Stay ahead of the curve as a political insider with deep policy analysis, daily briefings and policy-shaping tools.
Request a DemoState Rep. Ruwa Romman on her 2024 legislative priorities and what it means to be the first Muslim woman in the House
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. Ruwa Romman, who is Palestinian; and Rep. Esther Panitch, who is Jewish. 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 Romman, and on Tuesday we’ll post our conversation with Panitch.
Rep. Ruwa Romman is a freshman Democrat representing District 97, which includes Gwinnett County and her current hometown of Duluth. A Palestinian born in Amman, Jordan, Romman came to Georgia with her family when she was 7-years-old, growing up in Cumming in Forsyth County, then a mostly-white, conservative area of northeast Georgia marked by decades of racial tension and sporadic white supremacist violence.
“This was the kind of place where my teacher pulled me out of driver’s ed class because he overheard somebody mentioned I’m Palestinian and wanted to interrogate me to make sure I'm not part of Hamas,” recalled Romman, who has worn a head scarf since she was young, despite her parents’ fears for her safety.
“I was really proud of who and what I am, and really just going back to the values of justice and the importance of caring for others,” she said. “These were all core Islamic teachings, but I was growing up at a time where people would warp every single Arabic word into some sort of sinister understanding of my faith — that it was violent, that it was barbaric, that it was horrible, and honestly, we're seeing the same thing happening right now about Palestinians, where everything in our culture and language and lexicon is being deemed violent, because we're allowing these organizations like Isis and Hamas to define Muslims and Palestinians, when we all understand that the KKK doesn't represent Christianity.”
As a child Romman said she tried to teach her classmates “about Islam and how literally the root word is ‘peace.’ The idea that this faith has been twisted in this way was unacceptable to me. I'm also the oldest [child], and incredibly stubborn, and so I have a tendency to just be like ‘No, this is wrong. Let me tell you what's right.’ But at the same time, it [having to explain her religion] robbed me of my childhood. It really took away that sort of innocence that a lot of kids had that I lost very early on because I knew that I was representing something bigger than myself. But at the same time it is just really important for me to help people understand my community.”
With the boom in business and residential growth that has developed along state Highway 400 since the 1990s, Forsyth’s demographics have changed dramatically, and now has a population that is 20% Asian, 10% Hispanic and 5% Black. Romman said her sister, who is 12 years younger, “had a great time in high school. Her class is super diverse.”
Romman spent much of the past decade working and advocating for Muslim-American causes and volunteering for Democratic candidates while completing her education. She attended Oglethorpe University, studying politics, and earned a master’s degree in public policy at Georgetown University. She also worked for civil rights organizations for several years, and most recently as a consultant for Deloitte, specializing in government affairs.
She took office in January as the first Muslim woman elected to serve in the state Georgia House of Representatives.
The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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. So, I grew up here, went to Oglethorpe University. And this was during Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter's campaigns [for U.S. Senate and governor, respectively]. They did a joint type of thing back then and invited students to get politically involved. And as you know, 90% of political work is grunt work. It's the door knocking. It's the phone calling. … And what I learned was we can literally shift our reality one door at a time. And so many of these policy decisions can be changed by engaging people one door at a time.
And thing number two that I learned was that there was little outreach to Muslim communities, Asian-American communities, communities that historically haven't been engaged politically. And so after that I [got involved with] the Georgia Muslim Voter Project and I was so excited about it because it was a nonprofit and all they did was register people to vote and teach them where and how to vote, and I was stoked because that was what was missing.
So I leaned really heavily into the nonprofit space. At one point I worked for Points of Light to learn how to do some of that fundraising. … As an intern at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, I actually got to give tours to people like John Lewis and Ambassador Andrew Young, and they were basically giving me a tour, let's be honest, but it was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. I got to dig deep into the civil rights movement to learn things. John Lewis was I think 19 or 20 when he started SNCC [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]. A lot of these folks were young, but they were disciplined and they were committed and they just had such a clear moral understanding of what was required of us. And to get a chance to talk to them and sit with them and ask them questions was probably one of the greatest honors of my life.
I mean, everything I do is colored by the civil rights movement in some way, shape or form. … A lot of what I learned — how to register people to vote, how to be civically engaged, how to organize, how to do all of that was from Black movement organizers. And I don't think I would know how to do any of this stuff had it not been for the example that they set.
