During the primary campaign, The Current has talked with and listened to candidates in races where candidates are either going head-to-head in a one-party contest, or where more than one candidate is duking it out to represent their party in the November runoff. Here is what they had to say.
Georgia House District 168 (Democratic primary)
Two Democrats, Rep. Al Williams and challenger Henry Covington, are vying for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. Because there is no Republican challenger, whoever wins the primary will win the race.
Al Williams
Williams says the county needs his 22 years of experience and the relationships he’s built in the Gold Dome to keep bringing tax dollars back to Liberty County.
At the Riceboro NAACP candidate forum, Williams told the crowd the legislature is no place for beginners and that maintaining his position on six powerful committees is in the county’s best interest: “It’s not a learning experience. It’s not something you can play with.”
Williams sits on the powerful House Appropriations and Rules Committees, as well as on Defense and Veterans Affairs; Economic Development and Tourism; Game, Fish and Parks; and Regulated Industries.
He said his “life’s work” now is to cap property tax increases “for real,” now is to cap property tax at 3% or the cost of living, whichever is less. That’s known as KDW or Kemp-Deloach-Williams, which gave homeowners temporary tax relief. Williams said he would push to get Hinesville the KDW exemption next session.
During the last session, Williams authored a bill, signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp, that allows the City of Hinesville to levy an excise tax of up to 8% on tourist accommodations, which goes largely to marketing Liberty County as a tourist destination.
Williams also authored a bill requiring Riceboro’s mayor and councilmembers to live in the city for at least 12 months before their election, “provided, however, that this sentence shall not apply to any person serving as mayor or councilmember on the effective date of this section,” and establishing a plurality of the vote in Riceboro to win office. That means whoever gets the most votes in an election wins, whether or not the candidate got 50% plus 1 vote.
Williams also denied that he is inaccessible to constituents, pointing to monthly meetings he’s held for the past 14 years at 8 a.m. on the first Saturday at Dorchester Academy.
“You won’t have to ask anybody to give you my number because everybody’s got it or can get it with one phone call,” he said.
Henry Covington
Covingtonm a veteran, told The Current he doesn’t buy Williams’ claim that only an experienced legislator can represent Liberty County at the Capitol, pointing out that Williams was inexperienced when he was first elected.
In an online campaign pitch, Covington wrote, “With 24 years of service and multiple combat tours in challenging conditions, I have shown that I will stand up for the people of this county, just as I did for our country. I have advocated for the underprivileged, the marginalized, and the voiceless, fighting for causes that truly matter.”
While canvassing, Covington said, people told him “that they have not had an opportunity to talk to their representative, to meet with them.”
Covington said he had heard a proposed casino was “almost a done deal,” but that residents he’s spoken with in Midway “don’t want it but they don’t listen to the people. They do what they want to and it’s all about money.”
Part of his platform is environmental protection and expansion of green spaces in the county, as well as instituting “sustainable practices” and protecting the coast and waterways.
Covington added, “We can talk about the economic development, we could talk about education, the disparities in education, we can talk about affordable housing, public safety, all those things. But all those things have one thing in common. And that’s the people. If I’m elected, I would like them to know that my platform is them, the people, and I’m here to serve the people.”
Board of Commissioners Chair (Democratic primary)
Two Democrats, Donald E. Lovette and Chassidy Oliviera, are vying for the county’s top executive seat in the Tuesday, May 21 general primary. Whoever wins the primary will face the sole Republican challenger, Mike Navarro, in the November runoff.
Donald Lovette
Lovette says the county needs his experience and his network to keep moving forward, citing his working relationships with Savannah Mayor Van Johnson and mayors in the county, as well as his time as a school board member and commissioner.
“None of my opposition has any of those experiences,” he said, “and let me tell you, I just can’t imagine walking into this position without any of those experiences.”
Since the beginning of his current term in 2020, Lovette has had to manage the county’s response to COVID-19, the county’s takeover of EMS from the hospital (which had taken over EMS from the county only to find the expense too great), and the matter of piping in more water for the warehouses on Islands Highway when Liberty County is in a yellow zone. That project continues as of press time, as the county acquires right-of-way parcels to run the pipe.
“Outside of Tradeport, we really need water resources,” he told The Current, “or else the growth in Liberty County will really stall….So it’s not just Tradeport East. We need water, period.” The Development Authority won’t even consider any water-intensive businesses because “we can’t meet that demand.”
Acknowledging many homeowners are upset about the recent millage rate increase, Lovette defended the action, saying the county had been blindsided by an insurance premium hike, and that the county raised employee salaries after an independent study had found those were less than what their peers made.
As for the higher property taxes, Lovette said, “The tax notices just came out. I’ve been telling people, go to the tax assessor’s office and have those conversations with that office about your property values. Don’t wait until it’s millage time and then fill the county commission room. Go sit down with Glenda’s office and go over that.” He added that Glenda “has a specific rule she has to follow when it comes to assessing property, …so it’s not the county, we would never want to hurt our citizens with a heavy tax burden.”
