Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for December 17, 2025

The British ship Mayflower landed at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts on December 18, 1620.

Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley who founded Methodism, and one of the great hymn-writers, was born on December 18, 1707. Wesley accompanied James Oglethorpe to Georgia in 1736.

France formally recognized the United States as an independent nation on December 17, 1777.

The first national day of thanksgiving was observed on December 18, 1777 commemorating the American victory over the British at Saratoga the previous month.

Congress wrote, “It is therefore recommended to the Legislative or executive Powers of these UNITED STATES, to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth Day of December next, for solemn THANKSGIVING and PRAISE; That at one Time and with one Voice the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts, and consecrate themselves to the Service of their Divine Benefactor.”

On December 18, 1834, Governor William Lumpkin signed legislation chartering the Georgia Methodists Conference Manual Labor School at Oxford, Georgia, which would later become Emory College in 1836 and Emory University in 1915.

General Ulysses S. Grant expelled all Jews from his military district, which covered parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky on December 17, 1862. President Lincoln ordered Grant to rescind the order.

On December 18, 1865, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward issued a statement verifying the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery in the United States.

The office of Superintendent of Public Education and Georgia Schools was created on December 18, 1866 when Gov. Charles Jenkins signed legislation passed by the General Assembly; on December 18, 1894, Gov. William Atkinson approved a resolution for a Constitutional Amendment to make the State School Commissioner elected statewide.

President William McKinley visited Savannah, Georgia on December 17, 1898. While there, McKinley attended church at Wesley Monumental Methodist Church and visited Georgia Agricultural and Medical College (now Savannah State University) and the Seventh Army.

On December 17, 1902, legislation changed Georgia’s state flag changed to include the coat of arms on the blue band.

On December 17, 1944, Major General Henry C. Pratt ordered the end of the imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese descent in prison camps.

WTBS began broadcasting under new call letters on December 17, 1976 and uplinked its programming to satellite to become “America’s Super Station.”

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

Voters in Senate District 35 elected Democrat Jaha Howard as their new State Senator. From the Secretary of State’s website:

From Georgia Recorder:

Democrat Jaha Howard, a dentist and former Cobb County School Board member, is headed to the state Capitol after narrowly defeating fellow Democrat and former state Rep. Roger Bruce during a special election runoff. He will represent a metro Atlanta district that includes portions of Cobb and Fulton counties.

Howard and Bruce beat out four other candidates during a six-way special election earlier this month, but neither managed to secure the majority needed to win the election outright. Howard will replace former state Sen. Jason Esteves, an Atlanta Democrat who resigned from the state Senate in September to focus on his campaign for governor.

Ahead of the special election, much of the Democratic establishment coalesced behind Bruce, who was first sworn in as a state representative in 2003 and served for 22 years, until his retirement in 2024. But Howard, who has also been a candidate for state school superintendent and ran for a seat on the Cobb County commission earlier this year, received the most votes during the special election and maintained his lead in the runoff. He won Tuesday by roughly 235 votes, according to unofficial results from the secretary of state’s office.

Howard previously ran for state Senate in 2017, but came under fire after sexist and homophobic comments he posted on Facebook between 2011 and 2014 were unearthed. He later apologized for the comments, and eventually lost that race to attorney Jen Jordan.

During this year’s campaign, he said, he has worked to gain voters’ trust in his commitment to LGBTQ and women’s rights.

“I’m talking to constituents all the time, and they believe me when I say that we’re going to fight for our freedoms, including our freedom to choose, our freedom to marry who we choose, and freedom to vote,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday night.

He also received an endorsement from state Sen. RaShaun Kemp, one of the two openly gay lawmakers in the chamber.

As he prepares to take office, Howard said, “I’m doing my best to love God and love people for real, and not in the way that we see in the public square.”

“I look forward to serving with integrity and fighting for justice,” he said.

Howard will be up for reelection next year alongside all Georgia lawmakers.

Democratic Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will appear before the Georgia State Senate Committee on Investigations today. Click here to watch online.

From ABC News:

After more than a year of legal maneuvering, Fani Willis will face questions Wednesday from a Georgia state Senate committee over her prosecution of Donald Trump.

The question is whether Fulton County’s Democratic district attorney will answer any of them.

The Republican-dominated state Senate in January 2024 created the Special Committee on Investigation to examine allegations of misconduct against Willis concerning her case seeking criminal convictions for efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. Even before Trump embarked on a retribution campaign against his enemies, Republicans on the Georgia committee were eager to bring Willis in for questioning.

When Willis announced the indictment against Trump and 18 others in August 2023, she used the state’s anti-racketeering law to allege a conspiracy to try to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Republicans didn’t like that, but the committee has focused on Willis’ hiring of special prosecutor Nathan Wade to lead the election interference case. The resolution creating the committee said a romantic relationship between the two amounted to a “clear conflict of interest and a fraud upon the taxpayers.” But now the case is defunct after Willis was removed and another prosecutor dismissed it. Thus far, the committee has turned up few new facts regarding Willis’ activities. And she may choose to be guarded after Trump called Willis a “criminal” who should be “prosecuted” and “put in jail.”

Democrats have decried the panel as a partisan time-waster driven by political ambition. Four Republicans on the committee are running for statewide office in 2026. Chairman Bill Cowsert of Athens is running for attorney general, while Sens. Greg Dolezal of Cumming, Blake Tillery of Vidalia and Steve Gooch of Dahlonega are each seeking the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. Another Republican who had been on the committee, John Kennedy of Macon, resigned from the Senate last week to pursue his own bid for lieutenant governor.

Amid a court battle over the committee’s power to order her to appear, Willis didn’t show up last year when subpoenaed. A judge agreed that Willis couldn’t ignore the subpoena, and her lawyers worked out an agreement for Willis to appear when the subpoena was reissued this year.

But Roy Barnes, the former Democratic Georgia governor representing Willis, told state Supreme Court justices last week in a hearing over the validity of an earlier subpoena that there may be limits to what Willis will answer.

“You can’t just pick somebody out and say, ‘We’re going to embarrass you; we’re going to try you; we’re going to harass you,’” Barnes told justices. “So we’ll make an appropriate objection at the time. I’m not a potted plant.”

Willis’ prosecution began to fall apart in January 2024, when a defense attorney in the case alleged that Willis was involved in an improper romantic relationship with Wade.

In an extraordinary hearing, both Willis and Wade testified about the intimate details of their relationship. They both vehemently denied allegations that it constituted a conflict of interest.

The trial judge chided Willis for a “tremendous lapse in judgment,” ultimately ruling that Willis could remain on the case if Wade resigned, which he did hours later.

But after defense attorneys appealed, the Georgia Court of Appeals cited an “appearance of impropriety” and removed Willis from the case. The state Supreme Court in September declined to hear Willis’ appeal.