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Request a DemoState Rep. Esther Panitch on combating antisemitism and the responsibilities of representing the Jewish community
Since the most recent war between Israel and Hamas erupted last month, two of the most prominent voices in the Georgia General Assembly engaging in public dialogue over the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been two freshman Democrats — Rep. Esther Panitch, who is Jewish, and Rep. Ruwa Romman, who is Palestinian. Both have personal ties to the region, and distinctly different perspectives on what’s happening there.
State Affairs spoke to both legislators last week about their concerns over the conflict and its implications at home, as well as about their current legislative priorities. Today we hear from Panitch. You can find our conversation with Romman, posted on Monday, here.
Esther Panitch first made a name for herself in Georgia as an attorney in several high-profile court cases in Atlanta, including representing several former Boy Scouts in a sex abuse case, and a client whose husband was convicted in the murder of a Jewish businessman.
Now she’s also known as the sole Jewish lawmaker in the Georgia House of Representatives, and one who’s working doggedly to combat antisemitism, in part through a bill she co-sponsored last session that inspired passionate, marathon debates on the House floor. The bill didn’t pass, but Panitch and her Republican co-sponsors vow to fight for it again next year.
Prior to Oct. 7, Panitch said, “people didn't really want to believe antisemitism was a problem in the U.S.. Now the mask has slipped. People are pretty open about it, and shockingly, horrifyingly open about it … Now Jews are being attacked on college campuses for what's happening in Israel, and Jewish businesses in the United States are being attacked for what's happening in Israel.”
An active, practicing Jew, Panitch grew up in Miami, attending synagogue and becoming involved in Hadassah, the national women’s Zionist movement. She met her husband on a Jewish Federation mission trip in Israel.
A talented debater in high school, she leveraged those skills at the University of Miami in both her communications classes as an undergrad, and in law school. Over the past two-and-a-half decades she has served as public defender in Miami and Atlanta, and now leads a private law practice specializing in criminal defense, family law and personal injury.
Q. Tell me about your background and what (and perhaps who) led you to pursue public service and specifically to serve in the state Legislature.
A. I’ve always liked to talk, so I ended up as the first full-time debater on the new debate program with the new coach, even though I was in ninth grade and high school started in 10th grade. … I learned debate skills as part of the debate team with Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown [Jackson], who went to a competing high school. We overlapped for three years and spent our summers together in debate camp because we were all nerds and her coach used to teach some of these debate camps. She was in the speech events like oratory and I was in the debate events, so we never competed against each other. We were always friends.
And South Florida really led the country in national debate, so I became like a nationally-ranked high school debater, and I knew that I could use my voice, and I did not want to do any more math or science, and I was terrible at both. In the School of Communications [at the University of Miami], you had a double major. So I did broadcasting to help my oratory skills, and I also did political science, never thinking I would actually use both sides of my degree. My plan was just to go into law school. So I did that and joined the domestic violence court [in Miami-Dade County] as my first job out of law school, and realized instead of helping judges, I wanted to be in front of them, arguing. So I joined the public defender's office in Miami. I spent five years there, started my own practice, and then two years later, my husband, who worked for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, was transferred up to Atlanta for what was supposed to be only two years. We had three little kids under the age of 4 at that point, from three different pregnancies — bam, bam, bam.
And thinking we were going right back to Miami, and I wasn't gonna take the bar [exam] because we were only going to be there for two years, and I figured I'd stay home with the kids, which I realized I was not cut out for after a year. I said, ‘I'll take the bar here and if we go back, at least I'm licensed somewhere else.’ So I did pass the bar and then I got a job because I needed to exercise my brain and my kids were all in preschool at the time, and then my husband [Roger] got laid off … We had a choice: we could stay or we could go back home to Miami, and we decided we wanted to stay. We really liked Atlanta, people were really nice, and we had a change of seasons, which I never had growing up.
I had no real interest in running for political office until Trump won … when I realized you didn't have to have any political background to end up at the presidency. And I said, ‘I just can't sit back.’ I realized that he was dangerous. And we saw that at the moment of the Muslim ban, when I went to the airport and stood between TSA [Transportation Security Administration] and families coming in. I didn't do immigration law, but I was ready to use whatever skills I had to help families be reunified. … We sat at the airport and we were on-the-ground lawyers there for people who needed legal assistance at that moment.
