The AJC should start endorsing candidates again
Various legal shenanigans have delayed PSC races for the last few election cycles but we are finally back to having them again. I disagreed with the ultimate ruling that kept statewide elections in place (district based elections would be better for racial minorities AND consumers) but as a believer in the rule of law, here we are.
Unsurprisingly, turnout has been abysmal. One Democratic primary election is unopposed but the other features a race between three (now two) qualified candidates and one perennial candidate (and office holder) who mostly coasts through life on name ID, always looking for a bigger and bigger office and paycheck.
Most recently, Keisha Waites abandoned a brief tenure on the Atlanta City Council (where she flirted with extreme leftists on things like opposing “Cop City”) to try her hand at being the Fulton County Clerk of Court. Clerk of Court is an under the radar but incredibly important office and the appointed clerk (who thankfully defeated Waites) was literally a private consultant who specialized in fixing clerk offices before the Superior Court judges appointed her to the position and she got major commitments from the business community and local governments to help modernize and turn the office around.
Having an effective clerk could literally mean the difference between life and death, because an ineffective clerk means the wheels of justice grind to a halt and murderers and rapists don’t get tried and convicted in adequate time. Unfortunately, voters, even the ones who READ the AJC don’t typically possess this kind of information (life is busy, it’s literally not our job as voters to know this stuff) but a major newspaper like the AJC and it’s good reporters DO possess this kind of information and they should go back and time and re-instate a valuable service and TELL people what they need to know as they head to the voting booth, especially on low-information down ballot offices.
Back to the PSC. The aforementioned Waites, who has essentially no experience with utilities or regulating them does have elected experience - she briefly served as a state Representative and city council person. That’s not nothing, and to be clear, any Democratic presence on the unanimous Republican/rate-captured commission would be good, but there are MUCH better options.
Each of the alternatives have extensive energy backgrounds - one (Robert Jones) seems to come more from the utility side and the other (Peter Hubbard) seems to be more of an outsider on the green energy side. But they are both the kind of people that would be extremely qualified, seem to have roughly the same agenda (even though they have different experience), and they wouldn’t get railroaded by the lobbyists and industry executives who have had total control over the existing PSC for at least the last 20 years that I have paid attention to it. In comparison, I know that Waites has essentially been an ineffective legislator when she’s managed to hoodwink the voters into electing her (see for example allying with the Stop Cop City idiots), and if she were to someone win the PSC race, we could expect more of the same.
I am not the AJC, only about 100 people read this letter. But I am urging you to vote for either Robert Jones or Peter Hubbard in the Democratic primary. Visit their websites, watch their videos and see which one you like more. I am also urging the AJC to recognize that their small but influential readers would consider it a very valuable service for them to start endorsing in races like this again. And it would be good for democracy.