In full (winners in bold):
- Chair
- Nikema Williams (I): 206
- Liz Williams 41
- 1st Vice Chair (to succeed Ted Terry)
- Dontaye Carter ?
- Sheikh Rahman ?
- Matthew Wilson, round 1: ?, round 2: 143
- James Woodall, round 1: ?, round 2: 91
- Vice Chair of Congressional Districts and County Liaison
- Sarah Todd (I, unopposed)
- Vice Chair of Constituency Groups (to succeed Bee Nguyen)
- Brandon Goldberg 69
- Vincent Olsziewski 165,
- 2 abstentions
- Vice Chair of Candidate Recruitment (to succeed Adrienne White)
- Less Mayer 35,
- Helen Willis 56,
- Scout Smith 133
- Secretary
- Justin Holsomback (I, unopposed)
- Treasurer
- Jason Esteves (I, unopposed)
- CD 1 Chair:
- Jay Jones (incumbent)
- Sabrina Newby
- CD2 (to succeed Bobby Fuse; resulted in tie, went to runoff by Zoom)
- Tonza Thomas
- Willie Davis
- CD3
- Charles “Chuck” Enderlin Jr. (i, unopposed)
- CD4
- Janel Green (i, unopposed)
- CD5 (to succeed TJ Copeland)
- Maria Banjo (unopposed)
- CD6
- Melissa Clink (i, unopposed)
- CD7
- Cheryl Williams (i, unopposed)
- CD8
- Adrian Rivers (i, unopposed)
- CD9
- June Krise (i, unopposed)
- CD10 (to succeed Norman Garrett)
- Conolus Scott Jr. (unopposed)
- CD11
- Sheree Giardino (incumbent)
- Eduardo “Eddie” Aviles
- CD12
- Christopher Johnson (incumbent)
- Catherine Frederiksen
- CD13:
- Joel R. Cope (incumbent)
- Jasmine Bowles
- Shelia Edwards
- CD14
- David McLaughlin (i, unopposed)
Thoughts
I’m not a fan of this makeup. A sitting member of Congress chairing this party while flying back and forth between D.C. and Atlanta has been a problem for me. Jason Esteves is set to be a sitting member of the General Assembly. I’ve become ideologically opposed to public officials holding officer positions in the party.
I’m pleased with Scout Smith being elected to Candidate Recruitment, as well as Vinny Olsziewski for Constituency Groups.
Scout has done work over the years as Chair of the County Affairs Subcommittee, he’s from Troup County, and he’s talked plenty about what sort of outreach works in rural areas. He’s now in a firm position to lead party policy on candidate recruitment, training, support and communications. His predecessor, Adrienne White (from Gwinnett) leaves this position with a good record: the largest share of General Assembly seats contested by Democrats in two decades happened under her watch, Georgia being the only state in 2020 to see Democrats flip legislative seats and evade the red wall which emerged downballot, Georgia famously flipping both U.S. Senate seats in a rare “double-barrel” runoff, and seeing one of these Senators keep his seat in a runoff. However, the continuing failure to win any statewide executive offices under White will leave Scout with the task of building a bench for 2026 (and potentially earlier, if the method for electing PSC members is changed and delayed elections are held by 2024).
Vinny brings his experience as Chair of the DPG Disability Caucus, which I know best as the group which hosts candidate forums for party positions, to his new role. He has a lot of work to do to bring effectiveness back to this role, including building out the DPG’s relationship with its caucuses, councils and affiliate organizations. Only a few things changed for caucuses and councils since 2019:
- the DPG’s new bylaws adopted the DNC’s preferred parlance of “council” to describe interest-based in-party groupings as opposed to the identity-based “caucus” (this was definitely pushed for by Nikema)
- After repeated questions and pleas, Esteves finally designated a policy for caucuses and councils to fundraise, in which ActBlue pages were created for these groups, but such pages would direct donations to the DPG treasury, who would then allocate this money to the groups which received them.
Things I’d like to see from the new Constituency Groups VC:
- Establishing a protocol for how affiliate organizations establish and maintain their relationships with state and county committees.
- Establish whether caucuses, councils and affiliate organizations can endorse candidates in primaries
- What sort of relationship that caucuses and councils should have with county committees.
I look forward to better development of this role.
Matthew Wilson is no longer an elected official (as of this year), so I don’t have a problem with that. It will be his first time in party leadership, and he’s the first openly-LGBT person to serve in the role of 1st Vice Chair (that I know of?). Let’s see how he does.
But now Williams will have to face a few questions:
- What went wrong with the coordinated campaign?
- Why do we still have Rebecca DeHart as Executive Director?
- What went wrong with the Executive Director scouting process?
- How did we do this poorly for all statewide executive roles?
- Is it time for Stacey Abrams and a few others to hang it up?
- Should Abrams’ campaign staff be blacklisted from working for any more large campaigns until they can show some competence?
- Should we encourage state legislators to not run for state row office in 2026?
- Should David Scott and Hank Johnson retire?
We need to nip this losing streak in the bud.
