Georgia
GA-06 (Atlanta and western suburbs)
Lucy McBath (i) vs. Jerica Richardson vs. Mandisha Thomas
Result: McBath 84.8%, Richardson 9.3%, Thomas 5.9% | McBath wins
Rep. Lucy McBath has shuffled to and fro across the Atlanta metro area as district lines have changed. In 2018 and 2020, she ran and won in the swingy 6th district, based in northern Atlanta and the city’s northern suburbs. In 2022, Georgia Republicans axed McBath’s district and made the neighboring, Gwinnett County-based 7th district safely blue, so McBath ran there, defeating fellow Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in the Democratic primary. This year, Voting Rights Act litigation led to another redraw that nixed McBath’s new 7th district and replaced it with a Black-majority district based in Cobb County—which had been McBath’s original home. McBath’s endless game of redistricting musical chairs is more interesting than this primary. Cobb County Commissioner Jerica Richardson and state Rep. Mandisha Thomas are far from nobodies, but neither one has the resources to take on McBath, who hasn’t made any major missteps in her three terms in Congress.
GA-13 (Eastern Atlanta metro)
David Scott (i) vs. Mark Baker vs. Marcus Flowers vs. Brian Johnson vs. Uloma Ekpete Kama vs. Rashid Malik vs. Karen René
Result: Scott 57.6%, Baker 11.6%, Flowers 10.0%, René 9.1%, Johnson 5.0%, Malik 4.8%, Kama 2.0% | Scott wins
Much to our chagrin, Rep. David Scott keeps coasting through low-profile primaries, despite being a Blue Dog with a pretty conservative record for a Democrat (and, recently, despite growing doubts about his capacity to do the job.) We thought things might change when Marcus Flowers announced he’d challenge Scott; Flowers built up an online following and donor base as the 2022 Democratic nominee against Marjorie Taylor Greene, and candidates who can connect with the liberal grassroots seldom struggle to fundraise. Instead, the same curse that doomed past Scott challengers befell Flowers, too: his fundraising slowed, he never got much media attention, and just generally failed to get off the ground. Flowers might still be able to force Scott into a runoff thanks to a crowded field of other Scott challengers, including former South Fulton City Councilor Mark Baker, attorney Brian Johnson, and former East Point City Councilor Karen René, but the likeliest outcome is the congressman winning a comfortable majority as he did in 2022.
SD-28 (Mableton, Douglasville, South Fulton)
Donzella James (i) vs. Terracia “Tee” Wilkinson
Result: James 75.1%, Wilkinson 24.9% | James wins
State Sen. Donzella James has been an overall decent legislator in a body that doesn’t have many of those. Her latest legislative initiative is a bill which would allow localities to regulate rents, which has been banned in Georgia since the 1980s. Terracia “Tee” Wilkinson has worked as an entrepreneur, publicist, and political staffer, including a stint as chief of staff to now-retired state Rep. Erica Thomas. She doesn’t differentiate herself from the incumbent on the issues.
SD-33 (Cobb County)
Michael “Doc” Rhett (i) vs. Euriel Hemmerly
Result: Rhett 68.6%, Hemmerly 31.4% | Rhett wins
This is a rematch of 2022, when state Sen. Michael “Doc” Rhett defeated realtor Euriel Hemmerly 68%-32%. Hemmerly, a member of a citizen oversight committee of the Cobb County school board, is running on a vague but standard Democratic platform. Rhett probably doesn’t need to worry given this is a rematch, but these are new district lines, and Hemmerly has actually outspent Rhett this time around.
SD-34 (Clayton County, Fayetteville)
Herman Andrews vs. Tyriq T. Jackson vs. Xe Ross vs. Valencia Stovall vs. Melody Totten vs. Kenya Wicks vs. Daymetrie Williams
Result: Stovall 46.5%, Wicks 15.2%, Andrews 15.4%, Jackson 13.9%, Totten 4.1%, Williams 3.3%, Ross 2.7% | Stovall and Wicks advance to runoff
This race is likely headed to a runoff between Valencia Stovall, a former state representative who left the Democratic Party in 2020, and Kenya Wicks, an Army veteran and local Democratic activist backed by retiring state Sen. Valencia Seay. Army veteran Herman “Drew” Andrews is the only other candidate who even managed to raise and spend over $1,000. Both Stovall and Wicks stick to generalities on policy for the most part, but Wicks is more detailed, clearly opposing Republican efforts to restrict abortion and remove sex ed from schools.
SD-36 (Downtown and South Atlanta)
Nan Orrock (i) vs. Michel Powell
Result: Orrock 82.8%, Powell 17.2% | Orrock wins
One day, Nan Orrock will wake up to find that her district, the most progressive and dense in the state, has produced a challenger capable of taking her on. That day is not today, and we can’t even figure out who Michel Powell is. Total ghost candidate.
