Metro Atlanta residents returned to the polls Tuesday for runoff elections for six races in the City of Atlanta and DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties.
Races in which no candidate received more than 50% of the votes during the November general election headed to runoff elections.
Atlanta
Eshé Collins, an Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education member and attorney, beat former school administrator Dr. Nicole Evans Jones for the Atlanta City Council Post-3 At-Large seat. Collins garnered 60% of the vote to Jones’ 40% with all precincts reporting in DeKalb and Fulton counties.
All of Tuesday’s results are unofficial until certified by county election boards.
Collins will replace former councilwoman Keisha Sean Waites for the remainder of her term, which lasts until Dec. 31, 2025.
Collins has served on the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education as the immediate past chair and vice chair and works as a civil rights attorney as the director of the Equity Assistance Center-South of the Southern Education Foundation. She served as the senior program director at Georgia State University, then joined the Atlanta Board of Education in 2014. Collins also worked at Jumpstart, an organization that strives to promote equitable early education.
She has previously stated that she would not continue to serve on the Atlanta school board but will continue working in her role at the Southern Education Foundation during her tenure on the city council.
The two candidates for the city council seat campaigned on similar platforms, both with an eye toward affordable housing and an expansion of public transportation.
Collins received endorsements from a number of Georgia organizations and figures, including Atlanta urbanism advocacy organization ThreadATL, Democratic Georgia State Sen. Jason Esteves, Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council of the AFL-CIO, Atlanta Professional Fire Fighters, Atlanta Realtors, the Georgia Working Families Party and Educate Georgia, an organization affiliated with Represent Georgia Action Network.
Collins said at a Nov. 12 forum hosted by the Center for Civic Innovation that she would want to prioritize “affordable living for all.”
“When I say affordable living, I mean often well beyond affordable housing, so ensuring that we increase our affordable housing stock that is not only supporting our growing population but protect[ing] our legacy residents,” she said.
Collins added at the forum that her experience from the school board would help her bring accountability to the council.
“I call it working the plan,” she said. “You have your strategy. You have your game plan. Work your plan to hold yourself accountable to it. And so for me, that is something that I honestly would say pride myself on as a leader.”
At a transit forum on Nov. 21 hosted by MARTA Army and Beltline Rail Now, Collins said she would support moving forward with all projects of the More MARTA program, including light rail along the Beltline, as recommended by the recent independent audit into the program.
In 2016, residents voted for a sales tax to raise $2.5 billion for the More MARTA Atlanta program, which would fund a slate of capital projects.
The audit, released in August, found that MARTA had adopted a “resequencing plan” that divided capital projects into two tiers of urgency, but the audit stated that the plan “has not been officially adopted by all governing bodies, as required.” Therefore, it said that MARTA “is obliged to continue making progress on all 17 capital projects included in the 15th version of the sequencing plan,” including the deprioritized Beltline rail projects.
Collins said rather than moving forward with resequencing, MARTA should follow the recommendations of the audit and continue with all capital projects as previously planned.
“That’s what we communicated to the voters, that’s what we voted on in terms of More MARTA to actually be able to fund it,” Collins told WABE in an interview after the forum. “So I do think that it’s important for us to hold ourselves accountable to that.”
DeKalb County
For the DeKalb County Commissioner District 3 seat, Nicole Massiah handily beat Andrew Bell with about 75% of the vote to Bell’s 25%.
Massiah serves as the principal attorney at Massiah Law & Associates, specializing in business, family, property and estate law. She is also a real estate broker at Massiah Real Estate Group and the owner of Krumbz Bakery. Massiah received a slate of endorsements, including from former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes.
Bell, a real estate investor, previously ran in the 2022 Democratic primary for the same seat.
For the DeKalb County Commissioner District 7 seat, Dr. LaDena Bolton, a scientist and community organizer, beat entrepreneur Jacqueline Adams with 70% of the vote to Adams’ 30%.
Also in DeKalb County, Taylor Ray narrowly won the Doraville City Council District 1, Post 2 seat over Andy Yeoman. Ray received about a dozen more votes than Yeoman to take the race, 52.9% to 47.2%.
Ray is the secretary of the Doraville City Planning Commission and has an engineering background in the solar and construction industries.
Yeoman is a former Doraville City Council member who stepped down earlier this year to run for the DeKalb County Commission District 1 seat. He lost that race and then ran in this special election to try and reclaim his seat. Yeoman was arrested earlier this year on a driving under the influence charge and has pled not guilty to the charges.
Fulton County
Entrepreneur Shean Atkins won the East Point City Council race for the Ward B At-Large seat against Jermaine Wright, a Business and Industrial Development Authority board member and a nurse.
Atkins received 70.6% of the vote to Wright’s 29.4%.
Atkins serves as the principal consultant of the Atkins Group, an engineering consulting service, and he has a background in architecture. He was also formerly the vice president at Atlanta Housing, as well as the chief of staff for the 11th District for the Atlanta City Council.
Gwinnett County
In the runoff election for the Mulberry City Council District 5 seat, Doug Ingram won 56.1% of the vote, beating prosecutor Michele Sims.
Gwinnett residents approved a May 2024 ballot measure to incorporate the City of Mulberry, and Ingram would serve as the fifth council member of the new city council.
