Mayor Kelly Girtz and four Athens-Clarke County commissioners have endorsed Kalki Yalamanchili, who is running as an independent against Democratic District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez.
Girtz endorsed Gonzalez in 2020. He was joined in endorsing Yalamanchili this year by commissioners Allison Wright, Dexter Fisher, John Culpepper and Mike Hamby, according to Yalamanchili’s campaign. The mayor and commission are officially nonpartisan, although Girtz, Wright, Fisher and Hamby are Democrats. In addition, five Republican elected officials have endorsed Yalamanchili: Watkinsville Mayor Brian Broderick, Oconee County Commission Chair John Daniell and commissioners Mark Saxon, Mark Thomas and Chuck Horton.
Girtz told Flagpole that he’s known Yalamanchili since the challenger was an assistant DA under Ken Mauldin, “and I’ve always found him to be well-reasoned and skilled.”
Gonzalez won narrowly in 2020—a year when politics around criminal justice lurched to the left after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd—against an independent and a more conservative Democrat on the strength of promises to prioritize rehabilitation over incarceration and focus on violent crime over nonviolent offenses like drug possession. The former media and entertainment lawyer deflected concerns about her lack of criminal justice experience by saying she would run the office and delegate courtroom work.
However, Gonzalez has been plagued by a chronic shortage of prosecutors—which she has blamed on low pay—and has been reprimanded by judges for her and her staff’s lack of preparation and knowledge of procedure. Most recently, Judge Lawton Stephens ordered Gonzalez and her staff to attend classes on victims’ rights after a fourth violation of Marcy’s Law, which requires prosecutors to attempt to contact victims before entering into a plea bargain.
Girtz said his endorsement was motivated in part by the harm done to both victims and defendants waiting too long for justice during Gonzalez’s tenure. “I’m excited to have a candidate who can make the system run,” he said.
Initially, Republicans—according to Gonzalez, motivated by her identity as the state’s first Latina DA—seized on Gonzalez’s refusal to prosecute drug crimes, even passing a law to “reign in” what they called “rogue DAs,” but as more and more accusations of incompetence emerged, she has also begun to lose support on the left.
“Some of the criticism of Deborah has been ham-fisted and silly,” Girtz said. “It’s also true that in the past four years the office has not been run effectively.”
As the only Democrat in the race, the ACC Democratic Committee has endorsed Gonzalez, as has ACC Commissioner Tiffany Taylor. Gonzalez responded to Yalamanchili’s endorsement announcement by tying him to Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s plan for a second Trump administration.
“It’s not surprising that my opponent is endorsed by the establishment and GOP in Athens-Clarke County,” she said in a social media post. “He promised to undo the community involvement and vital work I’ve worked hard to progress, his version of Project 2025. We cannot afford to regress to a justice system that is only fair for certain people, as he proposes. My endorsements are genuinely representative of the community, as I will always be the People’s DA.”
Yalamanchili responded: “Although my opponent wants to fearmonger and mislead people about the type of District Attorney’s office I will provide for our community, I can assure you my office will not need to be ordered by a judge to learn its duty to serve victims.”
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