by Ty Tagami | Jul 29, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Marcye Scott, the daughter of late U.S. Rep. David Scott, drew the most votes in Tuesday’s special election to complete his term, and will face former Gwinnett County School Board Chair Everton Blair in an Aug. 25 runoff.
Scott took 46% of the vote to Blair’s 37% in the race between five candidates. An outright victory would have required a majority.
The two Democrats are vying to fill the U.S. House District 13 seat for the rest of the year after Scott died in April at age 80.
The election to succeed Scott for a full two-year term will be held in November, when state Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, will go up against Republican Jonathan Chavez.
Clark won the Democratic primary in May with 56% of the vote, or more than 61,000 in her contest against five other Democrats. Chavez had no opponents in the Republican primary and collected more than 25,000 votes.
The turnout for Tuesday’s special election was far lower at 3.9%, with just over 21,000 casting a ballot.
Scott won handily in five of the six counties represented by the metro Atlanta congressional district. Blair took the vast majority of votes in Gwinnett County, the most populous among them.
Women outvoted men by nearly 70%, and Black voters outnumbered white voters by nearly three to one. More than 13,000 Black voters went to the polls compared with fewer than 5,000 white voters. Only 257 Hispanic voters cast a ballot.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 28, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Starting Saturday, Georgians who watch television or go online will likely encounter campaign ads from Rick Jackson, the Republican candidate for governor.
The wealthy entrepreneur announced this week that he will spend $87 million on an initial ad buy to promote his campaign against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democrat.
“This is the largest general election buy of this race, and it reflects exactly how seriously we take the job of earning every vote in every one of Georgia’s 159 counties,” Garrison Douglas, the Jackson campaign spokesman, said in a statement Monday.
Bottoms’ campaign fired back Tuesday, pointing to Jackson’s business dealings with the state, which have earned his company, Jackson Healthcare, more than $1 billion, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in March.
“Rick Jackson made a billion dollars off of taxpayer-funded contracts with the state for health care services, even while rural hospitals closed and Georgians lost health care coverage, and now he’s trying to buy this election,” Bottoms’ campaign spokesperson, TaNisha Cameron, said in an email.
Jackson has been campaigning on his business background ever since he announced his candidacy in February, describing himself as a former foster child and self-made billionaire.
Last week, the Jackson campaign attacked Bottoms as anti-business after she posted an Instagram video responding to “online chatter” about Jackson’s visit to a Black-owned business.
Bottoms had alleged that Jackson was visiting barbershops, restaurants and other minority-owned businesses merely to promote his campaign. In her brief video posted in mid-July, she called that hypocritical because she said he opposed diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“I’m assuming anybody who opens their doors to Rick Jackson has made a calculated decision based on the benefits and the risk of doing that,” Bottoms said. “But don’t allow people to piss on us and then tell us that it’s raining.”
The Jackson campaign said people online had been calling for a boycott of a Black-owned brunch spot Jackson had visited. The campaign accused Bottoms of effectively warning businesses not to admit Jackson and said she should have defended the restaurant.
Jackson pressed the issue while on stage with President Donald Trump last week, during the president’s visit to Wheeler High School in Cobb County.
“My opponent wants to cut down businesses and cancel them just because I visited a restaurant,” Jackson said. “Well, that’s just wrong.”
Jackson said he would focus on business to address the cost-of-living issues that are top of mind for many voters.
“I’m going to bring business solutions to solve real problems,” Jackson said. “The other side talks about affordability as if that’s a solution. Affordability’s not a political problem. Affordability is a business problem. It requires business solutions.”
Jackson also said he was going to be Trump’s “favorite governor,” and Trump responded that Jackson would be a “great” governor.
Bottoms said in her video that she supports small businesses, having helped minority- and women-owned companies secure grants and low-interest loans. She said she normally gives them her own personal business.
“Jackson’s in this for himself and to serve Donald Trump, and Keisha’s the only candidate in this race who will stand up for Georgians,” her spokesperson, Cameron, said.
Democrats predict that the president’s endorsement of Jackson, whom they call an “out-of-touch billionaire,” would ultimately hurt Jackson’s campaign.
A national poll earlier this month found that Republicans had become less positive about the economy since January.
“The share of Republicans who say Trump’s policies have worsened conditions has risen from 18% to 28%, while the share saying they have improved conditions has fallen from 57% to 42%,” said the the Pew Research Center report, which was focused on the national mood and on Congress rather than specifically on Georgia.
Jackson’s campaign said Georgians simply need to hear from the man himself and that the advertising blitz will help.
