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Request a DemoNew lawmakers make up most diverse legislative group in recent history
The Gist
The Georgia 2023 Legislative session convenes Monday with one of the largest, most diverse groups of newcomers ever to assemble under the Gold Dome.
The Senate will have 10 new members while the House will have 43 newcomers.
Both the House and Senate will have new leadership, as well as a new Speaker of the House for the first time in 12 years.
All told, the General Assembly will have 155 men and 81 women, 151 of whom are white and 83 of whom are people of color, including immigrants from Nigeria, the Caribbean, and Bangladesh. There will also be bipartisan Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Hispanic caucuses for the first time. The 236-member Georgia General Assembly is the third largest in the nation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
What’s Happening
What does all of this change in leadership and increased diversity mean when it comes to shaping policies and procedures under the Dome?
“It’s probably a better reflection of the makeup of the state because Georgia has become a very diverse state,” said Larry “Butch” Parrish, R-Swainsboro, a retired pharmacist who will be one of the longest-serving lawmakers when he begins his 39th session Monday. “They'll be bringing diverse ideas and everybody sort of has their own idea of what's important to them and what they would like to work on. So I think it'll be an interesting session and mix.”
New Rep.-elect Long Tran (pronounced “Chang”) hopes the greater diversity “will lead to legislation that will benefit some of the minority communities while at the same time solving some of the labor shortage our industries are facing.”
Tran, a Democrat representing District 80, which includes Doraville and parts of north DeKalb, said he wants to see the Legislature tackle immigration challenges, such as those hindering Georgia’s estimated 20,000 young immigrants — including Latinx, Africans and Asians — enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, better known as DACA. Many were raised and educated here, but are banned from being able to get in-state tuition for college.
“Personally, I would like to see anyone who graduates from a Georgia high school be given in-state tuition,” Tran said.
Why It Matters
Monday will mark the beginning of the 2023 legislative session — and the start of a beehive of activity, including legislators being sworn in and electing new leadership. Your representatives in the Statehouse will spend this year’s legislative session considering proposed laws, any constitutional amendments that could come up as well as the state budget proposed by the governor.
State lawmakers will earn an annual salary of $22,341 for 40 days of work during the 2023 legislative session, which runs until early April, thanks to a $5,000 raise. The financial boost is the first in a decade. Even with the raise, the annual base pay doesn’t begin to compare with legislators in Alaska or Alabama, who earned $53,956 and $50,400 in 2022, respectively.
Many legislators will also work on researching issues and meeting with constituents, lobbyists and other issue advocates throughout the year, in addition to maintaining their regular jobs. Occupations held by this year’s class range from small business owners, lawyers, doctors, and business consultants to a priest and a truck driver who's also an auctioneer.
What’s Next
Legislative aide Jonathan Harris, who has been at the Statehouse since 2015, offered the following advice to new legislators: “Learn the lay of the land and what issues they want to work on. Get a team in place and have that team do the work for them because they're going to be new for 40 days. As that 21st day comes, that's when the session starts getting longer. So with a new speaker in the House and new leadership, it's going to be an interesting session,” said Harris.
A sampling of new lawmakers
State Affairs spoke with some of the newcomers to the Capitol to find out their concerns, legislative priorities, and what’s driving their public service. Learn about them here:
Nabilah Islam (D), 33, small business owner and political consultant.
Senator, District 7 (includes Peachtree Corners, Norcross, Suwanee, Duluth and Lawrenceville.)
Notable: First Muslim woman and first South Asian woman to be elected to the Georgia senate.
What prompted you to get into public service: I grew up in Gwinnett County which is the fourth-most diverse county in America and I never saw representation that looked like our community. It's important to have folks in positions of power that have a shared lived experience with their community, and I wanted to step up and represent my district so that they can have a full voice at the table.
Top three issues or concerns: Health care is near and dear to my heart. It’s a human right. We need to expand Medicaid in Georgia. We need to protect abortion rights, fully fund our public schools and expand access to the ballot.
Are you planning to introduce, sponsor or co-sponsor any legislation: I'm going to be working diligently with my colleagues to sponsor and introduce legislation that will increase the ability for people to have health care and protect abortion rights and make sure that our schools and teachers have the proper funding they need.
