A Better Georgia begins at home, and a Healthier Home requires that you have ready access both to quality healthcare and to healthy food, no matter where live and no matter your present employment status. To this end, expanding Medicaid just makes sense, both for individuals and for institutions. Ensuring that all Georgians have ready access to healthy food is imperative, and it is a challenge we can solve, if we are willing to work for it. I intend to support the expansion of existing programs, like Georgia Grown's Farm to School, while also partnering with farmers and local governments to develop innovative solutions where food access is difficult. As a father of four, I have had both the distinct privilege of being the first to hold each of them when they were born and the unique challenge of becoming a single parent when three of them were still younger than five years old. I know both how crucial those first five years are and how hard it can be as the sole provider of  all that they need when they need it most. As Governor, I will bring these hard-won insights to bear in addressing these challenges, from improving Georgia's abysmal maternal mortality rate to ensuring that every child has the opportunity to be school-ready at five years old. So many of us are presently facing seemingly insurmountable difficulty in our day-to-day lives at home, but I believe that, together, we can overcome them!

Better homes make safer and stronger communities, and it is a simple fact that the maintenance of safer and stronger communities requires revenue. Swapping property taxes for sales taxes, however, is bad policy that hurts the very consumers and small businesses on which our communities depend. The housing crisis we are facing is the product of two housing goals that are working at cross purposes: the American Dream of a home as an investment both for a family's future and in the community in which it exists is increasingly both out of reach for younger Georgians and too expensive to maintain for more established residents. I believe we can work to address this conflict of interests by introducing both more robustly comprehensive property assessment standards and optionally stepped bases for property tax valuation and application. Local law enforcement must have the resources they need to protect the communities they serve. Likewise, they must have a clear vision of how best to serve those same communities they are sworn to protect. The provision of these resources and the clarity of this vision is, ultimately, the Governor's responsibility, and I am committed to fulfilling this responsibility by maintaining Constitutional spheres of authority and requiring accountability when those spheres of authority are violated.

It is a well-worn mantra by now that "Georgia is the #1 state to do business", but even the trade magazine that has bestowed that honor upon Georgia for 12 straight years has stated that traditional tax incentives are no longer a primary driver for businesses considering relocation or expansion in Georgia. A better strategy to support Georgia's actively successful business development involves investment in the homegrown human capital that makes businesses of all sizes work. The Healthier Homes and Stronger Communities of the Future-Focused Better Georgia Agenda are that investment. Healthier homes support productively fulfilled citizens who have both the freedom and the desire to live in the stronger communities where business develops and thrives best. Accordingly, while it is wise to be cautious about AI development and to be vigilant to protect the very resources that make Georgia such a great place to live, work, and play, it would be foolish to rule out AI data center development in its entirety. The great diversity of communities in Georgia ensures that solutions for one area of the state may be problematic for others. As Governor, I will commit to guarding our human and natural resources so that, whenever any industry recognizes just how great Georgia is for business, we will not again be caught selling the farm for another flash in the pan. Consistent with guarding Georgia's human resources, I am committed to actively protecting the rights and freedoms of the individual consumers, family producers, and small businesses that have always been the lifeblood of local economies in Georgia. I intend to keep the Attorney General busy protecting the good people of Georgia. Likewise, the Secretary of State should also expect to be quite busy keeping our elections secure.

My kids and I have benefited immeasurably from generational commitments to educational opportunity. On my father's side, my great-grandmother, "Miss Thelma" Pacetti, was born in Pembroke, Georgia, in 1907, studied at Georgia Southern, and taught hundreds if not thousands of kids in a one-room schoolhouse in rural North Florida. My mother's mother taught both on Oklahoma reservations and Hollywood film lots. As a child, I attended all types of schools, and, while my parents were starting their own business, my mother homeschooled me during the day and worked toward her Masters degree at Georgia State at night. My parents were always committed, from my toddler years through graduation and beyond, to providing me and my siblings the best educational opportunities they could provide, and I have inherited that commitment to provide the same for my own kids and for yours. As, myself, a former teacher, tutor, and Science Olympiad volunteer coach, I know the sacrifices and the investments that our educators are making in our kids lives on a daily basis, and I fully intend to provide them with the support they need, even and especially if that means removing administrative burdens that may distract them from their callings to our kids. And, while I do not at all believe that the sole purpose of an education is to ultimately arrive at a job, Georgia needs skilled citizens of all types to support the Healthier Homes and Stronger Communities of our shared future, so I am fully committed to further developing our workforce through all levels of educational attainment in all parts of our great state. And, just as we should continue to invest in our human capital, as a state, we should continue to invest in our infrastructural capital, as well. This means ensuring that Georgia not only maintains but expands and secures our diversified energy portfolio while also protecting our vital natural resources, both productive and otherwise. The continued creation of opportunities in manufacturing, electric vehicles, and, yes, even AI, should spur us to plan wisely for our future. In alignment with a commitment to plan for future resource development and allocation is a commitment to a judicious stewardship of taxpayer dollars in the provision of government services. The goal, however, should not merely be the elimination of government services to save taxpayer dollars. The goal will be to evaluate government processes to the end of eliminating wasteful spending and administrative bloat so that the citizens of Georgia my all be better served.