… So fast forward to I guess it was 2021. My kids had all gone off to college. I had just turned 50. And I'm thinking, ‘I'm gonna live my best life now. [Then-Rep., now-Sen.] Josh McLaurin [a lawyer she’d previously worked with on the Boy Scouts case] calls me — it was November, I was actually here in the mountains taking a walk, and he said, ‘I'm thinking I'm going to run for Senate. Are you interested in running for my House seat?’ … Then February came and …[former state senator] Jen Jordan was running for attorney general at that point, and Josh and Jen said they had found out that [former Rep.] Michael Wilensky, the only Jewish member [in the House] at that point, wasn't going to run again for reelection. And they both said to me, ‘Did you know that there will be no Jewish voices next session?’ I checked, and they were right. … So I became essentially the defacto Jewish voice, even if that's not who all of my constituents are — they elected me and now I'm the voice for 150,000 Jews in Georgia, in government.
Q. What are the key issues that you're concerned about, working on and hope to see addressed in the next Legislative session?
A. So last session I had plans to kind of sit back and learn before filing any bills on my own. I was approached by [Rep.] John Carson, who's a Republican, about the antisemitism bill, which had been introduced the year before, and didn't make it out of the Senate. And so I said, ‘Sure I'll get involved,’ and it wasn't a big part of what I was planning to do, but I knew it was something that the Jewish community supported. So I was happy to lend my voice to it. And then I got flyered — the antisemitic flyers; they landed on my door, so I tweeted about it. The thought was, I could either be quiet about it — this had been happening in the Jewish community for months, and nobody said anything — or I could be vocal about it and alert the non-Jewish community to what had been happening to us. And that's what I chose to do. So after that, the bill became my primary focus in the Legislature, just because that's how things worked. This year it didn't pass the Senate; it did pass the House. We're going to try again. I even tried to get it on the Special Session agenda, but the governor said no, so we're going to bring it back up in the next full session and try again to have it pass.
[Another antisemitism bill] went to the Senate Judiciary Committee and was amended in a very dangerous way. So we asked to table the bill at that point, John and I.
Q. What did you consider dangerous about the amendment to the antisemitism bill?
A. So the definition we wanted essentially says antisemitism is a ‘certain perception’ of Jews which leads to other things, and [Republican Sen.] Ed Setzler, who doesn't really have a Jewish constituency, decided he knows better and said it should be a ‘negative perception’ of Jews. He brought that into the committee meeting. He obviously had planned for it, and didn't discuss it with anybody in the Jewish community. I immediately saw it and said, literally while I'm sitting there testifying, ‘This is dangerous.’ It's not just negative perceptions that get Jews killed. It's positive perceptions — that Jews have power, or Jews have money — those get Jews killed just as much as any other antisemitic tropes. When they passed the amendment, we were shocked, and then John and I looked at each other and said this cannot go forward. So we asked the chair to table the bill. … Then the Lt. Governor decided it was important enough that he called a separate meeting of the Children and Families committee in the Senate, and it passed as we had authored it with the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of antisemitism … and then it was ready to get called up on Sine Die.
And we waited all day and night and it never got called, and I don’t know why. I'm a freshman Democrat. The president of the Senate doesn't consult me on what legislation he calls up.
Last year, when the community was being taunted by antisemites throughout the state, we thought that would have been enough to get it called. Obviously, we're in a whole new dimension right now, after Oct. 7. Last year the challenges we came up against were that you should be able to criticize Israel, and this bill wouldn't let you. Which is untrue — it's a definition. And it’s only applied to decide the intent of a crime or an unlawful act. It doesn’t come into play except for discerning the motive of a crime against somebody Jewish, or perceived to be somebody Jewish, or something that's already unlawful, like housing discrimination or school discrimination because you're Jewish. So that's the only way it comes in.
And now after Oct. 7, I think people can see that what other people used to call anti-Zionism but not antisemitism has a lot of overlap, and something that's anti-Zionist can easily be antisemitic. Whereas last year, people wouldn't accept that reality. … So now we’re seeing ‘Gas the Jews’ at protests, and ‘River to the Sea,’ which calls for the expulsion of Jews or the murder of Jews. All of these used to be just called, ‘I'm criticizing the Israeli government.’ No, you're not. … Why are you attacking Jews in America for what you don't like going on in Israel? That's antisemitic. So this definition, and I said this in my speech last year — we hadn't seen very many examples of this in the United States, but Europe had, and that's who came up with the definition. So they were already dealing with anti-Zionism as antisemitism and we just hadn't seen it. … And now that definition is the only definition that takes into account people harming Jews because of what's going on in Israel.
Q. The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is far away from Georgia, but close to your heart. You've been very vocal on social media and elsewhere about the conflict. What is most important for people in Georgia to understand about this latest chapter in the complex 75-year Israel-Palestinian conflict??
