Republican Echols wins Georgia Public Service Commission primary as Democrats head for a runoff
Voters Tuesday were deciding party nominees for two posts on the commission, which oversees utilities including Georgia Power Co.
Separate Republican and Democratic primaries were taking place. In each race, candidates must live in a certain district, but run statewide. Turnout was low, with fewer than 200,000 people statewide casting ballots.
In the District 2 Republican primary, the incumbent Echols outpaced challenger Lee Muns of Harlem by a 3 to 1 margin. Echols, a Hoschton resident, has been on the Public Service Commission since 2011. He will face Democrat Alicia Johnson of Savannah in November. She was unopposed Tuesday.
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In mostly complete returns in the District 3 Democratic primary, Waites, a former state legislator and Atlanta City Council member, won the most votes but fell short of a majority. That means she will face the second-place finisher, Hubbard, in a runoff. He's a green energy activist from Atlanta. Former utility regulator and utility executive Robert Jones of Brookhaven finished third and will miss the runoff.
The winner of the Democratic runoff will face incumbent Fitz Johnson of Atlanta, who was unopposed Tuesday.
Daniel Blackman of Atlanta appeared on ballots in the District 3 Democratic primary, but votes for him were not counted after a judge ruled he hadn't moved into the district in time to meet the November 2024 deadline
Debate in the primary centered on bills charged by Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. Georgia Power customers have seen bills rise six times in recent years because of higher natural gas costs, construction projects including two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta, and other factors. A typical Georgia Power residential customer now pays more than $175 a month, including taxes.
Echols defends his record.
'I am grateful to Republicans who value our low rates and grid reliability, allowing us to stay the No. 1 state to do business,' Echols said in a statement Tuesday. 'Our Public Service Commission is laser-focused on protecting Georgia families.
Waites has said bills are 'going in the wrong direction' and touted her previous experience in office, saying she would be a viable Democratic candidate in November.
'I have a long track record and history of fighting and standing up for working families and seniors,' she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a Monday candidate forum.
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Hubbard said he believed his platform would triumph in the Democratic contest on July 15, saying he would 'fight for a Georgia powered by clean, low-cost renewable energy. I have a detailed plan to create that future and lower power bills.'
The five-member commission, currently all Republicans, also oversees some natural gas rates for Atlanta Gas Light and Liberty Gas.
Georgia usually doesn't have statewide elections in odd-numbered years, but these were pushed back after elections were delayed by a lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the statewide voting scheme as discriminatory to Black people. No Georgia Public Service Commission elections have been held since 2022 because of the lawsuit.
Johnson was appointed to the commission in 2021 by Gov. Brian Kemp and has never faced voters. He was supposed to run for the last two years of his predecessor's term in 2022. Instead, the District 3 winner can run again next year for a six-year term, after lawmakers rewrote the terms.
Echols was supposed to run for a six-year term in 2022. Instead, the District 2 winner will serve for five years, with the next election in 2030.
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'Anxious Generation' Author Jonathan Haidt Shares New Worries About Kids — and Why You Should Be Concerned (Exclusive)
His book has been a bestseller for more than a year and has prompted smartphone bans in schools across the country, but in a conversation with PEOPLE, Haidt says kids are still in danger When Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation debuted last year, it immediately became a bestseller — and a must-read for many parents navigating an era of pervasive smartphones and social media. Now, more than half of all states have passed laws banning or limiting phone use in schools — 17 states passed legislation just this year — and a new research poll finds that 74% of adults in the U.S. support classroom phone bans. Australia plans to restrict social media to those aged 16 and up starting in December, and several other European countries are also considering age restrictions. 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That means when kids come in, they put their phone in a locked pouch, or a locker, and get it back at the end of the day. But many states and schools are doing something that's not very good: They banned phones only during instructional time. They do that because they're afraid of parents who say, 'I have to reach my student all the time.' But when class ends, kids lunge for their phones. And for the first 15 minutes of the next class, they're thinking about the drama going on. Phone bans during class time do nothing to help kids make friends. They do nothing to reduce the mental illness issue. It has to be bell-to-bell. I've never heard of a school that did it all day and regretted it or went back. PEOPLE: Critics of your book say you ignore the possible benefits of screen I recently found a horrifying statistic, which is that 40% of American 2-year-olds have their own iPad. A touchscreen device is not like television. Humans have always raised their children with stories. This is how culture is passed on. A TV screen is a reasonably good way of presenting stories. If your five-year-old watches a 90-minute movie on TV with an older sibling or with you, there's nothing wrong with that. The opposite is iPad time. The kid learns, "Might there be something more interesting if I swipe?" If this starts at age two, your kids lose the ability to pay attention to anything if it's boring for even a moment. By the time kids get to middle school, if they've been swiping and seeing micro stories that aren't really stories, a lot of damage has been done to their ability to pay attention. Us college professors all say the same thing: Kids can't read books anymore. Some of our students say they can't even watch a movie. It's too long. Our attention is being shattered. Let children's frontal cortex develop before you expose them to this. It's damaging an entire generation. And you should never give a child an iPhone as their first phone. You should work your way up. 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These are predatory programs that prey on children. PEOPLE: One of the biggest criticisms levied against your book is that it doesn't adequately acknowledge the way in which technology has allowed people, and particularly kids who might be isolated or marginalized, to connect and organize. HAIDT: That argument confuses the internet with social media. The internet solved that problem in the '90s. If you're a gay kid in rural Nebraska, life was really hard until the internet came along and suddenly you could get information everywhere. You could find organizations to help. I love the internet. Almost everybody loves the internet. Then in the 2000s, we get one application on the internet, which is a way of linking people together, giving them a newsfeed curated by an algorithm — and the algorithm is giving them whatever it can to keep them hooked. So who do you suppose is most harmed by this? Who do you suppose is most likely to be sextorted ? It's LGBTQ kids. 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