The Rise of U.S. Rep. Brian Jack
Still only in his mid-30s, Jack has risen to the heights of American politics at a young age.
When I sat with U.S. Rep. Brian Jack, it was late December in an office high-rise several weeks before he’d take the oath as the new congressman for Georgia’s 3rd District. He’d just returned to Georgia from Mar-A-Lago, where he’d engaged in political discussions with President Donald Trump (then president-elect) about upcoming races around the country in 2025 and 2026.
That interaction harkened back to his role as political director in Trump’s White House, where Jack became well known as a powerful voice, as Trump weighed the legions of candidates clamoring for his endorsement.
Though I’ve had little to no interaction with Jack through the years, our time together represented a reunion, as he worked for several months in 2008 as an intern for then-U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Peachtree City). Back then, I was Westmoreland’s deputy chief of staff handling communications and hiring our interns. Technically, I supervised the intern who went on to win the same seat 16 years later.
He remembered the purloined “Robinson” campaign sign that I had taped to my office door, and he joked that I had taught him a word – “winnowed” – and then told him we couldn’t use it in a constituent letter because it’s not a word Westmoreland would use. I didn’t remember that, but I laughed: That sounded like something I’d say.
Still only in his mid-30s, Jack has risen to the heights of American politics at a young age. After college, he worked at the Republican National Committee and then at American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a U.S. organization that promotes pro-Israel policies. There, he interviewed more than 400 federal candidates, scrutinizing their positions, their campaigns and their viability before advising AIPAC on which candidates to support. “It was analogous to what a White House political director does,” Jack says.
Further preparation for that job came from working on Dr. Ben Carson’s 2016 presidential campaign, where he handled the byzantine ballot access process in the primary states. It was, he says, a role that required perfection. Missing a state ballot has proven fatal to past candidacies.
Next came the Trump campaign, in which he served as a liaison to Republican convention delegates. He trudged from one district GOP and state GOP convention to another, building a network with the party faithful and forging his expertise. “I knew what they thought,” he says. “I knew what made them tick.”
In the White House, Jack developed a strong connection with the president. Always ready with facts and figures on campaigns, Jack says his colleagues joked that he was “President Trump’s political Google.”
“I had an expertise that enabled me to have a very unique place within his orbit,” Jack says. On a personal level, Jack bonded with Trump over their shared interest in boxing and MMA fighting. They’d discuss Saturday night fights on Sunday mornings. Jack had just hung out with Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White at Mar-A-Lago, where Trump told White that Jack “is the go-to guy” for any fighting-related legislation.
When Jack decided to run for Congress, Trump was already the almost-certain nominee with at least a 50-50 chance of returning to the White House. When asked why he’d forego a potential role as deputy chief of staff to the most powerful person in the world to run for a job that’s 1/435th of one half of one third of the federal government, he walked to his briefcase and pulled out the leather House of Representatives portfolio we’d given him on his last day as an intern. “I’ve used it almost every day since,” he says.
For the next four years, he’ll have the ear of the president as he represents Georgia’s interests. Trump campaigned for Jack in Pike County – the first time a sitting or former president visited that part of the 3rd District since FDR kept a home at nearby Warm Springs.
His influence is already at play. As elected leader of his freshman class in the House, he managed to deliver a historically high number of freshmen appointments to the four most prestigious committees.
He says he’ll use his unmatched breadth of relationships to bring leaders such as Cabinet secretaries to the 3rd District “to address our needs.”
“I want to transfer that effectiveness for Georgia,” he says.
I bet he will. As the saying goes, in politics it’s often who you know. And for me it inspires another maxim: Always be nice to your interns. 
Brian Robinson is on The Georgia Gang Sundays on WAGA/Fox 5 Atlanta.
