by Ty Tagami | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Another Democrat has entered the contest to succeed term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia’s highest elected office, a candidate with a history of winning statewide, albeit a while ago.
Michael Thurmond, who has held a wide variety of local and state elected positions, announced his bid for the governor’s office Wednesday.
He said he will be running on “a record of competence and service to the people in the state.”
Several Democrats are running for governor, but the biggest names are former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and current state Sen. Jason Esteves, who is also from Atlanta and was previously an elected school board member there.
Unlike them, Thurmond, 72, has appeared on ballots across the state.
His political fortunes rose from a foundation as a state representative decades ago when Democrats led the General Assembly. Then-Gov. Zell Miller, a Democrat who would later become a Republican, appointed him to lead the state Division of Family and Children Services.
Thurmond would parlay that into statewide electoral wins as a Democrat for labor commissioner in 1998, 2002, and 2006, leading the office during the Great Recession. He was a lonely successful statewide Democrat when Republicans, including then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, were sweeping the ballot.
Once out of statewide politics, Thurmond shifted to local office. The DeKalb County school board hired him as superintendent in 2013 to handle a governance and financial crisis. He would later win two terms as CEO of DeKalb County, leaving office this year after term limits prohibited another run.
Whoever emerges from the Democratic primary will face a statewide electorate that has continued to skew Republican, although the state’s two U.S. senators have won as Democrats.
Two leading Republican gubernatorial candidates are state Attorney General Chris Carr, who entered the race last year, and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who joined it last month.
Both are campaigning on issues such as immigration that appeal to President Donald Trump’s base of voters.
Thurmond said he hopes to get beyond “hyper-partisan” politics and sees an opening on issues such as education and medical care, noting that Georgia has among the worst records for infant and maternal mortality in the country.
Georgia consistently ranks as a top state for business but has room for quality-of-life improvements, Thurmond said, adding that he thinks his relationships with lawmakers in the GOP-led General Assembly would help him as a Democratic governor who wants to do things like expand Medicaid.
“I believe Georgia is underachieving,” he said. “We can do better, but we can’t do better when we are basically imprisoned in this world of hyper-partisan politics.”