As a military community, he said, Liberty County has a high concentration of veterans who have retired here, including those who earned a 100% homestead exemption for their service-related disability. Lovette said county staff have been comparing how Liberty County is doing compared with Columbus, which is a much larger military town.
Lovette said a proposed casino would have been in the “general area” of the warehouses visible from I-95 but “if it never leaves Atlanta, it won’t happen anywhere…we still have a Bible Belt, you know?…Personally, I’m not highly optimistic it may happen.”
He would like to see a convention center and a family entertainment venue as amenities, “but as far as infrastructure, we’ve gotta have the water and the sewer.”
Chassidy Oliviera
Chassidy Oliviera has been campaigning hard, knocking on doors and waving signs with her family. She had skipped the NAACP candidate forums, according to her husband, T.J. Grace, who said, “We have our own thing.” The couple has held online town halls, done local radio interviews, and spoken at Democratic Party candidate events.
Oliviera says it’s time for new blood and new ideas, and is pushing for a grassroots approach to governing. She and her husband have taken on local government after Grace was slammed to the ground during a traffic stop by a Liberty County Sheriff’s deputy, “before Ahmaud Arbery,” Grace told The Current.
“There’s no accountability,” Oliviera said. “Like we went from the top of the leadership to the bottom of the leadership when my husband went through his case. It was clear paperwork and evidence that they could see that it was clear corruption. But they didn’t do anything, like nobody would step out and help us. We’re still fighting it now. But when they get something that they want to broadcast live about something and they want to have their own personal vendettas going on, inside the board, not working together, then they’re able to do everything that they tell us they can’t do.”
Oliviera said that the jail does not rehabilitate people and that the grievance-filing system does not work.
She told The Current that, while campaigning, many people “agree with what I’m saying, as far as the leadership not changing nothing over the past 20 years that’s really uplifting the people. They’re tired of the family ties — like, a lot of people, before I can even say it, they’re like, ‘You need to focus on breaking these family ties,’ because it is like that. They only help people in their own groups.”
Oliviera said the established politicians “give you the runaround” when you ask them about those family ties, or why they might work in one jurisdiction and serve as an elected official for another jurisdiction. She also said “regular citizens” can’t get appointed to boards because the powers that be “already know who they want to give it to, “and we never really get the chance to use our voice to really help the community. It’s always just the same thing.”
She said that small-town politics means some people “don’t want to be open about who they’re voting for. They know how those people are, like they retaliate. Your whole reputation will be ended if you go against them. Now you can’t go to no more family barbecues, none of that no more. For real! It’s sad, but we’re trying to let them know it’s time out for all of that…family or not.”
Oliviera remains optimistic about her chances in the race.
“I think it’s gonna be a good turnout this time,” she told The Current. “A lot of people that they think aren’t gonna vote, they’re gonna vote this time. The community really wanted change and [is] really stepping up.”
Commission District 4 (Republican primary)
Two Republican challengers, Kevin “Remy” Remillard and Timmy Blount, are on the primary ballot. Whoever wins will take on Democratic incumbent Maxie Jones IV in the November runoff.
Kevin “Remy” Remillard
Kevin Remillard, a business owner and retired Hinesville Police officer, says the county needs more sheriff’s deputies on the road. He also says the county needs to address proper drainage, pave dirt roads, and improve county recreation facilities. Remillard says the county has to trim its budget and he opposes the recent property tax increase.
“We have high taxes and we have low quality of life within having high taxes,” Remillard said at the Riceboro NAACP candidate forum. “And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to go over to Long County, go over to Bryan County, and look at the rec departments, and understand that their parks are all beautiful, while our parks are in shambles.”
Remillard says the public needs to see where their tax dollars are going.
Timmy Blount
Timmy Blount says the county’s development is out of control. In particular, he says, the county should not keep giving warehouses tax exemptions as incentives to build here. Blount told the Coastal Courier, “Liberty County should stop the warehouses from building. If Liberty County is going to allow warehouse development, then they should be taxed and not waivered for 10 years.”
He also says the county is allowing too many homes too close together in new subdivisions and is calling for a limit of two homes per acre.
Commission District 6 (Democratic primary)
Two Democratic candidates, incumbent Commissioner Eddie J,. Walden and challenger McKesson Stafford, are battling for the District 6 commission seat. Whoever wins the primary will win that seat.
Eddie J. Walden
Incumbent Eddie J. Walden says he won’t apologize for backing industrial growth in the county, but he also says he doesn’t like smokestacks. Although the nearby Hyundai Metaplant and other EV-related businesses are coming, Walden said he wasn’t sure whether an electric car tenant was coming. Last year, Seohan, a Korean auto parts manufacturer, announced it would build a $72 million plant at Tradeport East, and the company has had a presence in a mobile building on the campus.
“You say that you’re creating jobs. Well, I don’t know if you’re creating jobs or not,” he told The Current. “I think if anybody can get a job down there, that’s great. Because when I was growing up, there was one place to work in Hinesville. And that was Fort Stewart. And you had to know all the people that had been out there and the families to get on it….The only other place to go was Interstate Paper. And it was in the same vein.”
