Republican billionaire Rick Jackson is walking a Trump tightrope in his quest to lead Georgia

ATLANTA (AP) — He’s hardly the first billionaire to promise working-class voters he’ll fight for them in public office. Rick Jackson, the Republican candidate for Georgia governor, has even compared himself to the real estate mogul who reached the Oval Office. But Jackson’s path differs from Donald Trump’s, and the 72-year-old healthcare magnate and investor brings a vastly different persona to his first campaign.

Unlike Trump, who was born to wealth, Jackson spent his early years bouncing through foster homes before launching his first company as a young man. Now, he wants to leverage both his similarities and contrasts with the president, a challenge he’s tackling with buckets of his own campaign cash and a personal story that anchors his appeal to voters. “I have lived in poverty,” Jackson says.

“When you have not eaten, you never forget that, and you don’t forget the people that are struggling.” Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor, disputes Jackson’s altruistic pitch, setting up the Nov. 3 election as a test of whether an alternate, softer version of conservative billionaire politics can complement or even counter Trump’s pugilistic populism in a key swing state. Jackson planned to join Trump at a rally Saturday in Perry, in what would be his second appearance with the president in the closing stretch of the campaign.

‘From foster care to billionaire’ “My father left me at nine months old. My mother was a sixth-grade educated waitress with a severe alcohol problem,” Jackson said in the only debate of their general election campaign. “I had seven stepfathers before I was 12.

I lived in the projects, went to 13 different schools, and lived in five different foster homes.” He left college to start a business at 21. That led to Jackson Healthcare, a behemoth company that provides contract nurses and other workers to hospitals and health systems, including public entities that have helped fuel Jackson’s fortunes with taxpayer money. At events with supporters, Jackson gets more personal.

“I have, because of my background, severe abandonment issues,” he told hundreds of voters in Cleveland, a conservative enclave in the north Georgia mountains. He turns that acknowledgment into a promise: “Let me tell you one thing: I will never abandon you.” Rags-to-riches themes are not uncommon in politics, and it’s yielded Jackson’s campaign mot…