A. So somewhere between 90% and 95% of Jews believe in Zionism, which is Jewish self-determination. Not Jewish supremacy, [but] Jewish self-determination. And so when you see these outlying groups like Jewish Voice for Peace [JVP], or If Not Now, they don't represent the Jewish community. They are the fringiest of the fringe and they are anti-Zionist and don't believe that Israel has a right to exist. Again, that's contrary to what 90% to 95% of the world's Jews believe.
So I want them to know that anybody who tokenizes Jews by holding up JVP, or If Not Now, that's what they're doing, they're tokenizing the Jewish community by using some who are willing to be used as a cover. And don't forget, there were Jews who supported the Nazi party before they were killed. So I put those in the same category. And nobody ever believes me when I say there were Jews in favor of the Nazi party, but there were … and just like now, it's very difficult for the mainstream Jewish community to believe that there are people actively trying to harm Israel during this time. And everybody I know has a personal connection to what happened over there. One of my children was friends with somebody who was murdered in the music festival. There was a lone soldier that was just killed from Dunwoody a couple weeks ago. And I have family in the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces]. Everybody here has a connection there. It might be remote geographically; it is not remote emotionally and psychologically.
And then, as if what happened wasn't bad enough, you have the denialism. I went and watched that 43-minute video that they were showing to the journalists. I wouldn't wish watching that on anybody who doesn't have to. These are things you can't unsee. They are seared into your soul. But I had to bear witness as an elected representative that these things actually happened. And the glee that was taken by those murderers. So I do a lot of domestic violence work as part of my practice. And when there's a murder with domestic violence, it’s incredibly personal.… and that's what this was, but between strangers. … Of course everybody should be concerned about innocent civilians being caught up in it. The blame needs to be on Hamas for putting civilians in harm’s way intentionally. They want their numbers to go up, the numbers of dead. They don't include the numbers of combatants in their totals, but any child's death, any baby's death is one too many deaths. I look back to other wars that were fought to eradicate terrorists, like the Nazis — there was a blockade of Germany, because things were going to be used by the Nazis. There's always this balancing act of how to treat civilians, not just children, all civilians. And I believe there are a lot of mostly innocent people there, so you have to balance it … Hamas has said time and again that they will do this again and again and again. They have to be wiped out. But every life is sacred and every death is mourned. But again, Israel didn't start this.
… I criticized the far left, the Squad [progressive Democrats in Congress], for not speaking on Oct. 7. I made a snarky Tweet. And I was attacked by the far progressive left. And they threatened me with the primary. I say bring it. I didn't need this job. I have a law career. I still have a practice if I don't win. I mean, I'll be sad. I like doing what I'm doing, but I'm losing money being in the Legislature because I’m out of work for three months. So I'm not scared by competition.
Q. What does it mean to you for Gov. Brian Kemp to announce that he was sending an additional $10 million in state funds to support Israel's defense and flying the state flag at half staff for a week in the wake of the Hamas attack??
A. I was in Israel at the same time as Gov. Kemp in May. We saw each other at the U.S. Embassy reception. I'm incredibly grateful that he went. It was his first time and his family's first time to see why Israel means so much to the Jewish community here. How we are inextricably intertwined. Our lives here, our survival here, is dependent on the survival of the state of Israel. So I'm grateful for everything he does for Israel. And I'm hopeful that he will do the same for the American, Georgian Jewish community if this [antisemitism] bill passes, by signing it.
Q. Your work as a legislator can impact many people's lives and must feel consequential and perhaps even stressful at times. When you're not working, what do you do to unwind, free your mind and conjure up some joy?
A. That's a good question. I try to get to the mountains as much as possible just to disconnect. And I will say that I was raised in the Conservative branch of Judaism … and I was never [so] observant as to have no phones, no travel, no cars, that kind of thing on Shabbat [the Jewish sabbath]. Last weekend for the first time I realized how stressful everything was, and it was getting to me, and I stopped social media for the first time for Shabbat. And I think each week from here on out, I'm going to do something else that requires me to disconnect, because it is stressful. There's a lot of honor being the only Jewish member and a lot of responsibility, especially since Oct. 7. So I take that very seriously and it's hard to disconnect. I haven't done anything fun. My mother and I were supposed to travel to Europe and Israel for my birthday five days after Oct. 7, and I didn't feel that I could leave the district. … So I haven't had a vacation in a very long time, but I'm grateful that my family has a place in the mountains where I can just get away and wear a sweatshirt and disconnect.
