by Ty Tagami | Oct 21, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Two high-profile partisans will visit Georgia over the next week to promote their parties’ candidates ahead of Election Day on Nov. 3.
On Saturday night, President Donald Trump will return to the Peach State for a rally in Perry. The visit, his third to promote statewide Republican candidates in Georgia this year, will come soon after his visit to Dalton last week and three months after his visit to Cobb County in July.
Four days after Trump’s visit, former President Barack Obama will headline a rally in Atlanta for candidates atop the Democratic ticket.
The prominent visits underscore the battleground status of Georgia in a midterm election that will help determine control of Congress and the direction of state politics.
At his Dalton rally, Trump promoted U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate, and businessman Rick Jackson, the party’s nominee for governor, along with down-ballot candidates.
Trump told attendees that GOP turnout falters when he is not on the ballot, so he asked them to pretend that he is. His next rally was initially scheduled for Macon but was subsequently moved to Perry, according to the GOP attendee registration website.
Obama will promote the campaigns of U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is defending his seat against Collins, and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic nominee for governor.
The Democrats’ rally will be held on the evening of Oct. 28 at an Atlanta venue that has not yet been disclosed, according to an attendee registration site for United for Georgia, the joint campaign theme for Ossoff and Bottoms.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 20, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A record number of Georgia voters have cast early ballots in person for a midterm election, surpassing 1 million on Tuesday.
“We continue to break records each day of early voting,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
Early voting started Oct. 13. By noon Tuesday, 1,007,015 voters had cast a ballot in person ahead of the Nov. 3 election, according to Raffensperger’s office.
That is up by more than 12% from the 894,412 who had voted early in person by the same point in the run-up to the 2022 general election.
Including the 48,916 absentee ballots, total turnout was 1,055,931.
It is unclear whether Democrats or Republicans are the ones casting those ballots because Georgia does not register voters by party.
Democratic voters outvoted Republicans in the May primary, marking a reversal of turnout in the 2022 primary, when GOP voters had the larger numbers.
In May, Democratic primary turnout in the governor’s race was up by half from 2022, while GOP turnout for governor fell by a quarter. The proportions were similar in other statewide races.
Democrat Stacey Abrams ran unopposed in the 2022 primary for governor, which may have depressed her party’s turnout that year.
Raffensperger pointed to the elevated turnout Tuesday as evidence that voters trust the state’s election process.
His message came nearly three weeks after James Mills, executive director of the State Election Board, a rulemaking body, sent correspondence to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asking them to intervene in Georgia’s election process.
Critics of the Republican-controlled State Election Board called the move a continuation of a false narrative of election fraud.
“There is no evidence of voting security threats or massive voter fraud,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said after Mills sent his correspondence.
“The election denialists at the Georgia State Election Board are trying to sow chaos into the midterms before voting takes place,” Kristin Nabers, Georgia state director of All Voting is Local, said at the time.
On Thursday, Carolyn Roddy, the election board member whose Sept. 28 resolution had authorized Mills’ action, wrote a memo defending Mills after some board members complained that they had not had a chance to approve the correspondence before he sent it.
“The Resolution imposed no such requirement,” Roddy wrote to her fellow board members.
Her memo said Mills had faithfully communicated the resolution’s intent. The resolution raised concerns about outdated software on the voting machines, among other things.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 19, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Net Georgia tax collections in September rose 2.3% over the same month last year, continuing gains recorded in recent months.
Net collections for the month totaled $3.34 billion, up $76.7 million.
The increase came despite a drop in individual income tax collections, amid growth in corporate income taxes and in the sales and use tax, according to numbers from Gov. Brian Kemp’s office.
The overall increase builds on a 3.5% year-over-year increase in August. That month, the state
collected nearly $2.5 billion in net tax revenue, extending gains recorded in July.
September corporate income tax collections rose $37.9 million, or 5.9%, over the same month last year.
September gross sales and use tax collections totaled $1.73 billion, up $136.8 million year over year, or 8.6%. Net sales and use tax collections rose $98.8 million, or 13.3%.
The adjusted sales tax distribution to local governments was up $100.2 million, or 12.8%, compared to September last year.
The increases in sales taxes and corporate income tax collections made up for declines in individual income tax collections.
September individual income tax collections fell $61.3 million year over year, or 4.1%.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 16, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — President Donald Trump traveled to Georgia on Friday to rally Republican voters three days after early voting got underway and with Election Day just over two weeks away.
His visit was meant to boost the campaigns of GOP candidates, especially U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, who is running to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, and businessman Rick Jackson, who is running against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor.