… And then we're in 2015-2016, it was the height of Trump's candidacy and eventual presidency. So that's when the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Georgia chapter was refounded, and I was one of the five original, I guess, like refounders. Basically, we operationalized the idea of a CAIR chapter here as the only Muslim civil rights organization in the state. This was when the Muslim ban was also implemented. So I was spending time at the airport translating for travelers who were stuck but needed somebody to help with Arabic. … And what was really interesting to me about that experience and I think what gave me some of the courage to kind of be a little bit more public about my advocacy was that it was a time of heightened hatred, particularly against Muslims. We were getting death threats. I was assigned a GBI agent. We had state reps taking pictures with militia groups that were attending anti-Muslim rallies, and we were getting death threats to local mosques, things like that. And so I feel like that experience took me up a notch in terms of sometimes the cost of this work and what it means.
Long story short … Shafina Khabani [head of the Georgia Muslim Voter Project] reached out to me and said, ‘We're doing a training for people interested in running for office.’ And I said, ‘Okay,’ and she's like, ‘We really need more people to attend, this is just really important. It's the first of its kind, but we need to have basically more butts in seats.’ And it was on a Zoom call. I was, ‘Fine. I'll do laundry and listen and give you feedback if you're missing anything.’ But a reporter from the AJC was there and she was asking me why should Muslim women be involved politically. Why is it important for this community to stay engaged in the political process? I was like, ‘I love talking about this.’ Her article was published a few months later, on my and my husband’s anniversary, on December 23rd, 2021. And it started with ‘Ruwa Romman is running for office.’
And I was like, I don't even know what district I live in, this is absurd. But the phone calls wouldn't stop and the cajoling wouldn't stop. My Muslim community, my advocacy community, every person who read the AJC that I knew growing up was calling and saying ‘You should run for office.’ And so 15 days later, I launched my campaign.
Q. And besides all that encouragement, what did you think that you might change or move the needle on?
A. I love digging into the policy, and the things I ran on were things like expanding access to Medicaid, and fixing the economic opportunity gap in our state, and making sure that every child has access to high quality, diverse public school opportunities. And voting rights. I did my masters on the Voting Rights Act and I knew that these laws had a real impact on turnout and so as I've tried to tell people as a state representative, I agreed to do this because those were the things that I knew the most about, those were things that I can engage the best on. So there's my constituents in my district and a broader constituency that is the Muslim and Palestinian community. And the reason I distinguish between the two is because the majority of Palestinians in the U.S. are Christian. And so I’m sort of wearing these multiple hats of state rep and all these different communities were looking to me to learn the process and I was hoping to help them as well.
Q. What are the key issues that you're concerned about, working on, and hope to see legislation address in the next session?
A. I would love to see Medicaid expanded. There's no reason why we haven't done Medicaid expansion. Hospitals are closing all around our state, 50% of counties don't have an OB/GYN. We were just ranked as the worst state for health care in the country by Fortune [magazine], the absolute bottom of the bottom of the list. And to be clear, that also doesn't translate to us paying less for health care. In fact, we pay more than a lot of these higher ranking states in our country. And so health care is an absolute big one for me. I grew up with sporadic access to health care. It was always a problem.
… Fully funding education. What all people don't understand is these teacher raises are great, this fully funding the QBE [Quality Basic Education] formula was a phenomenal thing that we did, fully funding HOPE [college scholarships] was a phenomenal thing that we did, but this is at the tail end of almost 10-plus years of austerity measures, and now we need to pay to restore these institutions back to where they were. On voting rights, we've got some really awesome experts in our body, particularly folks like [Rep.] Saira Draper [D-Atlanta] who has been professionally doing this work as well. And like I said, I did my masters on the Voting Rights Act and its impact and repealing pieces of it and its impact on turnout, and I will fight every bill in any way shape or form that impacts peoples’ ability to vote. I think, at the end of the day, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. It just doesn't exist. I mean we have looked at billions of ballots, we have studied an insane amount of races, and every single researcher agrees that this sort of ballot stuffing is just not real. It's this kind of manipulation everyone’s worried about that doesn't exist.
