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Beth and Michelle: Onto November

On Tuesday night, Georgians in our Battleground State House Districts sent a message. While all five of our endorsed candidates cleared the primary and are headed to November, we wanted to highlight our two candidates who had contested primaries.

Beth Fuller won in HD-53 with 80% of the vote, while Michelle Kang won in HD-99 with 71.5%. Overwhelming victories from two strong candidates with two strong campaigns. Both are headed to November with a mandate from Democratic primary voters who looked at two candidates willing to do the hard work of knocking doors, showing up, and making the case—and said yes, unambiguously.

The 2030 Project is proud to stand with Beth and Michelle. We've been on the ground with them in their districts and have witnessed firsthand their passion and leadership.

Now the work begins in earnest. Five endorsed candidates. Five winnable districts. Tuesday proved we have the right people to get the job done. However, you can help, wherever you live; we are going to need you between now and November. 

State Supreme Court

Tuesday's energy didn't carry over to every race. Democratically backed candidates Jen Jordan and Miracle Rankin fell short in their Georgia Supreme Court bids. Jordan lost 60-40, while Rankin’s race came down to a razor-thin 51-49 margin, a reminder that down-ballot judicial races require a different kind of voter contact than the candidate-driven campaigns we highlighted above. These seats matter, and Georgia Democrats will need to keep building the infrastructure and awareness to be competitive in nonpartisan races like these. The work continues. 

Bottoms Clears the Field

Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary officially cemented former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms as the party’s nominee, setting up one of the country’s most closely watched governor’s races and giving Democrats renewed hope of expanding statewide power in 2026.

Bottoms emerged from a field that included former state senator Jason Esteves and former DeKalb CEO Mike Thurmond, ultimately securing more than 56% of the vote. 

Her victory was fueled by strong support in metro Atlanta and a late shift from undecided voters who rallied behind her statewide message and national profile.

Throughout the campaign, Bottoms focused on abortion protections, Medicaid expansion, voting rights, and public education funding. She also emphasized economic affordability by addressing housing access and healthcare costs, while criticizing Republican leadership for prioritizing culture-war politics over the everyday concerns of working families. 

Her victory also demonstrated how undecided voters gravitated toward the most recognizable candidate as turnout surged across the state. Georgia shattered primary turnout records, with over two million ballots cast statewide. This was a 27.9% turnout rate, according to the Secretary of State's office. 

With the GOP primary headed to a runoff, Democrats now turn their attention to November. Georgia's changing demographics, a growing suburban coalition, and signs of energy from younger voters set the table for what could be the party's best shot at the governor's office in nearly three decades. 

The Republican Side of the Ballot

Georgia Republicans are headed for several runoffs, largely consisting of a moderate and Trump-allied candidate moving on. In the gubernatorial primary, Trump-backed Lt. Governor Burt Jones advanced with 38.4% of the vote and will face billionaire Rick Jackson. Meanwhile, in the Senate, MAGA-allied Mike Collins will face former college football coach Derek Dooley, with the two collecting 40.5% and 30.2%, respectively.

While neither race will have a nominee until June 16th’s run-off, there are a few key takeaways. For starters, Democrats are going to have to get their checkbook out. While the former Atlanta mayor has a month to garner support from her party, she will need to bridge the spending gap: Jackson has spent over $80 million, while Jones has spent just under $20 million. And while Jon Ossoff has raised over $57 million for his Senate race, almost $50 million more than Collins and Dooley combined, the GOP-backed Senate Leadership Fund pledged $44 million for their nominee in the general election. 

A Jones victory would also signal another win for Trump-backed candidates, as just this week, Sen. Bill Cassidy and Rep. Thomas Massie, two Republicans who have criticized Trump in the past, lost their primaries. Even Dooley and Jackson, the more moderate of the two candidates, have been vocal in their support for Trump, illustrating the continued stronghold the President has on the GOP.

Finally, the results in Atlanta counties suggest that potential election interference weighs heavily on voters’ minds, as Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, who famously refused to overturn the 2020 election, outperformed in these regions. If the GOP nominates Rep. Collins for Senate and Lt. Gov. Jones for Governor, Democrats will need to emphasize this, as both have brought forth election-denial claims, and Collins has gone as far as to blow up voter ballots for campaign ads. If Collins is the nominee, the election-denial playbook that Republicans have been running since 2020 comes back to center stage in Georgia, and that's a fight Democrats will be ready to have. 

