Reaping What He Sows — Chris Carr in Fundraising Checkmate Over Loss of Court Case Against Burt Jones

In my recent post enti­tled, “Kemp, Carr, Jones and Doo­ley — Irony, or Com­plete Hypocrisy in Geor­gia’s Midterms,” once again we dis­cussed Georgia’s “Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee” law, SB221, passed by Gov­er­nor Kemp dur­ing the 2021 Gen­er­al Assem­bly. As I have described sev­er­al times call­ing for its repeal, among oth­er pro­vi­sions SB221 per­mits Georgia’s Gov­er­nor, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor, or any can­di­date receiv­ing par­ty nom­i­na­tions for those statewide offices, to elic­it dark mon­ey from anony­mous con­trib­u­tors, sit­u­at­ed vir­tu­al­ly any­where in the world. Those sources are enti­tled to legal­ly con­tribute UNLIMITED funds to so-called “lead­er­ship com­mit­tees” chaired by the elect­ed offi­cials so described. Thus, among oth­er major con­cerns with this law, SB221 is an obvi­ous nation­al secu­ri­ty issue.

The use of SB221 hap­pens to be the pre­dom­i­nant means by which Gov­er­nor Kemp is finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing fam­i­ly friend Derek Doo­ley to run for Sen­ate, last year Kemp hav­ing trans­ferred $950K from his Georgian’s First Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee to a Kemp-con­trolled, Doo­ley-sup­port­ing PAC by the name of Hard­work­ing Amer­i­cans, Inc. Although Kemp’s 2025 trans­fers are not yet pub­lished, we can expect they are sub­stan­tial. It is safe to say, with­out SB221, Doo­ley would stand lit­tle chance in his sen­ate bid. Yet, with it Doo­ley is like­ly the front-run­ner, as no oth­er can­di­date will have his fundrais­ing abil­i­ty. SB221 is a game-chang­er in Geor­gia pol­i­tics.

But the can­di­date most butt-hurt by all this is Geor­gia Attor­ney Gen­er­al Chris Carr, run­ning against Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Burt Jones to become Georgia’s next Gov­er­nor. Recent­ly, Carr sued Jones per­son­al­ly for using the Lieu­tenant Governor’s law­ful lead­er­ship com­mit­tee to aid in financ­ing his pur­suit of Georgia’s gov­er­nor­ship in 2026. The grounds for Carr’s suit cen­tered on the unfair­ness of Jones, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor, pos­sess­ing that kind of an unlim­it­ed fundrais­ing tool, when Carr, Attor­ney Gen­er­al, does not.

While Carr lost that case, in Per­due v. Kemp the ques­tion posed to the court was not the law’s over­all con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty. It was instead a nar­row­ly-defined ques­tion whether Kemp’s appli­ca­tion of the law to sup­port his pri­ma­ry cam­paign should be dis­al­lowed by the Geor­gia Ethics Com­mis­sion, bas­ing the Per­due campaign’s argu­ments on a vio­la­tion of cer­tain First Amend­ment rights of Can­di­date Per­due. As a result, Per­due won an injunc­tion requir­ing the Ethics Com­mis­sion to step in to pro­tect Perdue’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

But now the posi­tions are reversed. In an attempt to appear con­sis­tent with his pre­vi­ous defense of SB221, includ­ing its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty, and while main­tain­ing his respon­si­bil­i­ties as Georgia’s chief attor­ney, this time Chris Carr did not sue the State of Geor­gia and the ethics com­mis­sion to pro­tect his rights. Had he done so, as Georgia’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al Chris Carr would find him­self in the divid­ed posi­tion of hav­ing to defend against his own law­suit, an obvi­ous con­flict of inter­est.

Thus, to make that oth­er­wise like­ly-win­ning case, Chris Carr would first have to resign his posi­tion as the state’s head lawyer and make the same argu­ments as Per­due. Unless he is will­ing to do that, which is not like­ly, Chris Carr appears to be in check­mate. From his elect­ed office in state gov­ern­ment, Carr appar­ent­ly has no legal path­way to achieve per­haps a wor­thy goal of lim­it­ing the use of SB221’s pro­vi­sions against his own guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­da­cy. To achieve that pur­pose, some­one else run­ning in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry for gov­er­nor would have to estab­lish stand­ing to make a case against the State of Geor­gia, sim­i­lar to the case of David Per­due in 2022. If that might hap­pen, guess who would have to defend AGAINST that very same lawsuit…that’s right, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Chris Carr.

Below is the most recent video by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Carr attempt­ing to spin his predica­ment and court loss into a fundrais­ing tool:

https://www.instagram.com/chriscarrga/reel/DN6196ajofP/

Now, none of this proves Chris Carr is a bad lawyer, although he may be. It sim­ply means that, as Georgia’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al Chris Carr is per­haps the one indi­vid­ual in the state who would not be able to make the real case here, one that must even­tu­al­ly be made, that Geor­gia law under SB221 “is an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al attack on the First Amend­ment,” and must be repealed or nul­li­fied. So, Carr knows the real issue here. He sim­ply can’t make that case from where he sits.

Unlike the judge who threw Carr’s case out, how­ev­er, giv­en Carr’s lack of con­cern over elec­tion integri­ty in the past, I, for one, am not quite so sym­pa­thet­ic to his predica­ment.