Election board races in Chatham County have typically been low-key affairs, drawing only a fraction of the attention directed to contests for mayor, city council, governor, or congressman.
Not this year.
The race between James Hall and Vicki Bradley for one of two Republican seats on the Chatham County Board of Elections has become a test of the power of the county’s Republican Party committee and its ardently pro-Trump, “America First” leadership.
In an unusual move, the committee has endorsed Republican challenger, Bradley, in a bid to unseat Hall, the Republican incumbent.
A win by Bradley in elections on Tuesday would mark a major victory in efforts by the Chatham County Republican Party to define who is — and who is not — authentically Republican and conservative. A loss, on the other hand, would be a blow to its efforts to solidify its brand of Republicanism in Chatham and make inroads into the county’s Democrat-dominated politics.
To bolster its efforts to oust Hall and deny him another four-year term, the party has adopted a tag-team approach, urging Republican primary voters to back a ticket made up of Bradley and Jody Voss, a retired health-care executive, who is running unopposed for the election board’s second Republican seat.
Supporters of the ticket — with or without the direct consent of the candidates — have also weighed in.
A text message sent this week to Republican voters in Chatham implored them to reject Hall, saying he has “a history of opposing election reforms backed by President Trump” and declaring that “Republicans can’t trust him with election security.”
The message did not indicate the identity of the sender or the source of financing for the texting drive. A telephone call to an attached number was not picked up.
‘Lack of engagement’
Chatham’s Republican committee has made no secret of its reasons for moving against Hall.
In April, a statement explaining the committee’s decision to endorse Bradley instead of Hall was read aloud at a candidate forum on Skidaway Island hosted by the conservative group, Ladies on the Right. Bradley and Voss delivered remarks at the forum. Hall said he was not invited.
The statement, delivered by LOTR’s chair, Diane Ingram, at the request of committee chair Brittany Brown, said Hall had shown “a clear and ongoing lack of engagement over the past three years,” including a “failure to participate in party activities” and providing “little or no support during election cycles.”
Hall, a real estate agent at a downtown Savannah firm who describes himself as a Rand Paul and Ronald Reagan-style of conservative Republican, does not dispute the claim that he has pulled back from the local GOP in recent years.
“I’ve told several people that I think the local Republican Party has gotten too radical,” he told The Current. “I’ve been pretty open about the fact that the activist class says one thing, and the rank-and-file Republican voter says something else.”
“I believe that if you ask the average Republican voter what issues are most important to them, elections wouldn’t be the number one issue. But if you go to a Republican Party meeting, that’s all they talk about.”
‘Upheld conservative Republican principles’
In its statement, the committee highlighted one reason for its decision to recruit a challenger to run against Hall: his involvement in a lawsuit brought against the State Election Board two years ago.
That lawsuit, Eternal Vigilance Action v. State of Georgia, accused the Republican-controlled board of exceeding its authority by approving election rules that violated Georgia state law, Georgia’s Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution.
The suit angered Trump administration officials, along with the Georgia Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, which rallied behind the SEB.
In the committee’s view, Hall’s decision to sign on as a plaintiff in the case, together with lack of dedication to the local party, were not only “inconsistent with the party’s mission” but “directly at odds with our efforts to strengthen election integrity and support Republican priorities.”
Hall defended his participation in the lawsuit.
He said he joined the lawsuit following warnings from Chatham elections office staff that implementing the SEB’s rules was unfeasible. More importantly, he said, he also believed that by issuing the rules, the SEB was assuming the role of lawmaker, in violation of the state’s Constitution.
“I upheld conservative Republican principles. I stood against bureaucratic overreach and for the separation of powers — something Republicans should celebrate instead of being angry about,” he said.
‘A Republican value’
The man behind the lawsuit said there was nothing un-Republican or anti-conservative about the lawsuit..
“The lawsuit was brought by Republicans, and it was supported by Republicans, including sitting members of the legislature,” said Scot Turner, a former Republican state representative and founder of Eternal Vigilance Action, a conservative advocacy organization made up mostly of Republicans.