The Esther Panitch file
Position: Representative, District 51 (D-Sandy Springs/Fulton County)
Age: 52
Birthplace: North Miami, Florida
Current residence: Sandy Springs
Education: Bachelors of science in communications and a law degree, both from University of Miami.
Career path: Started her legal career as a domestic violence court coordinator, and then served as an assistant public defender in Miami-Dade County, handling cases from misdemeanors to murder. Moved with her family to Georgia in 2004, and joined the Fulton Conflict Defender’s Office before opening a private firm in Atlanta representing criminal defendants, victims and clients in family law cases. She is serving her first term as a state legislator.
Family: Husband, Roger Panitch, and three children: Miriam, 24; Ben, 22; and Jacob, 20.
Hobbies/passions outside work: Spending time in the north Georgia mountains; volunteering with Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
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Weekend Read: Mesha Mainor expected to face uphill battle to retain seat — even against little-known competitors
Three of the four candidates for Georgia House District 56 in southwest Atlanta are scheduled to appear at a forum in Fulton County next week, just a few days ahead of the May 21 primary election.
Rep. Mesha Mainor won’t be among them. The incumbent, an Atlanta native running for her third term, said she won’t go because her alleged former stalker — one of her Democratic challengers — will be there.
But in any group of Democrats gathered in Atlanta lately, Mainor is the odd woman out. Since switching to the Republican Party last July, she has earned the enmity of many of her former Democratic colleagues, as well as the voters who elected her.
Mainor’s strong support for bills creating private school vouchers and disciplining prosecutors last year made her a pariah among some in her party. After Mainor cast the lone Democratic vote for Senate Bill 233, the Georgia Promise Scholarship Act, which narrowly failed, Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, said that “a Democrat who votes to defund public education should be primaried,” and posted online a photo of a $1,000 check awaiting Mainor’s primary challenger.
More condemnation and criticism from other Democrats followed, leading Mainor to announce last July that she was leaving the Democratic Party due to their “harassment” and intolerance. In doing so, she became the only Black member of the GOP among Georgia’s 236 lawmakers and the first Black Republican woman to ever serve in the Georgia General Assembly.
This year Mainor voted as a member of the Republican majority to pass the school voucher bill, as well as Senate Bill 332, which empowers the oversight commission aimed at disciplining “rogue” and errant prosecutors.
‘Dead woman walking’
Mainor’s Republican colleagues have praised her for taking a stand on the two bills, despite the political cost.
“She was a leader on that education reform bill from start to finish,” said Rep. Matt Reeves, R-Duluth, adding that “here in Georgia, I think that people want to see problem solving and effectiveness and delivering results. And that’s what she has done.”
House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, told State Affairs that “[Mainor’s] support of school choice legislation played a vital role” in the bill’s passing. He added, “Representative Mainor’s dedication to common-sense policies that support Georgia’s children, families and communities has been evident since day one.”
Still, Mainor, who has no Republican primary opposition, faces long odds for reelection in November in her strongly Democratic district, where 90% of voters chose Joe Biden for president in 2020.
House District 56 is 47% Black, 32% White, 10% Asian and 6% Hispanic or Latino, and 26% of residents live below the poverty line, according to 2022 data from the Atlanta Regional Commission.
“She has incumbency in her favor, and she’ll do better than most Republicans in a heavily Democratic district where African Americans are a key constituency, but she will get nowhere close to 50% plus one vote,” said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.
“She alienated everyone in the Democratic caucus and engendered animosity among her colleagues” through her unpopular votes, he said. And once Mainor switched parties, “she was a dead woman walking from that point on,” Bullock said. “I would imagine most Republican strategists have written that district off.”
“Party matters,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science associate professor at Emory University. Although “there is a diversity of thought within Black communities on issues related to school choice, this is likely not the top issue for voters in her district in this cycle,” Gillespie said. “And Democratic voters as a whole tend to penalize more conservative candidates. Party switching kind of goes beyond the pale. … While she may have some residual level of support as an incumbent, most people are not going to defect and go vote for her because they’ve known her before. Partisanship is going to hold that back.”
Mainor’s Democratic challengers
Mainor’s first Democratic challenger to emerge was Bryce Berry, a 22-year-old seventh-grade math teacher and president of the Young Democrats of Georgia.
Originally from St. Louis, Berry said he got involved in community organizing as a teen after the shooting death of Michael Brown by police in nearby Ferguson in 2014. At Morehouse College, Berry started a state-level student group to help elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020 and then led college voter mobilization efforts for the Georgia Democratic Party in 2022.