The Questions Nobody Warned You About

Tuesday's ballot had more than just candidates on it. Tucked beneath the governor's race and Supreme Court seats were a set of Democratic ballot questions, county by county, that most voters had not seen before. Some were straightforward. Some were deliberately pointed. And most voters had no idea what they were actually being asked. 

Statewide Democratic Ballot: “Is it ethical for political candidates who have used their public offices to enrich themselves and their families, or have had nearly a billion dollars of business dealings with the state of Georgia, to hold statewide office?” 

This question appears to be referring to an actual Republican candidate for governor, Rick Jackson. Jackson leads Jackson Healthcare, to which state agencies have made payments. While Jackson claims to end this practice once in office, this question attempts to make voters aware of any candidates with particularly problematic pasts.

Cobb County: “Do you support legislation that targets a small group of elected officials from one political party?”

The charged language of this question was bound to leave some voters confused. In essence, it is asking if the government of Georgia should pass bills that would not apply to all elected officials equally. This seems so intuitive that some voters may have pondered the question to see if it is getting at something deeper.

DeKalb County: “Do you support your local law enforcement signing an agreement to act on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents?”

“On behalf” is the tricky part. Voters may assume this means law enforcement will begin phasing out ICE and returning things to normal. This is not the case. A “yes” here means local law enforcement should assist ICE in carrying out its orders. This could lead to a wider distrust of law enforcement among citizens and undocumented immigrants alike, when everyone in this country should feel safe from the police, not fear.

These questions weren't accidents. They were Democrats putting Republican overreach on the record, in the one place voters have to pay attention. The execution wasn't always clean, and not every voter walked out knowing what they'd just weighed in on. But the instinct is right. Georgia Republicans are reshaping this state question by question, bill by bill, map by map. Democrats are going to have to get a lot better at meeting voters where they are before they're standing in a voting booth trying to decode it alone. 

Undeterred…

Georgia showed up on Tuesday. Over two million Georgians cast ballots, a record for a primary election, in a state where the right to vote has never felt more fragile. This was the first Georgia primary since the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and Georgians responded the way Georgians do. 

They voted.

Young people showed up too. The final numbers will tell the full story, but the direction was clear. They will not sit idly by while their future is decided by others.

Jon Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms lead the Democratic ticket into November. The top of the ticket matters—but elections are won and lost up and down the ballot. The Georgia State Legislature is where policy gets made, where maps get drawn, and where the next decade of this state gets decided. That is why the work of flipping our five battleground districts matters as much as anything on the ballot in November. 

And Republicans know it. A Special Session opens June 17 with redistricting on the agenda. They are drawing maps for 2028 in part to distract us from 2026. We will not be distracted. We will show up, organize, and vote. The party that controls the Georgia legislature by the end of 2030 will shape this state for generations. Whatever power grabs and nonsense they throw at us from now until November, our response is simple:

We have elections to win.

Undaunted, A Memory

As a reminder of the power we hold today in Georgia and across the South, let us look back at a tragedy that led to a hard-won history that we are fighting to keep.

“Take your names off the books before some other Negro gets hurt…” Those are one of many sentences uttered to Medgar Evers and his brother, Charles, when attempting to register and vote in Mississippi’s primary elections in 1946. It’s no secret that intimidation tactics and trickery were laboriously implemented. But what’s often overlooked as an attempt to “remediate” the past is the emotional, physical, and mental trauma Black Americans went through to secure voting rights. 

It’s astonishing how a World War II veteran, like Medgar Evers, was denied and disenfranchised from voting in the very country he served and risked his life for. Black Americans have fought tooth and nail for this country, abroad, and on American soil. The civil rights and liberties that all American citizens so righteously enjoy were once held in the hands of Black Americans. If it weren’t for the brave actions of people like Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Marcus Garvey, and Claudette Colvin, where would this country be? Black Americans have consistently fought and raised concerns about America’s upholding of its promise of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. 

The purpose of this article is not to sow sorrow and guilt for what once was, but to refine the perspective regarding how our voting rights came to be. This isn’t a couch debate; it never has been. This is the livelihood of our country that Black Americans fought tenaciously for. Risking their lives and clothes in order to secure an equal future for themselves and generations to come. We’ve come too far to let their work die in vain. It’s time to continue the fight, as it’s never really over. The bar was set; the precedent was created. Undaunted, we must stand against the struggle.

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