And closing the economic opportunity gap includes everything from public transportation to raising the minimum wage to ensuring that people have safe working conditions.
Q. Where do you think you may have some traction or hope to get some things done in the House with a Republican majority?
A. If you look at the results of the vote on SB 233, the school voucher bill that failed, a lot of my colleagues understand that for a lot of their constituents, the only thing they can access is their local public school. There is no private school in the area. There's no better alternative. And so they understand the importance of making sure that schools are taken care of. That if they are crumbling, they get fixed and that we are able to give every child the education that they should be having access to. Things like that. I think the idea of how do we prevent hospitals from closing? That's something we all agree on, right? People don't want to live in an area where they don't have access to a hospital because, God forbid, all of us are prone to accidents, illnesses, and emergencies. These are things that impact us on a human level. Obviously do we disagree on how we fix those things? Totally. But what I've noticed at least working on the House side, we kind of have to learn how to work together better. And I find people are at least willing to engage in the conversation and consider different possibilities. It doesn’t always translate to votes on the House floor, but it has translated into moving some things through committee.
Q. What would you say are the top lessons learned or key takeaways after your first 11 months of being in the Legislature?
A. One of the best lessons I have learned is that even when you can't decide what is coming to the House floor, you can still do a lot of good as a state representative. One of my favorite things is constituent services. I have access to points of contact that most people in the general public don't have, and so when somebody comes to me and says, ‘Hey, this thing is stuck somewhere,’ I can literally help unstick it.
Q. The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is far away from Georgia, but close to your heart. You've been quite vocal on social media and elsewhere about the conflict. What is important for people in Georgia to understand about this latest chapter in the complex, 75-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
A. So, it's weird because I feel like the personal is the professional right now, and I'm really good about separating the two, and I've been unable to do so. On a personal level, I really am taking it day by day. There are days where I can't sleep, I can't function, but simultaneously I have to anyway, because every single day I'm getting text messages, a phone call, a Facebook post, something from a community member who's lost 10, 20, 50 family members, and I'm not exaggerating here. This is an occurrence that happens every single day for me.
We are seeing the conversation evolve in the way that it has because for the first time there are way more people in the United States that know a Palestinian or somebody impacted by this than ever before. And to give you an understanding, I just held a series of open office hours in my district, mostly to talk about redistricting stuff and what to expect. Naturally people also wanted to talk about what's going on [with Israel and Gaza]. And this was the first time for me as a Palestinian where people understood that this chapter didn't start on Oct. 7. It was a horrible new chapter. It's just distressing in every way for everybody. But it was so interesting to me to hear back from my constituents who were seeing what’s happening in Gaza right now is unacceptable. Some people understand the argument that Israel needs to respond and defend itself, but we've now shifted from defense to a much different and much more sinister … people are recognizing that just as every other country in the world, Israel is currently experiencing a dysfunctional far-right government that is attempting to take advantage of a tragedy for political gain. Israel is not unique here. It's just unique in the fact that this issue matters to so many people outside of the country.
And with that personal piece of so much pain and so much anguish and so much suffering, on the flip side I have to figure out how do I connect what I'm hearing from my community to the people who can actually do something about it, because as a state representative, I have little to no jurisdiction on international issues. And as I've tried to explain to my colleagues, we have a duty to make sure that people who represent us are doing what we need them to do. And 80% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans support a ceasefire. How do we ensure that's happening? And at the same time making sure that those who try to take advantage of this moment are not rewarded for it, because we've already seen it. People are focusing on college kids and college campuses, sometimes completely lying about what these kids are saying … I am currently getting messages from Jewish students, pro-Palestinian allies, you name it, who are getting doxxed right now on their college campuses, and they're getting little to no recourse. But the way the conversation has been happening you would think that only one group of people is misbehaving or only one group of people is acting out or only one group of people is dealing with this and frankly for me, these are college kids, right? Like the idea that anybody would in any way leverage their platforms as fully functioning adults and members of society to target kids is just so out of balance for me.