Berry has since won the endorsement of dozens of Democratic state legislators, including most of the House leadership. He also has the backing of several Atlanta school board members, Fulton County commissioners and Democratic student organizations at Spelman and Morehouse colleges.
Berry, a teacher at Young Middle School, in southwest Atlanta has raised $36,350 in campaign contributions since last July, and his campaign war chest held $19,150 as of April 30. Mainor, meanwhile, reported raising $62,863 over the last three quarters and had $12,420 in her campaign account through April.
Berry’s platform includes measures around education reform, expanding Medicaid coverage, raising the minimum wage and working with local and federal governments to create more affordable, mixed-use housing developments in Georgia.
“Fundamentally, Rep. Mainor has left our community behind,” Berry said. “It’s not just about her switching parties; it’s about her actions. …Voters in my district feel like they are not being heard by the state, their needs are not being met and they’re ready for a return back to a visionary, progressive Democrat who will work tirelessly to improve their lives.”
Emory’s Gillespie said Berry appears to be the front-runner in the District 56 Democratic primary.
The Democratic candidate with the next-best level of name recognition in House District 56 is likely Corwin “CP” Monson.
Monson, 50, an audio engineer, was a volunteer in Mainor’s unsuccessful campaign for Atlanta City Council in 2019 before she fired him for being disruptive, she said. Soon after, she accused him of stalking her. A Fulton judge granted a temporary protective order against Monson, who was later arrested for violating it.
In September 2021, in a plea deal offered by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Monson pleaded no contest to aggravated stalking charges and accepted a three-year sentence — one in prison and the rest on probation. Having already served 10-and a-half months in jail, he was released in November 2021.
Monson has denied stalking Mainor, who he said has “lied and committed character assassination” against him. He told State Affairs he took the plea deal to get out of jail after his lawyer told him a court backlog in Fulton County meant his case might not be heard for another two years.
Monson, who has been endorsed by former state representative for District 56 “Able” Mable Thomas, is campaigning on economic development and education reform, including making the school funding formula “more equitable” for low-performing and rural schools.
Monson also seeks to expand Medicaid and other affordable health care options, as well as pursue criminal justice reform.
He reported $1,005 in campaign donations as of January, but has not yet filed a campaign finance report for the first quarter of 2024, which was due on May 7.
Last week, Mainor announced she is suing Fulton County, Willis and Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington (who initially represented Monson) in civil court for their mishandling of the stalking case against Monson, which she said was not properly investigated, was sidetracked due to interference from Arrington and resulted in a too-lenient sentence.
Also challenging Mainor is Adalina “Ada” Merello, a 42-year-old waitress who has lived in Vine City in House District 56 for two years.
Originally from Eugene, Oregon, she has an extensive background in government and campaign-related work, including working for former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed on neighborhood improvement and service-based initiatives and volunteering for the campaigns of former President Barack Obama in 2012, gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in 2018 and U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams and U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in 2020 and 2021.
“I’m running because the neighborhood has been misrepresented for too long,” Merello told State Affairs. “Recently, we’ve had backstabbing with misrepresentation,” she said of Mainor’s party switch. “But I believe prior to that, we just don’t have a loud enough voice at the Gold Dome. So I’m newer in the neighborhood, but what I’ve seen is just people living their day-to-day lives, wanting life to be a little easier. And I don’t mean that in a handout way but a hand-up way, of people helping each other.”
Her campaign platform includes mental health reform, with a focus on further implementing some of the parity goals established in the major mental health legislation passed in 2022.
Merello, who has openly discussed her bipolar disorder diagnosis, said she “wants to normalize mental health issues and treatment to make life easier for people who’ve had lives like mine.”
She also wants to improve public schools, create more food security for low-income residents, enact more tenant protections and expand LGBTQ+ rights.
Merello reported $13,219 in campaign contributions as of April 30.
Running on her record
Shrugging off Democrats’ criticism , Mainor, 49, maintains she is “extremely proud” of her advocacy for “the school choice bill,” which she said will deliver sorely needed education options to families in her district, where only 2% or 3% of students at some schools meet reading and math proficiency levels, she said.
Mainor grew up in the Hunter Hills neighborhood of District 56, where she said property and violent crimes, prostitution and the drug trade were rampant and students like her were stuck attending low-performing, poorly equipped schools. She said her mother “worked the system” to enable her to attend Mays High School across town, a better public school that put her on a path to attend Howard University.