Committees you’d like to serve on: Education is definitely a priority of mine; Health & Human Service and Regulated Industries.
Derek Mallow (D), 33, chief executive, East Savannah United.
Senator, District 2 (includes parts of Chatham County, including Savannah, Garden City, Port Wentworth and Thunderbolt.)
Notable: Mallow is new to the Senate but he spent the last two years as a House representative for District 163.
What prompted you to get into public service: My family has been around for a long time in the Pinpoint and Sandfly communities. Pinpoint is a Gullah Geechee community. Growing up poor, I understood poverty. I looked at poverty from the perspective of not having enough. When I got into public service, I wanted to make some changes. I grew up without having investment in my community.
Top three issues or concerns: I'm going to talk about affordable housing, expansion of Medicaid, and economic mobility in the state. Less than 1% of all business contracts in the state were minority businesses. I'm concerned about that because we say we're the No. 1 state [in the nation] to do business. I should see a lot more Black people at the table than I see today. And that's not knocking anybody.
Are you planning to introduce, sponsor or co-sponsor any legislation: I do have some legislation I intend to put forward to address affordable housing. I did a rental tax credit bill last session that I thought was a unique way since we couldn't get an earned income tax credit so that we could promote homeownership in the state and give people a refund. If they were renters instead of homeowners, it was a small $50 refund but it was something people could invest to potentially buy a home. So I’ll be looking at that again this year.
Committees you’d like to serve on: Economic Development and Tourism, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Higher Education, as well as Judiciary.
Reynaldo “Rey” Martinez (R), 53, small business owner.
Representative, District 111 (includes Dacula, Walton County)
Notable: One of four new Latino and Hispanic lawmakers. Former mayor of Loganville where he also served on the City Council.
What prompted you to run for a state-level position: I've always enjoyed serving, whether it's local politics or the military. I served 25 years before retiring from the military.
When the [current Representative] Tom Kirby decided to retire, I decided to do it.
Top three issues or concerns: When I was mayor, one of the biggest challenges — as with many cities — is transportation. I'm going to try to work for transportation for Gwinnett County, which is growing and some of that growth is going into Walton County. So transportation is one of the big issues.
Are you planning to introduce, sponsor or co-sponsor any legislation: Not yet. I’m going to talk to the leadership. Right now, it’s just about building relationships.
Committees you’d like to serve on: As a veteran, one of the things I’d like to be a part of is the Veterans Committee. The Agriculture Committee. Even though it's considered the metro[Atlanta] area, Walton County is still a big Ag county and I want to represent my constituents.
Colton Moore (R), 29, auctioneer, cattle truck and dump truck driver, and co-owner of the family bulldozing and trucking business in Dade County.
Senator, District 53 (in northwest Georgia, including Dade, Walker, Catoosa, Chattooga, Floyd counties)
Notable: Served as the House representative for Dade and Walker counties from 2018-2020. Was a top 20 finalist at the International Auctioneers Championship in 2017, and says these skills come in handy as a politician since “like auctioneering, politics is a marketing scheme.”
What prompted you to get into public service: I learned at a young age that elected officials could do good or bad things, and I saw a lot of public officials growing up do a lot of bad things, so I hope to be a change to that.
Top three issues or concerns: First, a reduction in income taxes due to the intense inflation that people in my district are experiencing. Second, election integrity. I still do not believe that our elections system is in proper order. Senate Bill 202 just did not do enough. My third priority is going to be gun rights.
Are you planning to introduce, sponsor or co-sponsor any legislation?
I am drafting the Second Amendment Preservation Act. I’ll be pushing hard for a bill called Defend The Guard Act. I think our national guard troops should be used for other things than a rogue president who might send them to Ukraine. I’m also working on a bill to fully repeal Certificate of Need. A hospital shouldn’t need permission from the government to set up shop. My constituents would like to see multiple hospitals in the area competing with each other.
Committees you’d like to serve on: Transportation, Public Safety, Natural Resources. And I’m vying for chair of Interstate Cooperation.
Tremaine “Teddy” Reese (D), 42, lawyer practicing civil litigation in his own firm.
Representative, District 140 (includes Columbus)
Notable: Reese is taking over the seat long held by stalwart Democrat Calvin Smyre, who stepped down last year after 48 years at the Capitol.