SD-38 (Long strip from South Fulton to Sandy Springs)
Nkoyo Effiong Lewis vs. Nate Green vs. Rashaun Kemp vs. Ralph Long III vs. Darryl Terry II vs. Richard N. Wright
Result: Kemp 24.3%, Long 22.9%, Green 20.3%, Effiong Lewis 17.8%, Terry 8.4%, Wright 6.3% | Kemp and Long advance to runoff
This race seems to have a frontrunner in Rashaun Kemp—who is a professional charter school advocate, which is an automatic “no” from us. Kemp leads the field in fundraising and has a number of valuable endorsements; there will likely be a runoff, and Kemp will very likely be in it. CPA Richard Wright, Atlanta City Council staffer Darryl “DJ” Terry II, and serial political staffer Nate Green probably won’t make the runoff, but that leaves two more potential runoff candidates. Former state Rep. Ralph Long III has the backing of some of his former colleagues and the Georgia Federation of Public Service Employees, while attorney Nkoyo Effiong Lewis is the only woman in the race. Both stress standard Democratic priorities, but Long gets extra credit from us for clearly spelling out his opposition to school vouchers.
SD-40 (Northern DeKalb County and Peachtree Corners)
Sally Harrell (i) vs. David Lubin
Result: Harrell 70.8%, Lubin 29.2% | Harrell wins
David Lubin’s reason for running, as he states on his website’s landing page, is incumbent Sen. Sally Harrell’s vote against adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, a highly contested definition that in practice includes many criticisms of Israeli government policy; the lead author of the IHRA definition has since criticized its usage as a means to silence pro-Palestinian speech. Harrell is a thoroughly mainstream Democrat with a fine but not great voting record, and Lubin does nothing to differentiate himself from her on any issue but the IHRA definition.
SD-44 (East Atlanta to Clayton County)
Elena Parent (i) vs. Nadine Thomas
Result: Parent 73.6%, Thomas 26.4% | Parent wins
After Republicans scrambled the Atlanta-area state legislative districts to shore up their gerrymandered majorities, state Sen. Elena Parent found herself drawn into a majority-Black district stretching from East Atlanta to the suburbs of northern Clayton County. Parent, who is white, seems well aware that she’ll have to work to introduce herself to tens of thousands of voters, mostly Black, who have never seen her name on a ballot before; she’s spent more than twice as much on campaign mailers as former state Sen. Nadine Thomas has spent on her entire campaign. Thomas is a blast from the past—she last held office during the administration of George W. Bush—in a fast-growing part of the country where many voters haven’t resided there for very long, and, as we’ve mentioned, Parent is taking her seriously, so Parent should win this one.
SD-55 (Tucker, Snellville, Stone Mountain)
Robin Biro vs. Iris Knight-Hamilton vs. Randal Mangham vs. Osborn Murray III vs. Verdaillia Turner
Result: Mangham 31.2%, Knight-Hamilton 22.6%, Biro 21.5%, Turner 19.9%, Murray 4.8% | Mangham and Knight-Hamilton advance to runoff
Former Obama campaign staffer Robin Biro has the inside track for retiring state Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler’s seat, but he’s probably headed to a runoff with one of his two top opponents. Former state Rep. Randal Mangham, who is running to “fight for property value protections,” is backed by some former colleagues, while self-funding healthcare executive and former nurse Iris Knight-Hamilton is supported by progressive state Sen. Nabilah Islam; that’s more than enough for us to hope Knight-Hamilton and not Mangham advances to a runoff with Biro. Verdaillia Turner hasn’t filed any campaign finance reports or touted any big endorsements, as far as we can tell—which is surprising, because she’s the president of the Georgia Federation of Teachers.
HD-42 (Smyrna)
Teri Anulewicz (i) vs. Gabriel Sanchez
Result: Sanchez 56.8%, Anulewicz 43.2% | Sanchez wins
State Rep. Teri Anulewicz is a boring, normal Democrat, and not exactly an inviting primary target. However, she has a new, diverse district centered on the now-blue suburb of Smyrna, and democratic socialist Gabriel Sanchez thinks that such a blue district can do better and bolder. Sanchez, a community organizer with a background in voting rights advocacy, has put Anulewicz on notice; she’s called in endorsements from Sen. Raphael Warnock, local Rep. Lucy McBath, and dozens of her legislative colleagues, and spent a whopping $70,000 (which really is a lot for districts as small as the Georgia House’s are.) Electing Sanchez would give the left a foothold in the legislature in a way that they don’t have now—while there are progressives in the legislature, there are none with an activist background and movement backing quite like Sanchez, whose coalition includes the Georgia WFP, Atlanta DSA, a collection of other progressive nonprofits, and even a major union (IUPAT’s District Council 77) that likes Sanchez enough to buck the AFL-CIO’s endorsement of Anulewicz.