“Currently, my district has the most charter schools than any other district in the entire state,” she said. “And what does that mean? That means parents want options and choices. And I do believe school choice is going to create a competitive environment; it’s going to change the dynamics of the education system, which needs to happen. I mean, we really do need to look at how education is done. The school board essentially controls the curriculum, and it’s not serving all students well enough. … And so I think SB 233 will allow families to kind of pick what they want.”
Besides improving educational opportunities for children, Mainor said she’ll continue to focus on public safety and criminal justice reform. She pointed to a bill she sponsored last session, House Bill 1165, that will bring in $7.5 million in federal funds for gun violence prevention programs in Georgia, which Kemp signed in April. She also worked this year with Rep. Reeves on House Bill 926, also known as the Second Chance Workforce Act, which allows people to keep their driver’s licenses and “to still be able to get to work” while they’re awaiting court appearances. Kemp signed it last week.
In 2023, as a Democrat she authored House Bill 142, the Unified Campus Public Safety Act, which allows police on the multiple Atlanta University Center campuses in southwest Atlanta to cross boundaries and collaborate, which she said was in response to campus shootings and bomb scares.
Mainor pointed to other accomplishments during her two terms, including her bill in 2021 to create the Fulton Technology & Energy Authority, an agency that fosters the development of energy-saving technologies that she said will lower the energy burden and create good-paying, green jobs for her constituents.
If reelected, her “key priorities are going to be continuing in the education space,” she said. “But in addition to schoolwide things, I really want to focus on the criminal justice system. I want to see what kind of resources you have while you’re in jail that are getting you ready for when you go out of jail and then when you’re on probation, because we really need to be more comprehensive with the resources we’re giving ‘second chance’ citizens once they come out.”
Reeves, who serves on two House judiciary committees, said Mainor “has a passion for workforce issues and upward mobility of young people. … I think her mindset is rather than having people unnecessarily go to jail or go to prison, to figure out a way to not have their work and education disrupted. And that invariably touches on legal and criminal and public safety issues, so we’ve had multiple chances to work together. And what I’ve seen is she’s very educated, intelligent, a deep thinker in terms of legislative matters. She gets the big picture and the philosophical issues, but she’s always working on the practical part of it to help out her constituents.”
Mainor said she has enjoyed accomplishing more as a legislator in the Republican majority.
“Mentally, I’m in a better place because I don’t have the hostility on one side, because of my vote on school choice or whatever vote I did. And so I feel like I’m in a space where I am encouraged,” she said. “And I got a lot more done this year than I did last year.”
She said she is relying on voters in her district to “look at my record and reflect on what I’ve been able to deliver and see how that compares to what you’ve gotten from Democratic representation in recent years. I tell people, ‘Now you have someone at the other side of the table, sharing what your needs are, because right now [the Republicans] don’t know. I’m able to go and say this type of community needs this. Right now they have no idea.’”
Mainor said, “People in the community have told me, ‘You have helped us and we don’t care what letter is next to your name,’ and sent texts saying, ‘I guess I’m gonna vote across the ballot.’ Many people are coming to me secretly. You know, being Black and a Republican is taboo. You’re not allowed to be a Republican if you’re Black. You’re bound to face bullying and ridicule. Nobody, no one feels like they can just come out and say it, and that’s fine. I just need them to vote for me at the ballot box.”
Gillespie of Emory said Mainor might be expecting too much from voters.
“As a third-term incumbent, you have an incumbency advantage, but you haven’t built up a long-term reservoir of goodwill yet, compared to someone who’s held on to the seat for, say, 20 years,” she said. “It’s a risky thing to get ahead of your constituents on policy, when your constituents aren’t animated by the same issues that you are. And now we’re going to see what the impact of that is.”
Early voting is underway through May 17, and primary election day is May 21. Primary runoff elections, if needed, will be held June 18. The general election will happen Nov. 5.
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Kemp signs a bevy of bills on elections, public safety and workforce development
The Gist
Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday ended a six-week whirlwind statewide bill-signing tour that enacted hundreds of new laws governing agriculture, families, elections, public safety and workforce development.
He also vetoed a dozen bills — including those dealing with homestead exemptions and easing eligibility for the HOPE Scholarship for former foster youths — during that time.
What’s Happening
All told, Kemp signed 709 bills into law in the 40 days since the 2024 legislative session ended in the early hours of March 29. The most crucial piece of legislation, by far, was the $36.1 billion fiscal year 2025 state budget, which included 12 disregards. A disregard is when a state agency is directed not to spend the money allocated for a specific item.
“He didn’t have any real disregards. The majority of these are clarifications,” Kemp spokesman Garrison Douglas said of the governor. “Agencies were given more specific instructions on how to spend the money.”