What prompted you to get into public service: I got some experience serving as class president at Albany State University, and I served as president of the student bar association while at Florida A&M College of Law. I was national chair of the ABA law student division, where I was the face and voice of 179,000 law students nationwide and in charge of a $2.5 million budget. It also stems back to just family teachings, of helping the community where I can. I’m hoping my term as a legislator, as historic as it is for me and my family since I’m the first in my family to go to college, will be a great opportunity for me to make a difference.
Top three issues or concerns: One would be public education funding. We can’t expect our state to remain as strong as it currently is if we continue this downward trend of investing in public education. Our teachers need more resources to teach our children. It’s the best investment we can make as Georgians, to invest in our young folks. My second priority is to make sure our seniors are taken care of. It hurts my heart to see my grandmother struggle to determine whether she’s going to pay her bills or buy prescriptions, and I often have to step in and help her financially. That just shouldn’t be. My third focus will be on our veterans. We have a consistently rising rate of suicide among our veterans, as well as veteran homelessness.
Are you planning to introduce, sponsor or co-sponsor any legislation: Not yet. I’m very new so there’s a lot for me to learn. I need to get on the inside and get to talking with my colleagues and find out where our common interests lie. We’ll call that low-hanging fruit and we’ll work together on it.
Committees you’d like to serve on: I don’t want to be jinxed because I’ve put the request in for a few committees. As an attorney I might want to work in the judicial committee area. Considering I was born and raised in rural Georgia, agriculture is important to me. I talked about my passion for education. The committees I’ve requested align with my passion and the work that I’ve done historically.
Lehman Franklin III (R), 47, general manager of an auto dealership.
Representative, District 160 (includes Statesboro and Bulloch and Bryan counties )
Notable: The huge Hyundai electric vehicle plant is in his district, and requires massive planning around economic development, infrastructure, and environmental concerns affecting farmers and residents in the area.
What prompted you to get into public service: ‘Service before self’ has been one of the tenets of my life that I learned at The Citadel, practiced preaching the gospel as a missionary, and will bring to the table as a state representative.
Top three issues or concerns: Economic development, education, and infrastructure planning and development.
Are you planning to introduce, sponsor or co-sponsor any legislation: I will work to expand funding for job training programs to help give skilled workers a leg up and enhance their take-home pay … As our industries continue to grow in our region, we need to find innovative ways to make transportation and travel more advanced. This includes providing charging stations as the use of electric vehicles expands … I will work to cut taxes on hardworking Georgia families. Government is big enough.
What else would you like to know or share about legislators in Georgia? Contact Tammy Joyner on Twitter @LVJOYNER or at [email protected], and Jill Jordan Sieder on Twitter @JOURNALISTAJILL or at [email protected].
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Header photo: Members of the Georgia House of Representatives enjoy a moment of celebration on Crossover Day, March 15, 2022. (Credit: Georgia House of Representatives)
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the age of Representative Tremaine “Teddy” Reese.
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Spotted sea trout surged, shorebirds struggled, and the water’s safe for swimming
The Gist
Spotted sea trout flourished, sea turtles and shorebirds struggled, and blue crabs crawled their way out of trouble in ever-warming coastal waters last year. Those are a few of the findings in the Coastal Resources Division’s annual Coastal Georgia Ecosystem Report Card, released today.
What’s Happening
Every year since 2014, the Department of Natural Resources collects data on 12 indicators of coastal ecosystem health that impact humans, fisheries and wildlife and issues a report card.
Based on data collected in 2023, Georgia’s coastal ecosystem this year earned a B, which equates to a “moderately good health score” of 78%, up from last year’s score of 74%.
Click here to see the full 2023 Coastal Ecosystem Report Card.
The ecosystem indicators and scoring methods for the report card were developed with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, which has helped to create other ecosystem health assessments around the country.
This year, red drum remained plentiful and spotted sea trout numbers improved, as the sea trout count in the Wassaw and Ossabaw sound systems rebounded. The report said a 2016 regulation that increased the minimum catch size limit for sea trout is helping.
Shrimp numbers improved a bit, too, just in time for their recognition as the state’s official crustacean by the Georgia Legislature this year.
