He exchanged text messages about the stench of Black people. Now he's running for a U.S. House seat in Georgia to support Trump.
This morning,I woke up to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about Ryan Millsap's GOP bid for an open U.S. House seat. I covered his racist and antisemitic text exchanges in a 2024 investigation.
Fortify
March 4, 2026-Merriam-Webster defines ‘provocative’ as “serving or tending to provoke, excite, or stimulate.”
If you call text references to “Fucking Black people” and “nasty Jews” a part of exciting or stimulating conversation, then the description is on brand with Ryan Millsap.
Provocative is the adjective used in a Wednesday newspaper headline to describe Millsap, a Georgia film studio executive and real estate entrepreneur-turned Republican U.S. House candidate. His racist and antisemitic text messages centered my 2024 joint investigation with ProPublica and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Millsap has put up $4 million of his own money to launch a bid for an open House seat in Northwest Georgia’s 10th Congressional district, according the AJC’s Wednesday morning story.1 Millsap’s late entry into the race challenging a young state representative is fueled by a desire to, in his words, “ defeat the radical left once and for all and end the reign of radical lunatic liberals and impotent RINOs in Congress.”
The AJC article links to Millsap’s expensive ad that shows him shooting a semiautomatic rifle and handling a sledgehammer. You can read and watch here.
For Fortify readers unfamiliar with the Georgia political landscape, Millsap and state senator Houston Gaines are vying to replace Doug Collins in Congress. Collins was sworn in as Secretary of Veterans Affairs last month. I reported on Collins when he was a Georgia state representative leading Trump’s “Big Lie” election recount in 2020.2
Back to Millsap…The last time I wrote about the new Congressional candidate, he was exchanging racist text messages about “Fucking Black people,” the way Black folks smell, “nasty Jews” and other antisemitic tropes.
In late 2023, I received a tip that a trove of text messages were available in court documents related to a business dispute between Millsap and his former attorney. Those messages would contain racist and antisemitic text messages exchanged with Millsap’s ex-girlfriend, a powerful local real estate mogul. I found, and my newsroom purchased, those messages from a court filing in Fulton County.
At the time, I was investigating the powers behind the anti-diversity, equity and inclusion movements in America’s public schools. Colleagues thought I might be a good reporter to handle the Millsap discovery, especially since the film executive had been entrenched in Atlanta’s Black culture and awarded by the Atlanta Business Chronicle for his diversity efforts in film. His studio had also been used to film LoveCraft Country, a series about Jim Crow America that’ ironically at the center of one of my doctoral African American studies courses this semester.
The messages led to me reaching out the AJC and Senior Editor Mike Jordan to partner on the Millsap story. What we ended up with were these two articles about Millsap’s routine racist and antisemitic communications, published in both the AJC and ProPublica. Here are the paywall-free links from ProPublica:
A Powerful Atlanta Movie Executive Praised for His Diversity Efforts Shared Racist, Antisemitic Sentiments in Texts3
AND
Atlanta Movie Studio Executive Apologizes After Sending Racist, Antisemitic Texts4
The stories were picked up The Hollywood Reporter, IMDB, The Grio and some radio stations and TikTokers.
Now one thing I clearly remember about reporting on Millsap is that he did not bother to offer a response to the story until after The Hollywood Reporter was published this piece. It basically reviewed our reporting, which we had presented to Millsap weeks in advance of the story publication.
In his subsequent apology statement, Millsap wrote:
“Unfortunately, in the course of this litigation, comments which I never intended to share publicly have come to light, and people I care about and who have put their trust in me have been hurt. I want to extend my sincere apologies to my dear friends, colleagues and associates in both the black and Jewish communities for any and all pain my words have caused.”
There were plenty of people, who shall remain unnamed, who declined to comment on the matter because they had business interests with Millsap. Most of those interests had to do with film, an upcoming digital summit in the City of Atlanta and the land that Millsap owns around the infamous Cop City complex.
Georgia gubernatorial candidate and former DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, who is Black, told us he’d wanted to respond to the racism exposed in the story. But the county attorney advised against it because the county was in litigation over a land swap deal with Millsap’s real estate company. That’s all explained in the second story link above.
In the aftermath of these stories’ publication, people privately struggled with how to deal with Millsap. There were talks between Millsap and powerful folks in Atlanta about how to rehabilitate his image, according to people familiar with matter who reached out to me in the months following the reporting. Some folks who had worked on film productions with Millsap also reached out to me to confirm he routinely spoke in the ways depicted in the reported text messages.
Then he sort of “disappeared,” or more accurately-I stopped paying him much attention- until this morning’s political announcement.
I decided to recap this reporting in Fortify to leave you with a thought about why these stories matter.
Today’s Ryan Millsap story is hardly about the individual himself. What voters decide to do with Millsap is more about our appetite for the extremes that are routinely brushed off as matters of political fodder and identity politics. We ought to vote for elected officials who are representative of all constituents, and who can be counted on to view folks as humans deserving of dignity and respect regardless their race, religion or identity.
But we must ask ourselves how that ideal representation is possible when our politicians have no problem disparaging certain groups of people. And is that even an attainable ideal in America, who has shown us and the world her truest, ugliest self during this 250th birthday year of hers?
Whatever happens with Millsap’s expensive U.S. House run will simply be an indication of his district’s appetite. What’s on the menu or left on the plate? Decency, humanity and the desire to hold the powerful accountable for their words and actions.
Bluestein, G. (2026, March 4). Provocative film executive enters Georgia House Race with $4m pledge. AJC. https://www.ajc.com/politics/2026/03/provocative-film-executive-enters-georgia-house-race-with-4m-pledge/
Carr, N. (2020, November 17). Georgia secretary of State aims to set record straight on misinformation, party claims. WSB. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/georgia-secretary-state-aims-set-record-straight-misinformation-party-claims/Y5F6PHH2PBHRXPN4L2EKFJNMUY/
Carr, N., & Jordan, M. (2024, April 18). Movie exec Ryan Millsap sent racist, antisemitic texts, records show. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/ryan-millsap-movie-executive-racist-antisemitic-texts
Carr, N., & Jordan, M. (2024b, April 24). Atlanta Movie exec Ryan Millsap apologizes for racist, antisemitic texts. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/ryan-millsap-atlanta-movie-executive-apologizes-texts
Thank you for taking the time to share this update. I wasn’t aware of the original story but surely have this on my radar now. Thank you, Nicole. Your insights are always timely and extremely relevant.