Bills impacting education, health care, military members, human trafficking and Georgia’s coastal communities were among those Kemp signed in the month following the session’s end. Other notable legislation:
- Police and property owners now have more tools to remove squatters, people who have illegally taken over a private home or property.
- Homeowners associations are now required to notify homeowners in writing of a covenant breach and give them time to fix it before the HOAs take legal action.
- Families of students in low-performing school districts may now receive scholarships, commonly referred to as vouchers, of $6,500 per child to be used for private school tuition or homeschooling expenses.
Additional legislation the governor signed over the last two weeks includes:
Agriculture
- Kemp signed a package of bills meant to provide further protection for the state’s No. 1 industry. The new laws are intended to ban “adversarial” countries from owning Georgia farmland, ease high input costs for farmers, protect children from misleading and dangerous marketing, and hike penalties for livestock theft.
Children & Families
- Senate Bill 376 improves timely permanent placement of a child removed from his or her home by the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services.
- Senate Bill 387 provides free state identification cards for children between the ages of 14 and 17 who are in the custody of the Division of Family and Children Services.
Elections
Any Georgia resident can now challenge another resident’s voter eligibility under a new law the governor signed in April, setting up probable cause to have voters removed from the rolls, critics say. Senate Bill 189 also allows a presidential candidate from any political party to be on the ballot as long as that person qualifies in at least 20 other states. It’s one in a package of election-related bills that critics say could impact the outcome of the 2024 and other future elections.
- House Bill 974 gives the public online access to photos of ballots cast in elections on the Georgia Secretary of State’s website, requires watermarks on ballots and uses technology to verify the text on ballots cast. The bill also requires a percentage of ballots in select statewide elections to be audited.
- House Bill 1207 gives election supervisors the flexibility to change the number of voting booths in precincts.
Public Safety
- House Bill 1105, the Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act, creates a new immigration law that requires law enforcement to determine the nationality and immigration status of people they detain and requires the Department of Corrections and sheriffs to notify federal authorities when they have undocumented immigrants in their custody. Failure to enforce the law could cause local governments to lose state and federal funds, and law enforcement officers and government officials could face misdemeanor charges.
- Senate Bill 63 adds 30 more criminal charges to those requiring cash bail for release, including 18 misdemeanors, such as criminal trespass, forgery and failure to appear. The bill also limits what charitable organizations can do to provide bail to people in jail and establishes that individuals and organizations cannot post more than three cash bonds per year to secure a person’s release. Legal defense organizations say it unfairly limits their work and violates the rights of those accused, and they plan to sue the state to overturn the law.
- Senate Bill 465 creates a new type of offense — felony aggravated involuntary manslaughter — for selling fentanyl to someone who dies from taking the potent drug. Dealers could be prosecuted under the new law whether or not they knew the drug they sold contained fentanyl. Penalties range from a minimum of 10 years to 30 years or life imprisonment.
Workforce Development
Several bills were enacted to help students take advantage of dual enrollment and technical education programs, especially those in high-demand career fields.
- House Bill 982 directs the State Workforce Development Board to create the High-Demand Career List. Colleges, technical schools and high schools currently use conflicting lists, so this unified list will eliminate confusion among students, parents, educators and agencies about what careers are considered high-demand.
- Senate Bill 440 creates the Accelerated Career Diploma Program and simplifies the pathway for students to receive dual enrollment funding for more than 30 hours.
- Senate Bill 497 expands the apprenticeship programs in high-demand career fields and creates a pilot program for public service career apprenticeships.
The Legislature considered more than a dozen bills related to occupational licensing. Among those that passed:
- Senate Bill 354 removes the licensure requirement for beauticians who blow-dry hair, wash hair or apply makeup. The bill doesn’t include other services, such as cutting hair, applying dyes, bleaching or using chemicals, which will still require a cosmetology or esthetician license.
- Senate Bill 373, requires the Board of Marriage and Family Therapists to issue an expedited license to any individual moving from another state who has a current valid license to practice in that state and is in good standing with that state.
- Senate Bill 195 makes Georgia the third state to join the Social Work Licensure Compact. Once seven states have joined, the compact will become functional and allow social workers with valid licenses in good standing to practice in member states.
View Kemp’s 2024 signed legislation here.