HD-56 (Central Atlanta)
Bryce Berry vs. Adalina Merello vs. Corwin Monson vs. William Watkins
Result: Berry 54.1%, Watkins 20.9%, Merello 19.7%, Monson 5.3% | Berry wins
Incumbent Mesha Mainor made the baffling decision to switch parties last year. Considering that Mainor was a big fan of charter schools and crossing party lines to vote with Republicans, we’re glad nobody has to go to the trouble of beating her in a primary. (This district is one of the bluest in the state and the nation.) Four candidates, three of whom have a real shot, are competing for the right to officially unseat Mainor in November.
Small businessman Corwin Monson has the least money of the top three, but he has the support of Mable Thomas, Mainor’s predecessor in District 56, and he devotes an admirable amount of time to implicit and explicit jabs at Mainor’s party switch.
Waitress and grad student Adalina Merello promises to center renters’ rights, mental healthcare, and abortion rights if elected. Merello has been able to stay competitive with her opponents financially on the strength of small-dollar donations without much in the way of organizational support.
Organizer Bryce Berry is the consensus choice of the state Democratic establishment and progressives alike. Backed by labor and running on a platform including eviction protections and free pre-K, Berry offers a young, progressive perspective that’s missing from most state legislatures—not just Georgia’s. He’s also a massive upgrade on Mainor and the most clearly progressive candidate running to replace her.
HD-60 (Atlanta, Vinings)
Sheila Jones (i) vs. S. Diane Clair
Result: Jones 79.7%, Clair 20.3% | Jones wins
State Rep. Sheila Jones faces a serious challenge from local attorney Diane Clair—so serious that Clair has managed to outspend the incumbent 2 to 1 as Jones appears to sleepwalk through this primary. Policy differences between the two are tough to identify; the main point of contrast is age and the attendant difference, perceived or real, in the level of energy each candidate would bring to the job. Clair, 36, is a down-the-line liberal just like Jones—both support abortion rights, both oppose efforts to legalize anti-LGBTQ discrimination under the guise of religious liberty, both want to expand Medicaid. If Jones loses, it won’t be because of a bad vote she took or a bad stance she publicly holds; it’ll be because she didn’t treat Diane Clair as a particularly serious threat.
HD-61 (Atlanta, South Fulton, Smyrna)
De'Lonn Brown vs. Mekyah McQueen
Result: McQueen 64.6%, Brown 35.4% | McQueen wins
Nonprofit director De’Lonn Brown hasn’t filed any campaign finance reports and has nothing but a bare-bones website. High school teacher Mekyah McQueen has the support of state House Minority Leader James Beverly, and she clearly opposes school vouchers. This is McQueen’s race to lose, and she seems like she could be a good addition to the Georgia House.
HD-65 (South Fulton)
Robert Dawson vs. Mel Keyton vs. De'Andre S. Pickett vs. Sam Wakefield
Result: Dawson 54.0%, Pickett 24.5%, Wakefield 12.9%, Keyton 8.6% | Dawson wins
Sam Wakefield is a charter school chairman without a policy platform. It’s only natural that he has the most money of anyone in this race, including a $3,300 check from Democrats for Educational Equity, a New York entity that sounds awfully similar to Democrats for Education Reform, the New York-based pro-charter PAC network. Local and state Democratic officials are torn as to which alternative is best: consultant and party activist Robert Dawson has almost as much money as Wakefield and endorsements from local officials, while healthcare worker De’Andre Pickett is backed by state House leadership. Dawson clearly opposes school vouchers while Pickett is vague on education, which is enough to serve as a tiebreaker for us to hope for Dawson. Former South Fulton City Council candidate Mel Keyton seems to be the fourth candidate in a three-candidate race.
HD-69 (Fayetteville, South Fulton)
Debra Bazemore (i) vs. Cobie Lyrix Brown vs. Jared Daigre vs. Bobby Ferrell vs. Ray Mills
Result: Bazemore 73.9%, Mills 11.8%, Ferrell 6.5%, Daigre 4.2%, Brown 3.6% | Bazemore wins
State Rep. Debra Bazemore faces an eclectic field of challengers. There’s Jared Daigre, a math teacher whose mother, Regina Daigre, is an elected member of the Fayette County Board of Education. There’s firefighter and community association president Bobby Ferrell, who like Daigre hails from the Fayette County portion of this seat. There’s Ray Mills, “a self-made millionaire whose age is only approaching mid-thirties,” but who hasn’t filed campaign finance reports. There’s Cobie Lyrix Brown, a phantom candidate. Ferrell and Daigre both have the potential to exploit geography to their advantage—Bazemore is from South Fulton, and this seat’s center of gravity is increasingly in Fayette County as that county grows and gets bluer.