… It's uncomfortable to deal with the fact that our [America’s] policies and tax dollars are causing mass suffering and it's almost like people are just so much more comfortable with what's trending. They would just much rather talk about college kids on campuses versus literally what's happening around the world in a way that a lot of us haven't ever been exposed to before. There are people in Gaza whose main priority is keeping their cell phones going because they want to document what's happening. We've never seen that before. We've never seen young content creators who are all under the age of 30 and who are calling the world, they are so desperate for people to believe them and believe their suffering, but they're prioritizing that over everything else, and I think that has dramatically shifted the conversation in a way that even as a Palestinian, I'll be honest with you, I didn't expect it. But there are places and rooms that I enter where I expect people to be hostile or unkind and sure, I've gotten the hate messages, but for every hateful message, I've received 10 in support. And it's from around the district. People have been beyond kind and they have been more willing to listen than I've ever seen in my entire life.
Q. What does it mean to you for Gov. Brian Kemp to announce that he was sending an additional $10 million to support Israel's defense, and flying the flag at half staff in the wake of the Hamas attack?
A. There's nothing wrong with mourning with people who have experienced loss. I want to be very, very clear on this. I refuse to lose my humanity as we go through all of this, as if I don't care. It is hard and it is awful. Is there a power imbalance here? Absolutely, but that doesn't change the fact that if people are mourning with others and they are showing empathy and sympathy for something that's horrible, that is a good thing. We need more of that. We need more people to do that.
What I personally struggle with is this sort of unequivocal support for a foreign government on top of all of that. We are sending Georgia taxpayers’ funds while our hospitals are closing and when we can't afford to give people health care and where schools are really struggling right now, and we're constantly being told that we can't pay for something, we don't have it in the budget. From my understanding one of the line items that we had that the governor vetoed was for free lunches and breakfast. And the cost of that was about $10 million. … and we’ve now done [total] bond purchases of $50 million [for Israel]. And so my question is if my only job as a state representative is the budget, then what does that say when something like that can happen without our consent as a legislative body? So not only are we engaging on this in a way that is for me as a Palestinian incredibly unfair, and I think harmful, but on top of that we are also simultaneously telling Georgians that ‘I'm sorry. We can't afford to give you things like food and health care.’ That is infuriating to me on so many levels, because I'm a Georgian. I live here. I want my communities to thrive and what you're telling me is on top of the position you've chosen to take on this, you're also going to take money that my communities needed away. So it was really upsetting. I was also particularly upset at the fact that it doesn't seem to me like he's [Kemp] willing to say the word Palestinian. He had done an interview, and he said my thoughts and prayers go out to Israelis, Americans and ‘other people.’
So, this is infuriating. I actually know Palestinians here in Georgia who are massive business owners, very wealthy, that have raised a ton of money for this man and supported his campaign and made sure he got elected. And he won't even meet with them. He won't even engage with us. He won't even say that we're Palestinians, and it's maddening because I know this is personal for a lot of people. I know it's a really hard conversation but part of our jobs isn't to make complicated an already-complicated conversation. Is it to further muddy the waters? Our job if we take it seriously is to take care of the people that we have a responsibility to, and not only are we not doing that, we are actively hurting a large constituency in Georgia.
The coalition that’s emerging on this, I've never seen anything like this in my entire life, and I'm talking about Jewish allies who express incredible solidarity … I literally had a Jewish family attend one of my office hours who just wanted to engage in dialogue and they were genuinely open to the conversation and actually understood what I was trying to tell them. It's multiracial, it's multifaith, it's multigenerational. I cannot begin to fully express that in my 30 years of life I’ve never seen anything like this before and I think it would do us good to understand that shift and lean into it because there are some clear moral positions here, right? We can say killing children is bad. We can say killing innocent people, including the men who are currently trying to pull people out of the rubble with their bare hands – is wrong. We are now seeing entire families are being wiped off the face of the Earth. We can collectively say these things are bad and that is not an extreme position and it is one that is accepted by the majority of people in our country.
Q. If HB 30 is revived, or if we have another bill aimed at defining antisemitism introduced in the next session, what are the key elements that such legislation should include or perhaps not include and why?
A. The unfortunate reality is that there are some people taking advantage of every situation to push a political agenda, and I want to be very clear about this because I've seen a lot of news coverage about all the awful things that are happening in Cobb County and in Atlanta with the [antisemitic] flyers and the really hateful messages and full-on Nazi flags are being flown in front of synagogues. That is important and disgusting. I want that on every record everywhere humanly possible. My concern with these bills is that they don't actually address those things because first the person has to commit a crime and a lot of these things are happening in public places.
