Hollowell overtakes Griggs in Coastal Georgia congressional race

Heading into Tuesday’s Democratic primary runoff, no one seemed better positioned to navigate its challenges better than Amanda Hollowell, a veteran organizer of, among other things, voting rights campaigns.

On Tuesday, she proved it, coming from behind against rival Joyce Griggs to win the Democratic Party’s nod to face Republican Jim Kingston in this fall’s contest to decide Coastal Georgia’s next representative to the U.S. Congress.

After coming in second by nearly 10 points to Griggs in an eight-person field in last month’s first round of primary voting, Hollowell overcame that deficit, defeating perennial candidate Griggs in the runoff by 1,403 votes — or 5.9% of the vote.

The 47-year-old Hollowell, chief of campaigns for Color of Change, an online racial justice organization, will be a decided underdog in the November election, the first open race for the 1st District Congressional seat since 2014.

Coastal Georgia has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives since 1990. During that span, the closest any Democrat came to winning was in 2018, when Lisa Ring lost to current Congressman Earl “Buddy” Carter by 15.5% of the vote.

That history, along with the need to replenish the campaign war chest and possible cooperation on the campaign trail with U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms, lie ahead.

As the results filtered in Tuesday evening, what instead was foremost on Hollowell’s mind was celebrating her campaign and the end of a frequently rancorous party primary.

“I did it with integrity. I did it with my skill set that I’ve learned over the years, and I did it with friends and family. I’m absolutely happy,” she told The Current GA at her watch party at a restaurant on Savannah’s south side.

‘Haves’ versus ‘have-nots’

For Griggs, 74, a U.S. Army veteran and longtime community activist, Tuesday’s defeat marked her fifth failed bid for Congress, a quest that began more than a quarter of a century ago when she ran against Jim Kingston’s father, Jack, for the seat.

During the campaign, she cast herself as the champion of the “have-nots” against the “haves” of both the Republican Party and the local Democratic Party establishment.

That message, she believed, would carry the day. And at her watch party on Savannah’s east side, she clenched her fists in glee as the first returns from Coastal Georgia’s southern counties showed her with a two percentage-point lead.

“I’m very optimistic because we put in the work and the people believe in Joyce Marie Griggs,” she told The Current at her watch party at a meeting hall on Savannah’s east side.

There was reason for hope. Three of Griggs’ rivals in the primary’s first round — Sharon Stoke-Williamson, Michael McCord, and Defonsio Daniels — endorsed Griggs in the runoff. The Griggs campaign hoped a substantial number of their 17,000 votes would migrate to their candidate in the final round. It did not happen.

After the outcome was decided, she told WSAV-TV, “Bottom line is I will never stop serving. I’ve always served, and I will serve in whatever capacity to make sure that I serve the people.”

A ‘hump’

Hollowell faced many obstacles during the primary, not the least of which was the widespread name recognition that Griggs had amassed in nearly three decades of campaigning and community activism throughout the district, according to a leading supporter of Hollowell, Elijah “Bobby” Henderson.

It was a “hump” she had to get over, said Henderson, founder and executive director of A Better Glynn. “There was a lot of work, a lot of effort put into it in order to just tell people about her candidacy and tell people about the history of her work.”

The main challenge facing the Hollowell and Griggs teams, however, was logistical — how to rally their supporters back to the polls just four weeks after the first round of voting, as summer sets in, no less.

As expected, turnout for the runoff was very low.

Some six out of every 10 Coastal Georgia voters who cast Democratic ballots in the first round of voting in the congressional race did not do so in the runoff — a drop of more than 33,400 votes.

That hurt both candidates, but it hurt Griggs more than Hollowell. That challenge played to Hollowell’s strengths as a longtime organizer of voting rights campaigns, among other things.

Griggs won 12 out of Coastal Georgia’s 15 counties. But Hollowell won or cut into Grigg’s voter base of support where it mattered — in the more populous, less rural counties of Chatham, Glynn, and Liberty.

That was by design, Hollowell told The Current.

Following her second-place finish in last month’s initial round of voting, Hollowell’s campaign decided to focus its efforts on marshaling voters to the polls in three counties — Chatham, Glynn, and Liberty. It paid off.

Hollowell’s turnaround in Chatham was especially notable.

In the first round of primary voting, she received 2,715 fewer votes than Griggs in Coastal Georgia’s most populous county, losing to her by 9.8 percent of the vote.

In Tuesday’s runoff, Hollowell turned the tables. She won by a margin of 1,888 votes and 13.7 percent of the vote — a turnabout of 4,603 votes, or 23.5 percent.

As she did in last month’s initial round of voting, Griggs easily won Coastal Georgia’s other Democratic stronghold — Liberty County — on Tuesday. But crucially, in the wake of an 11th-hour endorsement for Hollowell by powerful state Rep. Al Williams, she received 1,070 fewer votes in the runoff, while Hollowell got 23 more. 

This article appears in 2026 Elections: Candidate lists, news.