HD-74 (Southern Atlanta exurbs)
Robert Flournoy Jr. vs. Maggy Martinez
Result: Flournoy 51.4%, Martinez 48.6% | Flournoy wins
This district was one of the newly created Black districts ordered by a judge. Surprisingly, the local political establishment seemed to have a candidate already in mind: political consultant Maggy Martinez, who seems to have helped elect every small town mayor in the district, and has a truly impressive resume aside from that: news reporter, nonprofit executive, and legislator in the Puerto Rico General Assembly, representing a suburban district in the 90s. She seems like a standard Democrat from her policy page, but she only really gets specific on hyper-local issues, so it’s hard to say for sure. Robert Flournoy Jr. ran for an overlapping Senate seat in 2022, and received 11% of the vote. We expect something similar from him here.
HD-75 (Clayton County)
Eric Bell II (i) vs. Mike Glanton Jr.
Result: Bell 70.0%, Glanton 30.0% | Bell wins
Mike Glanton Sr. resigned from the Georgia House for health reasons in early 2023, and local government staffer Eric Bell easily won the special election to replace him. The Glanton family evidently isn’t ready to hand over the seat, because Mike Glanton Jr. is running to reclaim it. Both candidates are either broke or delinquent on their campaign finance reports, which makes it hard for us to handicap this race. Both candidates are also frustratingly vague on policy, but that’s par for the course for Democratic state legislative candidates in states with seemingly impregnable GOP majorities like Georgia’s.
HD-84 (Central DeKalb County)
Mary Margaret Oliver (i) vs. Hunter Kemp
Result: Oliver 89.4%, Kemp 10.6% | Oliver wins
State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver is in no real danger from no-budget asset manager Hunter Kemp, but she’s taking her primary seriously anyway, spending handsomely and getting out and about in the community. Her margin of victory will likely be overwhelming.
HD-90 (East Atlanta, Southwest DeKalb County)
Saira Draper (i) vs. Becky Evans (i)
Result: Draper 67.6%, Evans 32.4% | Draper wins
Georgia Republicans only managed to engineer one member-on-member Democratic primary in their court-ordered redraw of the state House, but they made up for it by making it maximally painful: two relatively progressive lawmakers must face off for the right to represent some of the most progressive turf in the state. Reps. Saira Draper and Becky Evans are both pretty good, and the contest between the two has split the Democratic caucus. It’s also cost an awful lot of money. Evans, the more senior of the two, has raised and spent much more, flexing campaign muscles that she last had to use in her successful bid to unseat state Rep. Howard Mosby in 2018, but Draper hasn’t had time to get rusty, either—she’s a freshman representative who won a hard-fought primary in 2022. Given that Draper was not the progressive choice in that 2022 primary (nor in the runoff after progressives’ first pick was eliminated), and given that Atlanta DSA has recommended a vote for Evans over Draper, we’re inclined to defer to Georgia progressives’ judgment and root for Evans.
HD-91 (Southeast DeKalb County)
Angela Moore (i) vs. Marcus Akins vs. Dee Dawkins-Haigler
Result: Moore 53.4%, Dawkins-Haigler 35.3%, Akins 11.3% | Moore wins
Dee Dawkins-Haigler left the state House to run, unsuccessfully, for the Democratic nomination for Secretary of State in 2018. She tried again in 2022, this time making it to a runoff but losing that runoff by a wide 77%-23% margin. She’s set her sights lower this year, seeking a return to her old House seat, which has been held by low-profile Democratic backbencher Angela Moore since 2021. Dawkins-Haigler still has some friends in the state Capitol, and she’s backed by some state House leaders and local DeKalb politicians; she’s also outraised and outspent Moore, according to campaign finance reports. Moore has been running for office since 2006, finally notching her first win in a 2021 special election (and, subjectively, she does seem like a perennial candidate who got lucky—she won that special by making it to a runoff with Stan Watson, a DeKalb County Commissioner with a spotty ethical record who pleaded guilty to stealing $3,000 in public funds in 2017.) Marcus Akins is a phantom candidate who makes a runoff possible, if not particularly likely.
HD-96 (Gwinnett County)
Arlene Beckles vs. Sonia Lopez vs. Neva Thompson
Result: Beckles 39.2%, Lopez 30.6%, Thompson 30.3% | Beckles advances to runoff with either Lopez or Thompson
Pedro Martinez is retiring after more than two decades in the house, leaving one of the most diverse districts in the state up for grabs. Norcross City Councilmember Arlene Beckles is a small favorite, and she hasn’t given us much information to go off of, but we have a general suspicion of suburban local politicians, especially ones who talk about their time on something called the “Norcross Police Appreciation Committee”. Neva Thompson is running a low budget campaign, leaning in on her opposition to school vouchers, which is fine by us, and Sonia Lopez is a former Norcross City Council candidate who does not seem to have gone to the effort of putting together an actual campaign the second time.
