Bottoms pledges cuts to taxes on auto insurance and fuel

ATLANTA — With gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon less than two weeks ahead of early voting, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms pledged to cut driving-related taxes.

Standing outside a BP gas station near Georgia Tech on Wednesday, Bottoms said that if voters choose her as the state's next governor over Republican Rick Jackson, she will seek to eliminate the state's 2.25% auto insurance premium tax and roll back the state motor fuel tax to 28 cents a gallon for gasoline and 31.3 cents for diesel.

She also blamed President Donald Trump and the war in Iran.

"This war that Trump projected would last just a matter of days or a couple of weeks, or whatever it was that came out of his mouth at that time, has continued and it's only getting worse," Bottoms said.

Her policy rollout came two days after Gov. Brian Kemp, who is backing Jackson, declared a state of emergency to suspend the motor fuels tax for 30 days. The state excise tax is 33.3 cents per gallon of gasoline and 37.3 cents per gallon of diesel.

Bottoms' new policy proposals came amid a battle for voters' hearts and minds on one of the top issues in this election: the rising cost of living.

The Jackson campaign fired back, noting that Jackson had already laid out an affordability plan weeks ago. Jackson had said he would cut the state income tax in half and eliminate the state tax on tips and on energy for residential and small-business consumers. He also had said he would push local governments to reduce their property taxes and to reduce building permit delays that can increase housing construction costs.

And Jackson had said he would suspend the motor fuel tax during price spikes.

At the BP with Bottoms, state Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, attacked Jackson over his investment in a recently announced Texas oil refinery.

Jackson had revealed at a town hall in Blakely that he was the "largest outside investor" in the refinery, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in March. Then, on Wednesday, the publication reported that India's Reliance Industries had a deal to buy the proposed refinery's products. The article said Trump had identified Reliance as a project investor while Jackson had said in an unrelated deposition that a company from India was planning to buy the company's output.

Bottoms used the investment against Jackson.

"He is sending this diesel fuel out of this country while our prices rise," she said.

(The Jackson campaign on Wednesday repeated its own line of attack on personal finances, calling on Bottoms to disclose the clients of her consulting firm.)

Bottoms said her insurance tax cut would save the average two-car family about $140 a year while the fuel tax rollback would save that family nearly $80 a year. She said she was considering offsetting the revenue loss with "branding opportunities" at Georgia visitor centers.

Other states are scrambling to address rising fuel prices, with political leaders in California, Ohio and Texas seeking ways to lower costs, Politico reported Wednesday. The publication attributed the rising prices to hostilities in Iran and Ukraine, quoting Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, as saying that until those issues are resolved, "you're just putting Band-Aids on a gaping wound."

Bottoms urged voters to imagine that Trump is on the ballot, just as he asked his supporters to do at a South Carolina rally in August.

Fearing low turnout in a year when he was not on the ballot, Trump said, "pretend, please, that I'm on the ballot. Just come and vote, it's so important."

Early voting starts Oct. 13, and the Bottoms campaign is betting that Trump's endorsement of Jackson will help her campaign.

"Donald Trump says he wants us to imagine that he is on the ballot," Bottoms said. "Well, let's do that."

This article is available through a partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Association's nonprofit, tax-exempt Educational Foundation.

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