image, Jackson maintains conventional Republican positions, pledging to cut taxes, regulation and what he describes as waste. If he cannot halve the state income tax within four years, he promises not to seek a second term. He calls for a balanced budget and full audits of state spending — without mentioning that state law already requires a balanced budget and that audits of state agencies have long been standard practice.

On healthcare, Jackson says he will expand coverage without expanding Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, a program Georgia has declined to expand since a 2012 Supreme Court ruling made expansion optional for states. He argues he can fund broader coverage through partnerships with private insurers — an approach that would require Washington to grant permission and commit a level of financial support no state has received without expanding the traditional Medicaid program. Jackson says he can accomplish all of this while increasing spending on teacher salaries and vocational education.

Calibrating the Trump embrace

At the same time, Jackson has toned down his Trump adulation, reflecting Georgia’s general election math and voters’ frustrations with the Iran war and inflation. In July, he stood with Trump in Marietta and expressed hope to “be this guy’s favorite governor.” When Trump returned to Dalton on Oct. 16, Jackson did not mention the president at all in his own speech; when Trump later called him to the stage, Jackson praised him — for advocating on behalf of foster children.

When Trump announced he would return to Georgia on Saturday,’s campaign initially planned its own event in metro Atlanta before reshuffling so the candidate could appear again with the president. Jackson was set to join Trump at the rally in Perry, which would be his second appearance alongside the president in the closing stretch of the campaign.

Democrats seize on the contrasts

Bottoms says Jackson is “trying to buy this election” so he can serve as a Trump stooge, and Democrats have seized on his remarks about the economy. Discussing trade schools on the debate stage, Jackson said “my plumber drives a Mercedes.” Discussing inflation and crime during his town hall-style debate with Bottoms, he suggested Atlantans felt unsafe “at the gas store” during her tenure.

When a citizen in the debate audience asked Jackson about the minimum wage and affording basic necessities, he told her, “Hopefully, you’re not the one that is getting the $7.50 an hour.” The minimum wage is $7.25 — the federal floor, unchanged since 2009. Bottoms has proposed doubling it; Jackson has not proposed any increase. “My focus is creating jobs,” he said. “I’ve been creating jobs my entire life.”

A story that persuades some voters

Jackson’s balancing act was enough for Debbie Satterfield, a 72-year-old who came to a Jackson rally in White County wearing both a Trump shirt and a Jackson sticker.

“When I heard about his harsh upbringing, and to hear how far he had climbed, and starting from nothing,” she said. “It reminds me of my life starting with nothing. You can see his soul.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.