Bet Accepted, Rich: $1.59 Million Says You Said It

Rich McCormick offered me a bet this week, so I took it.

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On October 19, in an interview with William Daughtry on WDUN’s The Drive at 5, Rich called me a liar. He said he never advocated forcing data centers into communities that don’t want them, and he offered to bet “any amount of money or any number of push-ups” that nobody could find him saying it.

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I’ll skip the push-ups. I proposed a wager of $1,591,244, our estimate of the PAC money Rich has taken. If he’s so sure I’m lying, he can put all that PAC money on the line. I stand fully behind what I said.

▶️ Watch my response:

Here’s what Rich actually said

On August 21, Rich went on XTRA 106.3’s The Morning XTRA and laid out his plan for communities that push back on data centers:

“Since people don’t want it in their area, they’re scared of it, and they don’t want those jobs, or whatever, or they don’t want the benefits, you know what? Put it on a base. The base can’t say no. I mean, it’s an executive decision.”

That’s not my paraphrase. It’s his voice, and he was proud enough of it to post the interview on his own social media. He made the same pitch over the following days on Bloomberg and NewsNation.

Now he says each community has to decide for itself and that “the federal government has nothing to do with that. Nothing at all.”

Which is it, Rich? You can’t say “the base can’t say no” in August and “each community decides” in October and call the person who noticed a liar.

Why this matters for North Georgia

There’s a military base in our district: Camp Merrill in Lumpkin County. A data center on that base doesn’t float in its own universe. It runs on our power grid and pulls from our water table, and its roads, lines and infrastructure are paid for with our tax dollars.

On data centers, Republicans and Democrats here agree on something. We’re not against jobs or investment. We want a fair deal. If a corporation wants to build in our community, the promises it makes about good-paying jobs, tax revenue and paying into the community need to be in the contract, not just in the sales pitch. And our water and our grid need protecting before the bulldozers show up, not after.

That’s what government is for. Your representative should stand between you and a corporation looking for the cheapest path, not hand that corporation a way around you.

Rich’s plan does the opposite. “The base can’t say no” means you don’t get a say.

This could have been settled on a debate stage

I raised this at our debate in Hall County, moderated by the same William Daughtry of Access North GA who later asked Rich about it on the radio. Rich wasn’t there. He wasn’t at any of the six debates we held across this district, one in every county.

If he had shown up even once, he could have explained himself directly to voters, and they could have judged the evidence for themselves. Instead he waited until I wasn’t in the room to call me a liar.

The receipts are all public. Our press release links every interview with timestamps, so you can listen and decide for yourself:

📄 Read the press release and fact sheet: https://kozyckiforcongress.com/news-press.php

The bet that matters most is on November 3

I’m running a grassroots campaign. I don’t take corporate PAC money, so I can stand up for this district without checking who signed my donors’ checks first.

Here’s how you settle this:

🗳️ Early voting is open now through Friday, October 30.
📍 Find your voting location: https://mvp.sos.ga.gov

📅 Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.

Bring a friend, bring your neighbor, bring that one cousin who never votes in midterms.

Rich, the offer stands. $1,591,244. You know where to find me, even if I can never find you at a debate or other open district wide event.

Learn more and get involved at KozyckiForCongress.com.

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