Ceretta Smith announced her candidacy for Georgia’s District 12 seat in Congress, last month. Since then she’s been visiting counties throughout the district to meet “farmers, veterans, small business owners, educators, families,” planning listening sessions, planning listening sessions, and looking to grow her volunteer base.
Smith’s slogan for her congressional campaign is “Leadership Rooted in Service.” The Grovetown City Councilwoman says leadership — which has proven a thematic throughline in much of her career—is largely about “Just showing up.”
“Then it’s about standing up,” said Smith. “If you’re going to show up and then not stand up, then why show up? Showing up, standing up and doing the hard work even when nobody’s watching.”
Smith says that desire to “show up” to serve and lead is in her DNA, tracing it back to inspiration from her father and uncles, all of them Vietnam War veterans, one of them Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. 1st Class Eugene Ashley. But Smith remembers the tendency popping up long before she enlisted in the Army to follow in her father’s footsteps.
“I tell people this all time, I ran my first campaign in sixth grade,” Smith said. “Being a 12-year-old, I didn’t really understand where that was coming from, but now I know and understand. For me, it’s a calling.”
After retiring from the Army, in which she served as a combat medic, Smith would go on to become a federal worker, where she got her start in politics as a labor advocate in the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the federal workers’ union. There she served as Women’s and Fair Practices Coordinator, legislative political coordinator, and even president of AFGE Local 2017 (the union’s Augusta area chapter).
After visit on behalf of AFGE to D.C. — her hometown — for an annual legislative conference in 2015, she decided she was going to run for Georgia’s 12th.
“But I knew that I needed time to grow as a leader,” she said. “I was new to this legislative and political world, and so that’s what I’ve been doing ever since then.”
In 2020, Smith took on Max Burns and then-Columbia County Commissioner Trey Allen for the District 23 seat in the Georgia State Senate, garnering 40% of voters. She was first elected to her current role in Grovetown’s city council in 2021, and again in March of last year, earning 35 votes over opponent Jacqueline Rivera-Player.
Being on the city council, alongside her work in labor advocacy, has given her a more intimate look at conditions in Columbia County that spur some of her key issue interests — such as school programs, literacy and housing.
“We want to say that there’s no poverty in Columbia County, there’s no homelessness in Columbia County,” Smith said. “Those things are important to me, and if you’re not down here on the ground, you may not be aware of what’s happening.”
For next year’s election, Smith, a Democrat, is challenging incumbent, and Republican, Rick Allen, who has held the District 12 seat for 10 years. Smith says she “loves the non-partisan” level of local public service because it allows the elected to engage with their constituents with no labels—” I’ve had people say, wow, you know, are you really a Democrat? You seem very conservative.”
But she also says that current times yield signs that the 12th District may be open and ready for a shift, which she says she sees every day.
“I hear it from veterans struggling to get benefits. I hear it from working parents who work in more than one job to make ends meet because we don’t have livable wages. I hear it from senior citizens who are worried about the rising cost of living and so those voices,” said Smith. “Those are all signs to me that people are ready for leadership that puts them first. And I just wish people could grasp that like change doesn’t have to mean division.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering general reporting for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com