HD-98 (Gwinnett County)
Marvin Lim (i) vs. Jorge Granados
Result: Lim 82.3%, Granados 17.7% | Lim wins
The 98th is another district significantly reshaped by redistricting, which explains the opportunistic attempt by a member…wait, sorry, no, this is one of the few Atlanta metro-area districts that wasn’t touched in redistricting. This election has nothing to do with the district boundaries, and in fact is a rematch of the 2020 election that brought Marvin Lim into the house. In that contest, Lim was the clear progressive choice over blank state Gwinnett County Young Democrats treasurer Jorge Granados, and he won 61% to 39%. Little has changed in the intervening four years except that Granados has been promoted to President.
HD-113 (Eastern Atlanta metro, Newton County)
Sharon Henderson (i) vs. Karla Daniels Hooper
Result: Henderson 65.1%, Hooper 34.9% | Henderson wins
Sharon Henderson defeated a troublesome moderate in the 2020 primary, only to become one herself, whereas Karla Daniels Hooper seems to think she’s running for some sort of Newton County office, considering all her goals are about zoning.
HD-129 (Augusta)
Karlton Howard (i) vs. Scott Cambers
Result: Howard 76.5%, Cambers 23.5% | Howard wins
In a December 2022 special election, now-state Rep. Karlton Howard cleaned up against IT professional Scott Cambers, 68% to 9%. And while Cambers is technically on the ballot for this election, he hasn’t posted anything online since the special. Bold prediction: he probably isn’t going to win this one either.
HD-137 (Eastern Columbus and rurals)
Debbie Buckner (i) vs. Carlton Mahone
Result: Buckner 79.4%, Mahone 20.6% | Buckner wins
We generally support an incumbent who isn’t doing anything wrong when we just can’t find any information on their opponent. Well, we’re happy (?) to report that Debbie Buckner is absolutely doing things wrong, and there’s no shame in hoping she loses to her opponent, Methodist Pastor Carlton Mahone. Buckner is a moderate Democrat who often votes with Republicans on issues like tax cuts and restricting local control. On top of that, she’s a white incumbent in a 54% Black district.
HD-140 (Western Columbus)
Tremaine “Teddy” Reese (i) vs. Alyssa “Nia” Williams
Result: Reese 83.4%, Williams 16.6% | Reese wins
First-term state Rep. Teddy Reese is delinquent on his campaign finance reports, which is sadly common in Georgia but nevertheless a bad sign about the quality of your campaign operation. Paralegal Nia Williams is running on a tight budget, but her website is polished (and bilingual), and she managed to get some local news coverage of her campaign launch.
HD-149 (Macon and Milledgeville)
Floyd Griffin vs. Phyllis Tufts Hightower
Result: Griffin 69.3%, Hightower 30.7% | Griffin wins
GOP state Rep. Ken Vance is running for reelection, but redistricting transformed his district into a Black-majority, Biden+20 seat where he has no realistic chance of reelection. The primary is the ballgame here. We suspect this primary will be geographic: retired juvenile counselor and therapist Phyllis Tufts Hightower hails from Macon, which together with its suburbs casts about 45% of the Democratic votes in this district, and has the support of some Macon-area politicians, while former state Sen. Floyd Griffin hails from Milledgeville, a college town northeast of Macon that casts the other 55% of Democratic votes. Griffin has a financial edge as well as a geographic one, and he has more built-in name recognition from past statewide and state House runs and a stint as mayor of Milledgeville. (Hightower has run for office once before, losing a primary to future Georgia House Minority Leader James Beverly in 2018.)
HD-153 (Albany)
David Sampson (i) vs. Joshua Anthony vs. Tracy Taylor
Result: Sampson 57.9%, Anthony 21.5%, Taylor 20.6% | Sampson wins
College student Joshua Anthony is running a spirited challenge to incumbent state Rep. David Sampson, a first-term representative who initially announced his intent to retire before reversing course in late February. Anthony wants to focus on economic development and public transit, specifically naming light rail and solar energy as priorities. (Light rail isn’t something we expected to hear about from a candidate in a city of 70,000 surrounded on all sides by rural southwest Georgia, but we’re not complaining.) A runoff is made possible by Tracy Taylor, the Republican nominee against Sampson in 2022; Taylor is running on the Democratic side now, perhaps realizing that Albany, which is majority Black and heavily Democratic, won’t be electing a Republican anytime soon.
