Slick Rick Jackson Dogged by New Scandal and Continued GOP Disunity

Slick Rick Jackson Dogged by New Scandal and Continued GOP Disunity

Facing fresh scrutiny of his business scandals and a deeply divided Republican party, Slick Rick Jackson is floundering as Georgia's gubernatorial race hits the final sprint.

New reporting on Labor Day from The Daily Beast exposed Jackson Nurse Professionals for paying "nearly $2 million to nursing staff after being accused of failing to pay overtime and other wages owed." It's the latest revelation about how Slick Rick rigs the system for himself - at the expense of everyone. A few weeks ago, CNN reported that Jackson's Avant Healthcare Professionals settled a $3 million class action lawsuit over allegations of trafficking nurses.

The scandal comes as NBC highlights how Georgia Republicans continue to have a "unity problem" and are struggling to "build a winning coalition" to elect Jackson, with Lt. Governor Burt Jones, Jackson's primary opponent, repeatedly refusing to endorse Jackson after a bruising and litigious primary. One Republican operative even compared trying to unify Georgia Republicans to putting Humpty Dumpty back together.

Read more about Jackson's campaign setbacks:

The Daily Beast: MAGA Billionaire's Ugly Business Baggage Exposed

• A MAGA billionaire vowing to create record jobs if he becomes Georgia's next governor has come under fire over multi-million-dollar payments his companies made to settle claims that they exploited workers and breached labor laws.

• Health executive-turned-Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson has pitched himself as someone who can boost jobs and the economy, with Donald Trump even attributing his electoral success so far to his business acumen and MAGA views.
• "Congratulations to Rick Jackson, who very successfully campaigned on being 'TRUMP', and won," the president said after Jackson won his GOP primary run-off in June.
• "He will be your next Governor of Georgia. Can't wait!"
• But documents show that at least two companies within Jackson's health empire agreed to class action settlements over claims they failed to properly pay thousands of workers.

• The Daily Beast can reveal that one of those companies agreed to pay nearly $2 million to nursing staff after being accused of failing to pay overtime and other wages owed.

• Last month, CNN also revealed that another Jackson Healthcare company agreed to a $3 million settlement against foreign-born nurses who accused it of exploiting the very immigrant workers it recruited to the U.S.
• But the gubernatorial race between Jackson and former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is much tighter, raising the stakes in a state that has not elected a Democrat governor since 1998.
• Jackson's campaign depicts him as a "conservative outsider" who went from a modest upbringing to become a healthcare titan with his Jackson Healthcare empire.
• In a post on X, Jackson also vowed to "create more jobs than have ever been created in the history of Georgia". He also said that he would bring "business solutions to Georgia just like President Trump has for the United States-with a Southern tone."
• "I have built a $3 billion business without any outside financial help, and when you know how to do stuff like that, you can do a lot of things to solve problems, and that's what I plan to do all over the state," he said in April.
• But in 2022, Jackson Nurse Professionals, a travel nursing staffing company that is part of Jackson Healthcare, agreed to settle a 2017 class action from workers accusing the company of failing to properly pay their overtime, bonuses, and wages owed when they left their jobs.
• The settlement of almost $2 million covered about 300 workers. A separate $3 million settlement involving another subsidiary, Avante Healthcare Professionals, covered more than 5,000 current and former international workers.
• It is also not the first time the MAGA billionaire has come under scrutiny.

• In June, a bombshell recording captured him apparently agreeing that women should have to "prove" they were raped in order to qualify for an abortion.
• The recording was made at a campaign event and showed the healthcare executive discussing abortion with a voter who objected to exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape. But his campaign pushed back strongly on characterizations of the comments, accusing critics of distorting his position.

NBC: Republicans struggle to unite in Georgia's key races after bruising primaries

• Republicans appear to have a unity problem in Georgia.

• In both of the battleground state's marquee contests this fall, Republican power brokers have yet to fully rally around either of their nominees, Rep. Mike Collins for Senate and billionaire Rick Jackson for governor, months after they emerged from bruising primaries. It stands in stark contrast to the Democrats, who have coalesced quickly behind Sen. Jon Ossoff and gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms.

• The dynamic has sparked concerns within the GOP, less than 60 days from Election Day, that its statewide candidates will struggle to build a winning coalition amid a broader political environment that is presenting headwinds for the party.

• More than 11 weeks since that mid-June runoff, Jones has not endorsed Jackson, a political newcomer who spent tens of millions of his own money on his way to winning the nomination. Kemp has not explicitly endorsed Collins, saying only that he will be "supporting the Republican ticket this fall." And while Collins and Jackson are now both backed by Trump, they have yet to appear together on the campaign trail.

• "It's always hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together after a primary," said veteran Georgia Republican operative Chip Lake, who worked for an independent committee that supported Jones in the gubernatorial primary. "Does it seem like it's harder this cycle? Yes."
• In the race for governor, Jones has continually refused to commit to supporting Jackson, saying over the summer that his former opponent had "alienated" a huge chunk of the conservative and grassroots constituencies of the GOP in the state.

• Their primary battle featured multiple lawsuits against one another. Jones' family's gas company sued Jackson for defamation in June, seeking $100 million in damages, while Jackson sued Jones twice - including another defamation suit.
• The blood between the two Republicans remains so bad that Trump has tried to intervene. The president offered Jones an appointment as the ambassador to Germany in exchange for endorsing Jackson, a Trump adviser familiar with the situation told NBC News. Jones hasn't accepted the offer, the adviser said. News of that offer was first reported by NOTUS.

• Jackson and Jones did meet in person in recent weeks at Trump's urging, according to another person familiar with that meeting. That person described the meeting as "cordial," but "there was no breakthrough" in reaching a peace between the two men.

• Still, Lake said that Republican divisions in the state are substantial - and possibly beyond repair.

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