… So every time you see a headline where it's like this thing happened and that's why we need [legislation], by the sponsors’ own admission during committee hearings, it will not address those things. What it will do is it will criminalize speech as it relates to criticism of the state of Israel because it conflates anti-Israel sentiments with anti-Jewish sentiments. And are there times where that could happen, 100%, if you're going after a synagogue that the only reason you've gone after it is because it's a synagogue. And if you're collectively punishing a group of people for the actions of another government, that is a bad thing to do and people should not be doing it. But if somebody for example counter-protested an event for the state of Israel, are they doing it because they're antisemitic? Or are they doing it because they believe that what Israel is doing is wrong? Those things are complicated and we have to parse them out.
And so what I look for in this legislation is one, does it conflate anti-Israel sentiments with antisemitism? If so, I’m not going to support it. … I know this is much more difficult for the Jewish community, because people interpret Zionism in very different ways. And what I've tried to explain to people is that the first Zionists I ever met were Christian leaders from a megachurch in Forsyth County. I hadn't met Jewish Zionists growing up until much later in my lifetime. And so when you conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, I really struggle with that and I've been very clear about this growing up as a Palestinian. My grandfather always taught us that our problem was not with the Jewish people. He had Jewish neighbors. There is no Holy Land without Judaism or the Jewish community being in the Holy Land. His problem was the idea that somehow he does not have a claim to the land and that somehow he is less than anybody else who has a claim to the land.
And that ideology of supremacy is what so many of us have a problem with. It’s already complicated, right? It’s already difficult and to be very clear, antisemitism is on the rise. There are people pushing this bill who do see criticism of the state of Israel as antisemitic, period full stop. It is a Jewish homeland and they see criticism of it [as you] hate the Jewish people. And as I've explained to people, my family didn't lose everything because of Jewish people. They lost everything when they were kicked out of their homeland. It's the action and it's the policy, not the faith and ethnicity. It's really, really important to distinguish between those two things.
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. Right now my focus is to get more sleep and eat better. But I've really gotten into running — long, slow runs that have become meditative for me. It's almost like it unravels my mind for the day and helps me just organize my thoughts. As everybody knows, I'm a huge Swiftie; it’s been my thing, since I was 12. It has become part of my brand. … “Miss Americana” is my favorite song and it’s a political allegory all tied up into a high school story. And so one of my favorite things to do when I have time for it, is to put on some Taylor Swift and cook a nice meal and just take a beat. But even when I can't, just getting an option to engage in something that is less serious has been just really awesome. I also love reading.
The ruwa romman file
Position: Representative, District 97 (D-Duluth/Gwinnett County)
Age: 30
Birthplace: Amman, Jordan
Current residence: Duluth
Education: B.A. in politics from Oglethorpe University, Masters in Public Policy from Georgetown University
Career path: Worked for nonprofits including the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and Points of Light; advocacy organizations including the Council on American-Islamic Relations,Georgia chapter and the Islamic Speakers Bureau, in communications and strategic roles; and most recently, as a consultant for Deloitte, specializing in governmental affairs.
Family: Husband Shahzaib Jiwani, two cats (Itsy and Olive), and two dogs (Balto and Riley).
Hobbies/passions outside work: Reading, running, Taylor Swift.
Subscribe to State Affairs so you will have unlimited access to all of our stories.
Have questions, comments or tips? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajill or at [email protected].
X @STATEAFFAIRSGA
Facebook @STATEAFFAIRSGA
Instagram @STATEAFFAIRSGA
LinkedIn @STATEAFFAIRS
Correction: This story has been updated to correct that Romman said Gov. Kemp said his thoughts and prayers go out to "Israelis, Americans and 'other people',” not “Israeli-Americans, and 'other people',” as published in a previous version. The story is also updated to correct the anniversary date of Romman and her husband, which is Dec. 23, not Dec. 21.
Read this story for free.
Create AccountRead this story for free
By submitting your information, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy.
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.
Read these related stories:
Have questions, comments or tips? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajill or at [email protected].
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].
And subscribe to State Affairs so you do not miss an update.
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 …