HD-168 (Hinesville)
Al Williams (i) vs. Henry Covington
Result: Williams 78.0%, Covington 22.0% | Williams wins
State Rep. Al Williams faces a no-budget challenge from former Hinesville city council candidate Henry Covington. Williams is delinquent on his campaign finance reports, but the last report he did file (two months late) shows a campaign bank account stuffed to the brim with contributions from private prisons and other corporate interests. He’ll probably be fine, but we won’t be sad in the event of an upset.
DeKalb County CEO
Steve Bradshaw vs. Lorraine Cochran-Johnson vs. Larry Johnson
Result: Cochran-Johnson 46.3%, Johnson 34.4%, Bradshaw 19.4% | Cochran-Johnson and Johnson advance to runoff
Three DeKalb County Commissioners are fighting for the top job in county government, which is annoyingly named CEO as if DeKalb County is a business. Lorraine Cochran-Johnson has a few advantages: she’s the only woman in the race, she represents half of the county (her opponents each represent 20% of it), and she’s the least averse to making specific policy commitments. Steve Bradshaw and Larry Johnson are engaged in a platitude-off that doesn’t give us much to work with, though Johnson is at least supportive of rail transit expansion. (Cochran-Johnson also specifically highlights mass transit as a priority.) According to Atlanta DSA, Cochran-Johnson also has the best working relationship with metro Atlanta’s left-wing activists, even if her platform is pretty standard liberal fare.
Fulton County DA
Fani Willis (i) vs. Christian Wise Smith
Result: Willis 87.0%, Wise Smith 13.0% | Willis wins
Fulton County DA Fani Willis has benefited from liberal celebrity status as one of the many prosecutors going after Donald Trump. Don’t let that fool you; Willis is a conservative, punitive, carceral prosecutor who may yet botch the Trump prosecution because she thought it was a great idea to sleep with a subordinate. She ran as the tough-on-crime center-right candidate in her 2020 DA primary, and that’s exactly how she’s governed; other than the Trump case, her highest-profile prosecution has been a dubious RICO prosecution against the rapper Young Thug. Christian Wise Smith was the reform candidate who lost to Willis in 2020, and he’s back for a rematch. While the Trump publicity likely protects Willis from a primary challenge, Wise Smith is the better candidate—and, for the country’s sake, Fulton County deserves a Trump prosecutor who doesn’t need to be told not to have sex with subordinates.
Fulton County Sheriff
Patrick Labat (i) vs. Kirt Beasley vs. James Brown vs. Joyce Farmer
Result: Labat 54.2%, Farmer 22.8%, Beasley 11.6%, Brown 11.4% | Labat wins
Sheriff Patrick Labat was elected in 2020 after promising to clean up the Fulton County Jail, notorious for poor conditions and severe overcrowding. He has not cleaned up the jail. If anything, the jail has gotten worse under Labat; a man died of malnourishment, dehydration, and bedbug infestation last year after jail officials abandoned him and failed to treat his diagnosed schizophrenia. Labat says the solution is for the county to build him a new jail, as if aging facilities are a meaningful obstacle to giving inmates food and water. Needless to say, you should root for him to lose. Three candidates are running to unseat Labat, and any one of them would be better than someone with a record as deadly as Labat’s. Retired sheriff’s office sergeant Kirt Beasley, private security firm owner James “J.T.” Brown, and East Point police officer Joyce Farmer are all rightly horrified by the state of the jail, though we can’t say we’re fans of Brown’s focus on how costly jail deaths are to the taxpayer. Either Beasley or Farmer is the best choice—but above all, it’s anyone but Labat.
Gwinnett County DA
Patsy Austin-Gatson (i) vs. Andrea Alabi vs. Daryl E. Manns
Result: Austin-Gaston 53.2%, Alabi 32.6%, Manns 14.2% | Austin-Gatson wins
Patsy Austin-Gatson rode the blue wave into office in 2020, something that seems to have surprised even her. And her carceral approach to the office has left many wondering what the point of electing a Democrat even was. In fact, one of the biggest initiatives recently has been prosecuting retailers for selling Delta-8 products, a weaker derivative of THC which was functionally legalized on a federal level a few years ago. Her opponent, prosecutor Andrea Alabi, describes the stupidity of cracking down on low potency weed by-products with the simple response “We don’t have kids strung out and dying from Delta-8. We have a gun violence problem”. We like the sound of that. We less so like the sound of the rest of her approach, which still sounds carceral and miles away from any Krasner-style reform DA language, but at least she’s willing to back off some of the most over-eager prosecutorial habits of Austin-Gaston. The AFL-CIO feels similarly and has endorsed her. While Alabi would be a minor step forward, drug and gang prosecutor Daryl Manns feels like a lateral move at best, and possibly an actual step backwards if his hardline rhetoric about repeat offenders and violent crime are any indication.