According to the Department of Natural Resources, the dockside amount of wild-caught “food shrimp” brought in by commercial fisheries increased to 2.6 million pounds from 2.1 million pounds in 2023 (though the overall dockside value of Georgia shrimp decreased to $9.4 million from $11.3 million, largely due to competition from foreign suppliers of lower-priced, imported frozen shrimp).
Blue crabs got a D in the report but improved from a score of 18% last year to 32%. Warm coastal waters and increased salinity in the water could explain why crab numbers were low in the survey, but the report also noted its sample size of crab was skewed because its trawling vessel was out of commission for part of 2023. The amount of blue crab caught by commercial fisheries increased to 3.4 million pounds in 2023 from 3.1 million pounds in 2022, with a dockside value of $7 million.
Overall, the dockside value of all commercial fisheries tracked by Natural Resources in Georgia in 2023 was $19.7 million, about $2 million less than in 2022.
The lowest scorers
As was the case last year, shorebirds in general and American oystercatchers in particular were the animals that scored the lowest. Wildlife biologist Tim Keyes said big storms that hit the coast washed out and degraded the beaches and marsh islands where oystercatchers nest. Shorebirds, including wood storks, were also preyed on by raccoons, opossum, coyotes and hogs that live in remote coastal areas.
Keyes said the Coastal Resources Division is working with the Army Corps of Engineers to build new 10-foot-high sand islands and sandbars using dredged-up sediment near Cumberland Island and along the Intracoastal Waterway to give the birds a boost and a better place to roost.
Loggerhead sea turtles, a threatened species, dropped to a C grade from a B, primarily due to increased predation. Sea turtle nesting sites were plentiful once again, with 3,431 loggerhead nests located, and a 52% emergence rate for hatchlings. But many of the eggs and baby turtles were gobbled by wild hogs, raccoons, coyotes before they could make their journey to the sea, according to the Wildlife Resources Division report.
The good news
The report contains good news for humans who like to cavort in coastal waters, as the water quality index received an A, at 89%. Overall indicators show the water is generally safe to swim in and to eat local shellfish, that oxygen levels support fish and other species, and bacteria is at acceptably low levels.
Read this related story:
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Democratic incumbents vie for redrawn House district seat
ATLANTA — Democratic incumbents running in south DeKalb County’s newly drawn District 90 are in a political predicament: Longtime comrades, they now find themselves pitted against each other.
Reps. Saira Draper and Becky Evans met Wednesday on the debate stage at St. John’s Lutheran Church to make the case for why voters should choose them for the newly drawn district in the upcoming May primary.
Mike St. Louis, chair of the Druid Hills Civic Association and moderator of the hourlong debate, lamented the“gratuitous” pairing of two Democratic incumbents in the same district drawn by Republicans who controlled the special legislative session on redistricting last year. The process was an effort to comply with a judge’s order to add more majority-Black districts.
House District 90, which Draper represents, will still include the part of Atlanta that is in DeKalb County, as well as six new precincts in southwest DeKalb that were in District 89, where Evans serves. Each was elected in districts that were and remain majority-Black, solid-blue districts.
No Republican or independent candidates qualified for the 2024 election for the new District 90.
Draper and Evans began and ended Wednesday’s debate acknowledging their respect for each other, and their chagrin over their political predicament, while trying to draw distinctions on their legislative records and strengths.
“This was not something that either of us asked for. It’s not something that either of us wanted,” Draper said. “And to me, it really underscores the fact that we have to get the majority in Georgia.”
Draper, a civil rights attorney serving in the House since 2023, said what makes her “the best person for the job … really boils down to democracy and diversity.” She described herself as an elections and voting rights expert who helped to “flip Georgia blue for the first time in 30 years” during the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterms, when she said she “led the voting rights efforts” in Georgia for President Joe Biden and U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, for whom she oversaw campaign staff and thousands of volunteers.
Draper said she’s now fighting to bring Democratic majorities back to the state House and Senate, which she estimated will likely take four to six years.
In the meantime, she said she has worked to push through what legislation she can in the Republican-controlled House and cited as a small victory House Bill 1207, a bill she crafted that requires advanced proofing of ballots by candidates and election supervisors. Draper sought out five Republicans as co-signers to gain majority support for the bill, which passed in both chambers and awaits Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature.
Noting that “diversity is a central tenet to the Democratic Party,” Draper said, “as a woman of color and as an immigrant, I bring perspectives to the table that are underrepresented at the Capitol.”
