This story was updated on March 9, 2026 at 11:40 a.m. to clarify that while the Chatham County Republican Party qualified two candidates to run for the Republican seat on the county board of elections — Vicki Aeger Bradley and James Hall — it has not formally endorsed either candidate. The committee is expected to vote on such an endorsement in coming days.
With the end of candidate qualifying Friday, we now know who will be on the ballot in this year’s midterm elections, starting with party primaries and non-partisan contests on May 19 and continuing all the way to the general election on Nov. 3 — and possible runoffs a month later.
Most voters have been paying little or no attention to the elections. With the candidate field now set, here are some (but hardly all) of the races and candidates in Coastal Georgia we’ll be watching with special interest. We hope it will help you tune in.
Open race, packed field
A whopping 14 people — eight Democrats and six Republicans — have qualified to run for Coastal Georgia’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
It’s an open race, meaning that none of the candidates is the incumbent, the current holder of the seat — Earl “Buddy” Carter — having decided to seek the Republican nomination to run against U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in November.
Why is this race especially important for Coastal Georgians? The seat’s occupant is the legislator in Washington who most directly represents the interests of the region’s roughly 750,000 people.
A Republican has held the seat since 1993, when Jack Kingston broke the Democrats’ grip on the seat. Now his 36-year-old son Jim, aided by his last name and his father’s fundraising contacts, wants to step into it.
Vying with him for the GOP nomination are Pat Farrell, Brian Montgomery, Krista Penn, Kandiss Taylor, and Eugene Yu.
The Democratic field features two candidates from Camden, Coastal Georgia’s southernmost county — Defonsio Daniels and Joey Palimeno — and six from Chatham, its northernmost county — Joyce Griggs, Amanda Hollowell, Michael McCord, Sharon Stokes-Williamson, Pat Wilver and Randy Zurcher.
Incumbent power
Coastal Georgia’s delegation to the state legislature is made up of some four senators and 14 representatives. With the ballot for this year’s elections now set, only one of those senators — Savannah’s Ben Watson, a Republican — faces opposition for election to another two-year term. Democrats Barbara Gooby and Corey Foreman will vie in the May 19 Democratic primary to face Watson, a Republican, in November.
Coasting to reelection will be incumbents Derek Mallow (D-Savannah), Mike Hodges (R-Brunswick) and Billy Hickman (R-Statesboro). They face no opposition, either in their party primary or in the general election.
With the same ease, Orlando Scott will step into Savannah’s District 162 seat with no primary or general election opposition, following Carl Gilliard’s decision not to seek reelection.
Some ferment
Yet for all the power of incumbency, there’s some ferment and competition in Coastal Georgia’s House races.
After qualifying to run for reelection early in the week, Rep. Edna Jackson, Savannah’s former mayor, stepped away from her District 165 seat later in the week. The winner of the three-way Democratic primary between Jaylen Jay Morris, Kendra Clark and Miquan Green in May to replace will ease into the seat. No Republican entered the race.
Longtime Republican lawmaker, Buddy DeLoach of Townsend, will face a Democratic opponent — either Laurie Anne Thompson or Nathaniel Hicks —for the McIntosh-area, District 167 seat in November. To the south, Rick Townsend (R-Brunswick) will square off against Democrat Holle Weiss-Friedman of St. Simons for the District 179 seat
And in what promises to be one of the most watched primary races in Coastal Georgia, Sabrina Newby is challenging senior statesman Al Williams of Midway in the Democratic primary for the Liberty County-area District 168 seat.
The 78-year-old Williams has served in the House for more than 22 years. In 12 party primaries since 2002, Williams has faced a challenger only three times.
A successful primary challenge by Newby, president of Coastal Georgia Minority Chamber of Commerce, would signal generational change in the region’s Democratic politics.
County races rise
In McIntosh County, the issue of legal costs of the push to rezone Sapelo Island over the opposition of residents is expected to roil campaigning for three county commission seats which attracted eight candidates.
Elsewhere in Coastal Georgia, school board contests are shaping up as hotly contested affairs, especially in Bryan County and the race for board chair in Liberty County.
That isn’t the case for the school board in Chatham, the region’s most populous county, where none of the four incumbents running for reelection on its school board will face an opponent in May.
That doesn’t mean, however, there won’t be an airing over what Chatham public schools are doing well and need to do better — and at what cost.
Incumbent school board president Roger Moss is being challenged by Dionne Hoskins-Brown, who stepped down from her seat on the board to run against Moss. She’s expected to pose a tough test to Moss, who won the post four years ago on a wave of bipartisan support.
Then there’s Chatham’s election board. Once quiet backwaters, election boards have become frontlines in the battle over the trustworthiness of Georgia’s election procedures and the 2020 election.
Chatham County’s board is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans (in addition to a chairman), and those four seats will be contested in this election.
In this week’s qualifying, the Chatham County Republican Party has put forward Jody Ann Vos for the seat being vacated by the retiring Marianne Heimes.
More significantly, the committee has qualified two people for the second Republican seat on the board: incumbent James Hall and Vicki Aeger Bradley. The committee is expected to vote in coming days on a formal endorsement in the race.
Opposition to Hall’s reelection is strong among some local Republicans who view him as insufficiently critical of the state’s electoral system and the conduct of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
This article appears in 2026 Elections.