Kentucky
SD-33 (Louisville East End)
Gerald Neal (i) vs. Attica Scott vs. Michael Churchill
Result: Neal 55.3%, Scott 39.4%, Churchill 5.3% | Neal wins
First elected in 1988, Gerald Neal has by the far the longest tenure in the Kentucky Senate, and even though he started young, he’s now getting up there in the years: he’ll be 79 when the next session begins and 83 when the next term ends. In 2016, he was challenged by two Democrats in the primary, and pulled through with a less-than-stellar 48% of the vote. He avoided having any competition in 2020, but, now, in 2024, he’s in the fight for his political life after a familiar face returned to challenge him.
Readers may remember in 2022, when state Rep. Attica Scott ran for Congress. Scott, a progressive who was arrested and even, for a time, charged with a felony for marching with Black Lives Matters protestors in 2020, was defeated for the then-open Louisville congressional seat by then-state senate President Morgan McGarvey. Despite the contest initially looking promising for Scott, billionaire fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried spent several million dollars to elect McGarvey, and the final margin was 63% to 37% in his favor. Scott is back, and her grassroots supporters are as excited as ever to see her reenter government. Though the two share similar positions on all the major issues, Scott is quick to point to Neal's inactivity in the community, contrasted with how she puts herself on the front lines of fights such as criminal justice reform. We absolutely believe that Scott, who was endorsed by DSA and has proven herself a progressive fighter, would light a new fire under the senate.
HD-30 (Southeastern Louisville)
Daniel Grossberg (i) vs. Mitra Subedi
Result: Grossberg 50.8%, Subedi 49.2% | Grossberg wins
Self-funding real estate agent Daniel Grossberg knocked out a 90-year-old incumbent in 2022, and at the time we were worried about any clear ideological signals from him but not particularly opposed to him taking over for the incumbent. Two years later, Grossberg is a massive Israel hawk. When he’s not trying to convince university administrators to crack down on student protestors or sign a letter he wrote calling Israel’s action in Gaza “a fight against evil”, Grossberg is retweeting right wing influencer after right wing influencer after right wing influencer railing against pro-Palestinian protestors. As with many middle-aged men who become fixed on one particular conservative stance, the time he’s spent marinating in the right-wing ecosystem doesn’t seem healthy for him, and he’s now making strange comments about “Liberal Arts Colleges” and liking anti-Greta Thunberg posts. He’s even taking up the Republican line that “taking [Palestinian] refugees would also be taking terrorists”.
The only alternative on the ballot is math teacher Mitra Subedi, a former Bhutanese refugee who moved to Louisville in 2011. Subedi’s implications that Grossberg is more on the side of Republicans than Democrats clearly have the incumbent at least a little concerned if he went to the effort to wheel about an endorsement from Gov. Andy Beshear.
HD-40 (Louisville West End)
Nima Kulkarni (i) vs. William Zeitz
Result: Kulkarni 78.0%, Zeitz 22.0% | Kulkarni wins, pending litigation
We have absolutely no idea who Wiliam Zeitz is—he doesn’t have a website, we couldn’t find him on social media, he doesn’t appear to have given any interviews or been active in any recorded activities in Louisville. And yet, he might be the next state representative from this district. A state court just ruled incumbent Nima Kulkarni ineligible for the ballot owing to half her signatures being collected by a gatherer who was not a registered Democrat at the time. Kulkarni says she’s going to appeal, and we hope she wins, both because she’s a good incumbent and because we have no idea what the alternative is.
HD-41 (Louisville East End)
William “Rick” Adams vs. Mary Lou Marzian
Result: Marzian 70.9%, Adams 29.1% | Marzian wins
This primary is one of the most expensive in the state, pitting former state Rep. Mary Lou Marzian against KY Democratic Party counsel Rick Adams. For all the money being spent, there’s very little difference between the candidates on the major issues, and they’re so allergic to contrasting themselves with each other they’re trying not to speak each other’s name in public. Rick Adams put down the cash to run an ad on cable news, and he spends the entire time talking about Republicans. Marzian spent over a decade in the state house, and accumulated the record of a consummate liberal, often taking unpopular votes that put her deeply in the minority (even when Democrats still controlled the house), and there’s no indication so far that Adams would be any different.
HD-42 (Louisville West End)
Jonathan Musselwhite vs. Jack Walker vs. Joshua Watkins
Result: Watkins 53.0%, Musselwhite 24.0%, Walker 23.0% | Watkins wins
The favorite in this three-way contest is establishment pick Joshua Watkins, who currently works as Director of Strategic Initiatives for Louisville Metro Government. He’s running a vibes-heavy campaign, with “providing all residents a pathway to a high quality of life” and making sure “job opportunities are abundant” being examples of the less-than-clear goals he’s setting out for himself. More promising is Jonathan Musselwhite, a union steward and renter endorsed by the Teamsters and SEIU, who has a laser focus on workers’ rights. Finally, Jack Walker, a PR consultant, is running a more moderate campaign focused on tax cuts.