Draper immigrated to the U.S. when she was 6 years old from England, where her Spanish mother and Pakistani father met. “That makes me Spakistani,” she said, eliciting laughter from the audience. “But it also makes me the only member of the Georgia General Assembly who is a member of the Hispanic caucus and the Asian American Pacific [Islander] caucus.”
Evans, a community organizer and political operative who has served in the House since 2019, emphasized her six years of experience building relationships with fellow legislators and delivering on measures to support education, the environment, gun safety and housing.
“And I’m 100% pro-choice, 100% pro-LGBTQ and 100% pro-health care expansion,” Evans said, adding she is proud of her work developing legislation to promote literacy among school children over the past two years, including writing a bill last year to create the Georgia Council on Literacy and another bill to ensure that children are screened for dyslexia and other reading challenges and that teachers are trained in evidence-based reading and writing instruction.
When her bills didn’t pass from the House to the Senate by the Crossover Day deadline in 2023, Evans said she persuaded Republican lawmakers in the Senate to adopt her legislation, which then passed. She now serves on the 30-member literacy council, which she said is working “to make sure that all of our children will have the broadest possible futures and that they can all learn how to read.”
Evans also said she was “proud to deliver this session $7.4 million in [federal] gun violence prevention awareness funds that will go out to community groups” and to support the passage of a bipartisan Senate bill that will give “[sales] tax breaks [on gun safety devices] where people are using their guns responsibly.” She said she also advocated for adding new funding for school security grants to the education budget, which was approved.
The candidates took similar positions on many issues, both decrying the private school voucher bill they said would drain funds from public schools, and the need for the state to better fund impoverished school districts. They described their individual efforts to curtail gun violence and promote voting rights, as well as detailed their years of experience in ground-level get-out-the-vote efforts in DeKalb County and metro Atlanta. Draper and Evans also expressed measured support of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, which they said is needed to train police and first responders.
Among the 40 or so people in the audience, Lora Wuennenberg, 68, a Kirkwood resident and program manager at the humanitarian nonprofit CARE, said she emerged from the debate torn between the two candidates. Noting they have similar positions on the major issues she cares about, including public education, she said Draper, her current representative, impressed her as an “an activist who can mobilize people and is willing to stand up and stand out on some of the issues that may not be getting enough attention.”
“Becky seemed more of a practical, behind-the-scenes organizer, someone who understands the bureaucracy of government and has a lot of established contacts,” Wuennenberg said, noting Evans has worked across the aisle and “found entry points” to get legislation passed. “In the Republican-controlled House, maybe she can be more effective than Saira.”
Wuennenberg said over the next few weeks she’ll follow the candidates and look to see “how Saira thinks she can mobilize support for the bread-and-butter issues that have an impact on people’s lives” in the next legislative session.
Arica Schuett, 36, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Emory who lives in Druid Hills, said she also needs to spend more time studying the candidates.
She said Draper’s focus “on mobilizing voters and removing barriers to election participation resonated” with her, while Evans’ “experience and her ability to to work with constituencies that include Republicans is important. So getting a better understanding of how each candidate would manage their position in a really Republican Legislature is what’s important to me.”
Schuett said she plans to dive deeper into their proposed legislation and voting records. “I kind of want to look a little bit more at what they’ve done, right?”
The primary election will take place May 21.
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Barbershop talks and hip-hop summits: Georgia Black legislators’ group has big plans to build coalitions, boost voter rolls
The nation’s largest gathering of Black lawmakers is slated to meet in Atlanta this summer to discuss ways to boost voter participation nationwide ahead of the upcoming fall elections.
The Aug. 2-4 conference theme is “Testing 1, 2, 3.” The meeting will be the precursor to a series of events the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus plans to hold heading into the November presidential election.
“Because we’re the largest Black caucus in the nation, we’re reaching out to all of the caucuses from across the nation,” Rep. Carl Gilliard, D-Savannah, chairman of the 74-member Georgia caucus, told State Affairs. “This is the first time that I think we’re doing a total reach-out to all of the Black caucuses. We share a lot of similarities. Whether it’s voter suppression in Georgia, the same laws are going to be tried in Tennessee and the same laws are going to be tried in Florida. We share a lot of commonalities.”