Walden knows some residents east of I-95 are unhappy about the warehouses springing up along Islands Highway, but that he tries to take the long view when considering the county’s long-term needs.
He says not everyone opposes the development, and that he’s lost some friends, but that “forward thinking is the only way that you can accomplish anything and, you know, if you want to call it politics or government, it’s just [that] you’ve got to look down the road a long ways…..there may be jobs in there that people can have. Now, they may have to live in Richmond Hill and drive there. Or they may have to live in McIntosh County and go out there. Or they could live in Hinesville, in Midway or wherever. But there’s an opportunity for a job instead of, you know, you had four gas stations when I was growing up. And that was it. And now you’ve got four that you can stand on a corner and look at.”
Walden said he thinks more residential development and perhaps small shopping centers are coming, “but the thing that’s gonna keep us from having residential is going to the water. That’s the biggest, the biggest thing. And the other thing is, one day, the state of Georgia is gonna say, ‘Hey, guys, you’ve got septic tanks and everything from the railroad tracks in Midway, all the way to the coast, is septic tanks.’ Every one of them. Everything down there. And I think there is something that we’ve got to do.”
He said that some major landowners along the coast don’t want to see industrial development, but that “I can’t see that anything would be done down there at that industrial park that’s going to be of any detriment to that.”
He points proudly to local historical sites and the natural beauty of St. Catherines Island: “I want us to have a community. We haven’t tore down the Midway Museum. We haven’t moved any cemeteries. They’re still there. It’s just like in Savannah, you go to Bonaventure, you go to these different places and the cemeteries are still there….And the coast is historical. St. Catherines is historical.”
Walden said that, as a conservative Democrat who worked three jobs to put his children through college, he understood the struggles of Liberty County residents trying to budget for higher taxes.
“Sometimes people need to really try to buckle down and do the best that they can do,” he said. “You know, it’s not a free ride. It’s America. That’s what we do: work.”
On the whole, Walden said, “I think if we can put people in jobs indoors, in a controlled environment, and they make a decent salary, and with benefits, and can go home and be with their family, I think that’s what you need to do. That’s what I think more than anything.”
Walden said he would like to see the county build an aquatic center with an Olympic-size pool for swim meets and other pools for swimming lessons. But the one project he thinks is a necessity, “and it needs to happen real quick, is the road going from I-95 to Yellow Bluff. That road needs to be widened and probably even [put] a turning lane in it….But it ain’t my district, it’s somebody else’s. I try not to dabble around in there.”
He also says he’s not for a casino. “I’m not crazy about it. Some people might like it. And if a person’s got their own private property they want to put a casino in, and the State of Georgia says that its 50 acres and it belongs to them, then that’s fine. But just to have it? You know, it was all brought up about having it down there at the interstate….we got enough people homeless, we got enough people broke.” He added that he has a lot of friends who have a condominium in North Carolina and who go there to gamble: “I’ll tell you right now, they never come back with what they [had] — they might have won, but…you’re never gonna get rich, so I’m not real crazy about that….I’ve heard people say they’ve been to the topless bars; No, I’m not crazy about nighting like that either. I mean, the way I was brought up…my family and my mom was a devout Christian and was in the Baptist church, and that’s where we were raised at. And there’s some things that I just don’t agree with…. You know, there’s other things we need here worse than a casino.”
McKesson Stafford
Challenger McKesson Stafford has accused Walden of being missing in action during recent candidate forums: “In District 6, we have a ghost commissioner,” Stafford said of Walden at the NAACP candidate forum in Riceboro. “He’s never around.” He also questioned how a commissioner can get infrastructure and broadband money from the state without going to the workshops and training required of elected officials.
Stafford, a Desert Storm veteran who worked in IT in the Army and for the Georgia Department of Labor, owns a video production business. He says the county should “go ahead and install a local [government access] TV station, like Fort Stewart had at one point. We need to have one for Liberty County, so we can put the information out, instead of they’ve got to look at something else.”
Stafford also said he knows people are tired of gas stations and fast food restaurants,that the county needs affordable housing, that he will listen to residents’ questions, and “give you a yes or no. I will not beat around the bush with you.”
Stafford has served on the Hinesville Development Authority alongside Lovette, former Hinesville mayor and real estate agent Allen Brown, and Hinesville City Manager Kenneth Howard.
Resources
Educate yourself with The Current’s handy election guides:
“Your vote: Guide to 2024 elections”
“What do they do? Quick glossary for jobs on Georgia primary ballot”
Look up Liberty County local candidates’ campaign finance filings on the Georgia Campaign Finance Commission website
See Rep. Al Williams’ campaign finance records from 2006-2019
Read The Current’s previous coverage of other contested primary races on the May 21 general primary ballot
Liberty County Sheriff (Democratic primary)
“Follow the money: Liberty County sheriff campaign donations”
“4 Liberty County sheriff candidates seek to oust incumbent”
“Liberty County Commission takes over sheriff’s school zone speeding fines account”
Liberty County Tax Commissioner (Democratic primary)
“A look at Liberty County’s tax commissioner candidates”
Liberty County Magistrate Judge
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