Among the bills signed by Gov. Kemp this week is one that strips party labels from elected county offices – county commissioner, clerk of courts, district attorney, solicitor general, etc.- in five metro Atlanta counties. They are Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb, Clayton and Gwinnett.
Republicans, in general, were in favor of the move; Democrats opposed it.
There were some Republicans, however, who were against it. Among them, Stephen Aaron of Gwinnett, who is the chairman of the 9th Congressional District (which includes parts of Hall County) Republican Party.
“This is something that we’ve been fighting for the past 15+ years. It seems like every session, there is some new effort to make another local office nonpartisan,” Aaron told WABE last month. “This takes away accountability from the voters. It takes away voters’ ability to identify basic philosophy of who’s run when someone’s running for a certain office, and realistically it’s just bad policy.”
Aaron also believed that switching to nonpartisan elections would shift influence from political parties to special interests.
DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston said that changing the district attorney election process would require a constitutional amendment. She and the other district attorneys from the affected counties said last month that they were ready to file a lawsuit if the bill became law.
And the WABE report notes that Boston also said it was impossible to ignore that all five district attorneys in these counties are Black women and Democrats.
Democrats have been gradually winning races for other offices, as well, in the counties on that list that have been Republican strongholds for decades.