Next week, for instance, the Georgia caucus is scheduled to issue a statement supporting efforts to pass a hate crimes bill in South Carolina. The bill passed in the House but stalled in the Senate, Gilliard noted.
Over 700 Black legislators represent about 60 million Americans, according to the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. In addition to the Georgia caucus, Black caucuses exist in nearly three dozen states.
Shortly after the August convention, the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus will embark on a 14-city tour throughout Georgia to focus on “getting out the vote.”
“We’re not going to tell them who to vote for,” Gilliard said of voters. “But what is happening right now is no one is talking to the people. And if the election were held today, we all would be in trouble because no one is talking or meeting the people where they’re at.”
The tour is a continuation of various actions the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus has taken this year to align with other organizations of people of color on common causes.
In March, the caucus joined forces with the Asian American Pacific Islander and Hispanic caucuses for a tri-caucus town hall. It was the first time the three groups have aligned. The Black caucus also has “reached out to partner with the Hindus of North America population and the diaspora,” Gilliard said.
“What we’re trying to do is form a coalition to get to as many diverse groups of people as we can,” he said.
Gilliard said the lack of individual and collective involvement in communities he’s seeing concerns him. It’s a far cry from four years ago.
In 2020, the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man murdered while jogging in Glynn County, and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by Louisville, Kentucky police serving a no-knock warrant for drug suspicion, led to more than 450 protests nationwide and on three continents.
That same year, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams led an effort to increase the voter rolls for the 2020 presidential election. Fair Fight and the New Georgia Projects, two groups Abrams founded, registered more than 800,000 new voters.
That level of community and political engagement has since subsided, Gilliard said.
“People don’t know what’s going on,” Gilliard said. “No one is really talking to the people. You’ve got a presidential election. I’m talking about on both [political] sides. There are rallies and different events being held, but nobody has gone to the barbershop. No one has gone to the community centers or the neighborhoods. We’re going to be empowering those communities by going and taking those townhall meetings right where they’re at, not in a big municipality but in community centers and neighborhoods.”
The caucus also plans to hold a hip-hop summit to reach young people, many of whom are skeptical of both political parties.
“They’re forming their own opinions,” Gilliard said. “They’re saying, ‘Forget about Trump. We need to hear something different.’ That’s just their perception. That’s why I’m really quietly championing the young candidates behind the scenes who are running right now because we need young leaders.
“We have to get as many people together, but we also have to get them ready to work.”
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Special prosecutor to decide if Lt. Gov. Jones should face criminal charges in 2020 election-meddling case
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones will face scrutiny over whether he should be criminally charged for alleged meddling in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia said Thursday it has assigned Executive Director Pete Skandalakis as the special prosecutor to handle the case because Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is barred from investigating Jones. The council is a nonpartisan state advocacy agency for district attorneys.
In July 2022, Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney blocked Willis from investigating Jones because her actions were an “actual and untenable” conflict of interest. At the time, Willis had hosted a campaign fundraiser for Jones’ Democratic rival, Charlie Bailey, and donated to his campaign when both men were running for lieutenant governor. Willis is currently involved in an election interference case she brought against former President Donald Trump and 18 others.
McBurney’s ruling left it up to the council to decide whether Jones should be criminally charged.
“I’m happy to see this process move forward and look forward to the opportunity to get this charade behind me,” Jones said in a statement issued Thursday. “Fani Willis has made a mockery of this legal process, as she tends to do. I look forward to a quick resolution and moving forward with the business of the state of Georgia.”
The council cited state bar rules in its news release and said there would be no further comments.
Skandalakis’ appointment marks another step in the ongoing political odyssey for Jones and other lawmakers over charges that they served as “false” electors to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Jones is one of 16 alleged “false” electors in Georgia who gathered at the state capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast ballots for Trump and then sent their false certification of his victory to the National Archives and the governor’s office.
Jones has denied any wrongdoing, saying he and other electors were acting on the advice of lawyers to preserve Trump’s chances in Georgia in case the former president won a court challenge that was pending at the time. Jones was a state senator during the 2020 election.
Trump’s campaign enlisted an alternate slate of electors in 2020 in a number of swing states where Trump was defeated, as part of an effort to circumvent the outcome of the voting, The New York Times reported Thursday.
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