Here are some of the bills Kemp vetoed:
House Bill 1231 would have expanded the Georgia Tuition Equalization Grant (TEG) Program, HOPE Scholarship and Dual Enrollment Program eligibility for certainprivate, nonprofit institutions; allowed HOPE Scholarship recipients to use unusedcredit hours to get a first professional degree; and removed the initial and first-year achievement standards of the HOPE Scholarship for former foster youths. Kemp said he vetoed the bill because none of the three proposals were accompanied by additional funding or fiscal analysis.
Senate Bill 368 would have prohibited foreign nationals from making political contributions, which is already banned by federal law. Kemp vetoed the bill at the request of the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Rick Williams, R-Milledgeville.
House Bill 1019, as originally introduced, would have doubled the statewide homestead tax exemption to $4,000 from $2,000 if voters approved it in a referendum. But on the last day of the legislative session, the Senate adopted a floor amendment to return the bill to its original form. That amendment did not change the language of the constitutionally required voter referendum, which references a $10,000 exemption. Voters would therefore be approving a different exemption, which the Legislature did not pass. Conflict between the statutory and the referendum language led Kemp to veto the bill.
See the governor’s statements on all the bills he vetoed here.
What’s Next?
Most of the new laws took effect upon signing or will take effect July 1 unless otherwise noted.
Read these related stories:
Have questions or comments? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajill or at [email protected] and Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
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Rural communities hopeful Kemp change to state soil amendment law will curb stink
After seven years and millions of dollars in restoration, Heritage GA opened its door last month to those seeking solitude and a chance to commune with nature. But the constant presence of trucks hauling a noxious concoction of waste byproducts from poultry processing plants threatens to ruin those plans.
The historic Catholic retreat sitting on 200 acres near Sharon is meant to be an economic boon and tourist attraction for Taliaferro (pronounced “Tolliver”) County, a poor, mostly Black county of 1,600, situated 90 miles east of Atlanta.
“It’s a very historic, sacred site. Our business is being threatened by this soil amendment. It’s [the retreat] been a major financial investment in the county and in the state and it’s really helping,” Betsy Orr, chief executive officer of Purification Properties LLC, which restored the retreat — a tribute to the first Catholic settlers who arrived in Georgia in 1790.
The sludge, known as soil amendment, is being transported to a hog farm about 1.5 miles from Heritage. The former hog farm was cited by the state Environmental Protection Division after residents complained that the waste being spread on the farm had polluted a nearby creek. The property owner resolved the consent order requiring him to pay $5,000, mark the buffer area on the farm and ensure no soil amendment is applied to that area, according to EPD spokesperson Sara Lips.
The Heritage property includes a commercial building, barn, cottages, prayer spaces, walking trails and the oldest Catholic Cemetery in Georgia. Orr predicts that if the smell from the former hog farm reaches Heritage, “it’s going to wreck our business.”
On Monday, Orr breathed an inward sigh of relief when she learned that Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill into law that could prove fortuitous for landowners and other businesses battling problems created by soil amendment.
The new law adds a provision to the state Soil Amendment Act of 1976 that stops companies from hauling or receiving soil amendment if they’ve been notified by EPD to resolve an outstanding dispute or complaint. The notification is known as a consent order. The new law is effective July 1.
“It’s good because the state and the Agriculture Department have really prevented that kind of bill from being enacted because they say that it’s to the farmer’s benefit to be able to use the soil amendments,” Orr said.
Orr’s comments are a common refrain from business owners and families with properties in rural Georgia who sit near soil amendment sites and who complain of vultures, hordes of flies and unbearable smells floating across their properties.
“The problem is a lot of the soil amendments are causing pollution. They are stinky, nasty wastewater and other products,” Orr said. “Sometimes it is not even what they are allowed to dump. Finally, they have passed this amendment, and I hope they enforce it. Some of the things that these people are dumping are … ruining the landowners around them and the state has got to start caring about that.”
Doug Abramson, a retired corporate lawyer who lives in Wilkes County where a soil amendment runoff killed 1,700 fish in the Little River July 2022, called the new law “a step in the right direction.”
“Many counties throughout the state are encountering problems with sludge, improper dumping, and [other] soil amendment issues,” said Abramson, who along with his wife Susan have been working to address the problem for about a decade. “This [new law] is at least a recognition that there are problems out there. I do think the state could do better. The Department of Agriculture could do better but it is a step in the right direction.”
Have questions? Contact Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
Watch live: Kemp signs $36.1B budget bill
Today is the deadline for Gov. Brian Kemp to either sign or reject bills passed by the Georgia General Assembly during this past legislative session. Arguably, the biggest of those bills is the annual budget. Kemp and first lady Marty Kemp will be joined by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, House Speaker Jon Burns, and members …