“Rick Jackson has spent this campaign showing up in places candidates usually skip,” Douglas said, “and this buy makes sure all 11 million Georgians hear the same thing the people in those rooms have heard, which is that he is running to fight for them.”
by Ty Tagami | Jul 27, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
Gov. Brian Kemp weighed in on the rush to develop artificial intelligence, calling the technology “scary” while also welcoming data centers to Georgia and criticizing others who would pause their development.
“I’m not saying we need a data center in every community that’s out there, but to have a moratorium just like the governor of New York did and what Keisha Lance Bottoms is proposing — to me, is irresponsible,” Kemp said in a video interview with POLITICO Energy published Monday.
The Georgia governor, who is nearing the end of his final term, may have been referring to a video interview given by Bottoms in April to the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer.
At the time, the former Atlanta mayor was competing in a crowded primary to win the Democratic nomination for governor, which she subsequently won in May.
“If I have the privilege of being elected governor, I am going to ask for a pause in construction on data centers throughout the state,” Bottoms said. “Give us an opportunity to understand exactly where we are. Are we on the right track or do we need to scale back?”
Kemp said data centers can generate local tax revenue and other benefits and that communities rather than the state should decide where they are built.
“We don’t need to try to push these things where people don’t want them,” he said in the interview conducted last week, “but to say that we’re just going to have a blanket moratorium — to me, is indeed insane.”
Kemp said he was concerned about the effect of AI on children and on security.
“Some of the things that are very scary when you think about national defense, cybersecurity issues, and other things,” he said. “But I’m more concerned about China winning this race and using all those things against us economically, militarily.”
Kemp said some data centers had been announced or even started working “in the dead of the night.”
That is not the case with the $20 billion data center that OpenAI announced for an industrial site in Effingham County near Savannah last week, he said, adding that the company had met with local officials and utilities in advance.
The public learned of the company’s plans Wednesday, when residents were given a one-day notice that the company would be holding an open house about its planned facility.
Beth Remmes, with the environmental group Georgia Interfaith Power & Light, attended the event. It featured information tables with company representatives who gave sometimes vague information, she said.
Remmes said she and others were concerned about the use of noisy and polluting diesel-fueled generators for backup power.
“They said they do have diesel generators, but they are just backing up a small part of the system, but what is a small part of a $20 billion system?” Remmes said. “That’s what I would like to see written down and explained.”
by Ty Tagami | Jul 25, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Fresh off the world stage with the departure of FIFA World Cup fans, Georgia is back in the limelight with the listing of the Okefenokee Swamp as an international treasure.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization announced Saturday that it had decided to add the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge to its World Heritage Site List.
The decision, reached during the 48th World Heritage Committee session in Busan, South Korea, makes the swamp the first such site in Georgia and the first listed national wildlife refuge in the United States, which already has more than two dozen listed sites.
“Receiving World Heritage status affirms what those of us who know and love the Okefenokee have always believed: this place is special,” Kim Bednarek, executive director of Okefenokee Swamp Park, said in a statement while attending the committee session.
Tracie Revis, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, delivered a statement on behalf of Chief David W. Hill, in the languages of her two tribes, Muscogee and Yuchi. She said in a phone interview from Busan that she expressed excitement for both the natural wonder of the Okefenokee and for the lives of her ancestors who lived there before they were forcibly removed from the land.
The designation “gives us a larger platform to showcase not just the biological side of things, but the cultural side of it,” Revis said.
Okefenokee advocates say the designation also will put South Georgia on the global map as a tourist destination, boosting the regional economy.
Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement that it was “a fitting recognition for the Okefenokee that will further strengthen rural communities that surround it.”
A 2024 study said a World Heritage listing would draw 800,000 tourists a year, doubling visitation and creating about 750 long-term jobs and about $60 million in annual economic impact.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said in a statement that the designation “will help protect this renowned natural treasure for generations to come, promote tourism, and support Southeast Georgia’s economic growth.”
The Okefenokee is the first U.S. natural World Heritage Site added in more than three decades and brings the number of World Heritage sites in the country to 27.
Other natural sites include the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone in the United States, and the Great Barrier Reef, Mount Kilimanjaro and the Galapagos Islands beyond.
Sites can also have cultural value, such as the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal.
The swamp’s mass of floating peat deposits makes an unstable surface for walking. It led to the swamp’s name, often translated as “land of the trembling earth” from the Muscogee language.
It also played a role in UNESCO’s decision, according to Bednarek’s group, which said the World Heritage Committee recognized the swamp for its ecology, biodiversity and the scale of its subtropical freshwater peatland ecosystems.
The nonprofit Georgia Rivers said it facilitated a study that found the Okefenokee contains five times more peat than earlier estimates suggested, meaning the swamp could store substantially more planet-warming carbon than previously thought. This strengthened the Okefenokee’s case for World Heritage designation by underscoring its “Outstanding Universal Value.”