Trump said Republican turnout declines when he is not on the ballot.
“You have to go out and vote, so pretend I’m on the ballot,” Trump said at the rally in Dalton. “I won this state by a lot, and if my people get out to vote these guys are going to have a landslide.”
Trump ridiculed Ossoff as “radical left” and said he looks like the comic character Pee-wee Herman.
Trump blasted Bottoms as “an incompetent disaster,” adding, “if she becomes governor she will ruin your state.”
Democrats said they were happy about the visit, predicting Trump’s presence would backfire for GOP candidates amid frustration over rising prices.
Charlie Bailey, chairman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said earlier in the day that he too wanted people to vote as if Trump were on the ballot.
Speaking at his party’s headquarters in Atlanta, Bailey attacked Jackson’s company’s contracts with the state, calling him “another creepy billionaire that has made a career off of taxpayer dollars.”
Bailey repeated previous criticisms of Collins over reports linking some of Collins’ former congressional office staffers to white supremacists and over white supremacist social media posts by Collins’ son-in-law.
Bailey also attacked Collins over a report by The Daily Beast on Thursday that said several Collins campaign “convoy captains” had criminal backgrounds, including one who had pleaded guilty to sexual battery in an incident involving his stepdaughter who was younger than 16.
“At some point,” Bailey said, “you are the company you keep, and if someone just keeps on having sorry, immoral, evil people around them, well, that says something about them.”
A Collins campaign spokesman said convoy captains are volunteers and that the campaign was unaware of the backgrounds of the people cited in the report, adding that more than 800 people had volunteered to help Collins win.
Also on Friday, critics of Jackson again called on him to stop running an ad about the shooting death of Secoriea Turner in 2020, when Bottoms was mayor.
The 8-year-old was killed when armed protesters opened fire on her mother’s Jeep south of downtown Atlanta. Jackson has used the incident to criticize Bottoms’ leadership.
Secoriea’s mother, Charmaine Turner, has accused Jackson of exploiting the family’s pain for political gain. Last week, her supporters called on Jackson to pull the ad.
He didn’t, so on Friday they tried again.
“This is barbaric,” said Shanan Jones, president of the Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta.
A spokesman for the Jackson campaign blamed the child’s death on Bottoms, saying that her handling of public unrest was “one of the major reasons why Rick is running.”
At the Trump rally Friday, Jackson, whose childhood in foster care has been a staple of his campaign, said no president had done more for abused and neglected foster children than Trump.
He did not say the president’s name, though, referring to him as “this man here” while Trump stood nearby.
After pledging during the GOP primary that he would lead like Trump, Jackson has shifted during the run-up to the general election. With moderate voters in play, Jackson has been saying that he will govern like Gov. Brian Kemp.
Collins criticized Ossoff on immigration, transgender policy and other issues, saying voters should send him instead of Ossoff to Washington.
“Jon Ossoff hates Trump more than he loves Georgia,” Collins said. “It’s shameful.”
Trump called former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene a “whack job” but praised the looks of Collins and several of the other GOP men running for statewide office, noting their relative youth.
Jackson is older than those down-ballot candidates, but he still won praise from the president.
“I actually think that Rick Jackson is a very handsome, distinguished, beautiful looking guy,” Trump said.
by Ty Tagami | Oct 15, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia voters have a lot of decisions to make when selecting among so many candidates this year, but prominent figures from both major parties are pointing to one easy choice on the ballot.
Among the proposed constitutional amendments is one that would end the practice of probate court judges running for office under party labels.
Amendment 2 would require that probate judges stand for election in the same way as every other Georgia judge and justice: as nonpartisan candidates.
Probate judges oversee sensitive matters, such as estates, guardianships, mental health commitments, wills and weapons carry licenses.
“These responsibilities are not inherently political,” said a September letter signed by former governors Roy Barnes, a Democrat, and Nathan Deal, a Republican, and by more than 60 other current and former officeholders from both parties, from lieutenant governors down to mayors.
The constitutional amendment was proposed by House Resolution 251, which passed the Georgia House this year 147-20 and the Senate unanimously.
The House vote occurred one week after Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Nels S.D. Peterson gave his State of the Judiciary address in that chamber. His address included a request to pass HR 251.
“Judges must be impartial and we must also conduct ourselves in such a way as to be perceived as impartial,” he said. “Requiring any of us to publicly and formally align ourselves with a political party can only undermine the public’s perception of the judiciary as impartial.”
The previous year, lawmakers had passed legislation to make magistrate judges nonpartisan, Peterson noted, leaving probate judges as the exception.
