Ga. AG Loses Bid To Block Rival’s No-Limit Fundraising

Ga. AG Loses Bid To Block Rival’s No-Limit Fundraising

 Law360 (August 28, 2025, 2:43 PM EDT) — A Georgia federal judge Thursday threw out a lawsuit aiming to block the state’s lieutenant governor from raising unlimited money in his quest for the governorship, ruling that his Republican rival, Georgia’s attorney general, lacked standing to “level the unequal playing field complained of.”

In a blow to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, U.S. District Judge Victoria Calvert ruled that while Carr’s First Amendment rights “have been hindered” by the unique fundraising privileges afforded to Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, his suit was also hindered because he didn’t also challenge the statute that created those privileges.

Rather than attack the GOP-backed law behind Jones’ so-called leadership committee, a unique campaign vehicle allowing select candidates to escape fundraising caps, Carr tried to prevent Jones from taking advantage of a legal fundraising method, Judge Calvert said in an order.

“In short,” she wrote, “plaintiffs ask the court to twist itself into a logical pretzel to find that by benefiting from a law enacted to confer such a benefit, defendants caused plaintiffs’ injury.”

The judge added: “Plaintiffs’ true injury is caused by the campaign contribution scheme and the enforcement of it. Thus, granting plaintiffs the relief they request would not make it ‘likely,’ as opposed to ‘merely speculative’ that the injury would be redressed by a favorable decision.”

A spokesperson for Carr’s campaign told Law360 the case was dismissed on a “procedural technicality,” adding that the campaign was “reviewing all legal options to right this wrong.”

Meanwhile, a representative of Jones’ campaign said, “If Chris is this bad at being a lawyer, why would anyone want to give him a promotion?”

Judge Calvert’s ruling arrived three weeks after Carr, who has served as the state attorney general since 2016, sued Jones over allegations that his rival’s use of a leadership committee in the GOP primary gives him “de facto access to a second campaign committee in the primary election that significantly disadvantages Mr. Carr or any other candidate who may run for governor.”

Authorized by the Georgia General Assembly in 2021, the leadership committee statute allows certain candidates to set up pseudo-independent committees, which, unlike individuals, can bring in unlimited donations.

Passed along party lines, the bill creating the committees extended the privilege only to the governor and lieutenant governor, the Democratic and Republican nominees for those two top state offices, and the parties’ respective state house and senate caucuses.

The statute, as referenced by Judge Calvert’s order, has come under fire in the past over allegations that it sets up a two-tiered campaign finance system that unfairly favors incumbents. Most of those challenges came during Gov. Brian Kemp’s 2022 reelection bid, where Carr’s office defended the law and U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen twice checked Kemp’s ability to spend his committee’s money.

Judge Calvert, who at a hearing last week said Jones’ advantage through his organization, WBJ Leadership Committee Inc., “strikes me as unfair,” wrote Thursday that she saw “no reason to depart from those previous holdings.”

“Plaintiffs’ complaint, and the accompanying affidavit, successfully demonstrate that plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights have been hindered, at least indirectly, as participants in the same primary election as Mr. Jones,” she said.

But the problem for Carr, the judge added, was that the hindering of his rights was not traceable to Jones, nor was Jones responsible for the enforcement of the statute. And Jones successfully argued that another leadership committee could simply throw its weight behind him, Judge Calvert said.

“The court agrees with defendants. Plaintiffs’ injury would not be redressed by a favorable decision on the merits,” she said, further reasoning that while Jones had not yet moved for dismissal, tossing the case was appropriate given Carr’s lack of standing.

Carr is represented by Bryan Tyson and Casey Frew of Clark Hill PLC.

Jones is represented by Josh Belinfante, Vincent R. Russo, Macy McFall and Jane Ashley Ravry of Robbins Alloy Belinfante Littlefield LLC.

The case is Carr et al. v. WBJ Leadership Committee Inc. et al., case number 1:25-cv-04426, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.