Rena Ann Peck, executive director of Georgia Rivers, attended the committee session in Busan with Bednarek. She said she hoped the designation would encourage more swamp visitors.
The swamp has the largest undisturbed peat deposit on the North American Coastal Plain. It is also home to more than 1,200 species of animals and plants.
And it has mineral wealth that industry would like to tap.
For years, a threat loomed at the edge of the swamp, as a company called Twin Pines Minerals sought to mine titanium dioxide. Then, last year, that threat was neutralized when a group called The Conservation Fund assembled about $60 million to purchase the nearly 8,000-acre property.
But other properties nearby could also host a mine.
Researchers at the University of Georgia released findings late last year that showed how harmful this could be to the swamp.
Mining requires significant amounts of water. The mines would draw it from an aquifer deep below the swamp, under the assumption that an intervening layer of clay separates the swamp from the aquifer.
The UGA research found otherwise, tracing water isotopes and discovering that water from the swamp appeared to be draining into the aquifer. Their conclusion: mining would drain the swamp.
Meanwhile, political pressure was building to protect the Okefenokee.
Ossoff, a Democrat, and others from Georgia’s congressional delegation, urged the Department of the Interior to pursue the World Heritage designation.
Then, last year, University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue, who had previously been the state’s first Republican governor in more than a century and a former Cabinet secretary for President Donald Trump, joined the campaign. He asked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to seek the World Heritage designation because, Perdue wrote, it would “preserve a national treasure while also delivering incredible economic benefits to the state of Georgia.”
The group Environment Georgia noted that more than 30,000 acres adjacent to the Okefenokee remain eligible for mining.
“This World Heritage Site recognition affirms what so many Georgians already know — the Okefenokee is a natural treasure,” Jennette Gayer, the group’s Georgia director, said in a statement. “We call on our leaders to ensure this special place, a wonder of the world, is protected from the threats of mining.”
Revis predicted that placing the Okefenokee on a world stage will generate more support for protecting it, “which can sometimes add pressure if we need it down the road.”
UPDATE: This article has been updated to clarify the impact of research into peatland carbon storage at the Okefenokee that contributed to the swamp’s designation last month as a World Heritage Site. The nonprofit Georgia Rivers had said it was instrumental in facilitating a study that proved the carbon storage provided what the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization calls “Outstanding Universal Value.” The nonprofit recently clarified that the study contributed to the designation by complimenting other qualities, such as the swamp’s unique ecology and biodiversity.
by Ty Tagami | Jul 24, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A data center that is expected to consume as much energy as a whole Georgia power plant can produce is to be built for OpenAI at a Savannah-area industrial site, the company announced this week.
The tech company says the community and the state will benefit from hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue and other contributions to local causes.
It also says it will mitigate its environmental impact by using a closed-loop water system to cool the computers at the core of the project. And it says it will not burden taxpayers with the cost of building the infrastructure necessary to power such a facility.
“OpenAI will pay the full cost of the infrastructure and electric-service costs required to serve it,” the company said in its announcement this week about what it is calling Project Camellia.
Georgia Power says it is prepared to deliver the 3,200 megawatts OpenAI will require.
That is nearly as much power as Plant Bowen in Bartow County can produce with its four coal-fired units.
Georgia Power added that the tech company has agreed to use as much as 1,000 megawatts less during peak demand periods.
Ratepayer advocates like that flexibility agreement because it can reduce the overall capacity required from Georgia Power, potentially leading to less construction of power plants, power lines and other infrastructure.
But the advocates also say there is too little information available to assess the actual impact.
“My reaction is tempered right now because there are no details,” said Bob Sherrier, a lawyer with the Atlanta-based Southern Environmental Law Center.
The Public Service Commission, which regulates Georgia Power, has implemented a rule requiring data centers to pay their own way. But Sherrier said the industry opposed legislation during this year’s legislative session that would have written such a requirement into law.
“We promise but don’t make it enforceable,” was their position, he said.
The White House this week announced that over 200 “organizations and stakeholders” had committed to President Donald Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge. It asks data centers to pay the full cost of the energy and infrastructure they use.
Gov. Brian Kemp praised the pledge in a video on X, saying he signed it. He also said the public should embrace data centers. As their electricity demand rises, electricity bills for everyone go down, he said.
The Southern Environmental Law Center says Georgia Power has raised rates nearly $40 since 2023.
OpenAI held an open house Thursday in Effingham County.
A few hundred people protested outside but far more went inside to learn about the project, said Beth Remmes, a local coordinator with the advocacy group Georgia Interfaith Power & Light.
People were concerned about things like water use, and noise and light pollution, she said, adding that company representatives said the facility would use diesel generators as backup power for only a portion of the system.
“But what is a small part?” Remmes said. “I think people still left with more questions than answers.”