HD-44 (Louisville West End)
Beverly Chester-Burton (i) vs. Daniel Cockrell vs. Shreeta Waldon
Result: Chester-Burton 50.7%, Waldon 28.3%, Cockrell 21.0% | Chester-Burton wins
Louisville’s government has mostly merged with the county of Jefferson; however, the county also contains a few towns aside from Louisville. While they’re generally part of what people mean when they say “Louisville”, they’re technically independent, and have their own governments. For instance, the mayor of the city of Shively (pop. 16,000) is Beverly Chester-Burton, who also represents the city in the state house. However, she was only elected to that role in 2022. Before that, what she was best known for as mayor was getting drunk, crashing into a White Castle drive thru, and spending the night in jail in 2020. How did she win a primary after that? She didn’t—she was handed the seat in the classic maneuver by which a respected incumbent will file for reelection, have their dedicated successor also file to make the ballot right before the window closes, and then announce they’re not going to run for reelection after all, giving their successor the ballot all to themselves.
The alternatives that Louisville is finally getting to Chester-Burton are public health professional Daniel Deshawn Cockrell and Shreeta Waldon, Executive Director of Kentucky Harm Reduction Coalition. Neither of the two have raised much money, and while local, grassroots campaigns can work with electorate sizes this small, we worry two candidates running in that style will split the less establishment-friendly vote and allow Chester-Burton to glide by. We like Waldon better owing to her years working to help people addicted to drugs or lacking permanent homes, but we couldn’t say whether she’s running the stronger campaign.
HD-57 (Frankfort)
Erika Hancock vs. Kristie Powe
Result: Hancock 67.3%, Powe 32.7% | Hancock wins
Erika Hancock, a lifelong insurance agent, sees herself as a “unifier” who can apply the lessons she’s learned from working in insurance because, as she told the Frankfort State Journal, “I've always had to take different perspectives, whether it be the company and the customer, and bring them to a mutual understanding when we make hard decisions”. That particular line of centrist pablum—that the government’s basically like a business, so if people can compromise in business they can do the same in politics—has always been grating when it comes from a red district Democrat scrambling for votes, but from a primary candidate in a blue district it’s a clear warning sign. Luckily, there’s a candidate with actual government experience running who doesn’t see things that way: Kristie Powe, a former worker for the Legislative Research Commission who currently chairs the Frankfort Human Rights Commission. Hancock has raised far more money (being an insurance agent has its perks as a candidate) and has support from the state establishment, but Powe has at least been putting up signs and hitting the pavement.
HD-76 (Lexington)
Joshua Buckman vs. Anne Donworth vs. James Palumbo
Result: Donworth 44.4%, Palumbo 40.7%, Buckman 14.9% | Donworth wins
Ruth Ann Palumbo is retiring after 24 years in the state house, and attempting to keep the seat in the family by handing it off to her son, Jamie Palumbo. The reaction from the Lexington establishment has been effusively positive towards this inheritance, but two other candidates made their way to the ballot nonetheless: social worker Joshua Buckman and nonprofit executive Anne Donworth.
HD-77 (Lexington)
George A. Brown Jr. (i) vs. Daniel Whitley
Result: Brown 63.3%, Whitley 36.7% | Brown wins
Like many incumbent challenges in deep red states, the issues defining this election aren’t policy, but experience vs. energy. Incumbent George A. Brown Jr., who’s been in the house for a decade and spent time in the Lexington-Fayette Urban Council before that, takes the attitude that Democrats need to work better with Republicans and appeal more to rural voters, while defense attorney Daniel Whitley see the need for Democrats to “stop having the defeated mindset” and be more vocal about what they want to accomplish.
HD-93 (Southern Lexington suburbs)
Adrielle Camuel (i) vs. Sarah Ritter
Result: Camuel 72.6%, Ritter 27.4% | Camuel wins
Adrielle Camuel was selected by the county party to run in a 2023 special election in this district, tantamount to election. This is, therefore, the first primary she’s had to run in. Considering how gracelessly she handled the perfunctory general election last year, at one point saying she was motivated to run because of a proposed ban of gender-affirming care that showed “the extremes on both sides,” we wouldn’t be surprised if she was utterly unprepared for a primary, too. She walked that one back a few days later, by promising to sponsor a bill to repeal that ban, not doing so, and having to be shamed into actually putting her name on it. Her opponent, former Beshear staffer Sarah Ritter, has been critical of Camuel for this saga, even as she’s largely attempted to craft a more positive message about herself as someone who came up into politics through the Young Democrats and knows how things work in the legislature while still being young enough to inject youthful energy into the caucus.