“James Hall’s loyalties to the Constitution, the United States, and the promise of separation of powers and checks and balances — that is a Republican value shared by millions of Republicans across the country.”
“James stood up on the side of rule of law, which is a conservative Republican value,” Turner said. “To try to shoehorn him as being disloyal is a lie, and the people who are saying that are liars.”
Among those Republicans who filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of Eternal Vigilance Action was a prominent local Republican, former state Sen. Eric Johnson, the Hyundai project director at the Savannah Development Authority.
In its account of Hall’s involvement in what it portrayed as an ant-Trump effort, the committee omitted any mention of the lawsuit’s outcome: the Georgia Supreme Court ruled in his favor, blocking four of the seven rules it had approved.
The SEB “can pass rules to implement and enforce the Election Code, but it cannot go beyond, change, or contradict” existing Georgia law, Chief Justice Chief Justice Nels Peterson said in a 96-page opinion.
In a statement to The Current on Sunday, Brown, chair of the Chatham County GOP, reiterated the committee’s insistence that it was time for Hall to move on.
“I believe change is sometimes necessary,” she said. “No elected office belongs to one person, and incumbents can become too entrenched and disconnected from the people they represent.”
By criticizing fellow Republicans and the party itself, she said, Hall had sown “division instead of unity.” His involvement in Eternal Vigilance Action v. State of Georgia “weakened confidence in voter integrity at a time when Republicans should have been focused on voter trust.”
“Our party should be focused on conservative values, unity, and serving the people, not personal attacks and political grudges.”
‘Growing mistrust’
Bradley and Voss did not respond to requests from The Current to discuss their candidacies and address questions about Georgia’s voting system and the role of the election board and its members.
In remarks at a candidate forum hosted by the Chatham Republican Party in April, however, Bradley, a native Savannahian and longtime educator, pointed to “growing distrust of the electoral process” as the reason she was running.
She was keen, she said, to help improve understanding of that process. Owing to her work as a poll watcher, she has had a “front-row perspective” how it works.
Voss, a past chair of Ladies on the Right, vowed more transparency, too. Already guaranteed a board seat, she said she plans to foster “collaboration with board members” and with the GOP to “ensure there is solid communication going back and forth and making sure that all of the voters of Chatham County understand what’s going on.”
Absent in the two candidates’ remarks and in their social media has been any mention of the controversies that have rocked Georgia’s election system in recent years and deeply divided Republicans — namely, the SEB’s proper role, the push to replace voting machines with hand-marked paper ballots, and whether Joe Biden was legitimately elected president in 2020.
For his part, Hall said the SEB is an advisory board whose job is to carry out existing state law. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Regarding hand-marked paper ballots, “We don’t need to change our current system. I believe in one person, one vote, and it is easier to hold that standard with an electronic voting machine.”
Biden? “There were mistakes in the process, but they don’t rise to the level of stolen election. He was the legitimate president.”
‘Deserve a fair election’
In a campaign that has become an intense intraparty battle over who is more authentically Republican and conservative, it remains to be seen how much such partisanship will carry over after January, when a new election board is seated with as many as four new members.
One current elections board member said any litmus-testing and one-sidedness would be unfortunate.
Marianne Heimes has held one of the two Republican seats on the board for 11 years but chose not to seek reelection, clearing the way for Voss to run for her seat. Reflecting on her long tenure, she acknowledged that the board is, by definition, partisan — two of its five seats are designated for Republicans, two for Democrats.
But with few exceptions, she told The Current in an interview, the board has operated by consensus, and ideology has been pushed aside. “Mostly, we just deal with precinct changes and nitty-gritty like that.”
In carrying out the board’s largely technocratic tasks, Heimes said her highest loyalty is not to her party but to the principle of free and fair elections for every citizen in the county.
“As a board member, I answer to all the people of Chatham County. I don’t care who a voter is, they deserve a fair election.”
This article appears in 2026 Elections: Candidate lists, news.
You must be logged in to post a comment.