The Weekly Remix

By Jill Nolin | Editor

If you believe the polls, Jon Ossoff will easily win re-election to the U.S. Senate, and Keisha Lance Bottoms is right on the heels of Rick Jackson in the governor’s race despite being badly outspent. She might even have a slight lead.

Once upon a time in a not-too-distant past, this whole thing would have been unthinkable. For some, it still is. But Georgia has changed, the times have changed and under Donald Trump, the Republican Party has changed. 

After Tuesday, even more change is likely. 

By Ignacio Perez

Mary Dennard canvassed alone through one of Dalton’s neighborhoods on the eve of Hurricane Isaias. The other canvassers, who speak Spanish, canceled due to the weather. Her blue shirt peeked out from under her windbreaker, reading “Somos vecinos, we are neighbors,” and Dennard carried Spanish language pamphlets to leave with Latino voters or at unanswered doors.

Nearly a quarter of registered voters in Dalton’s Whitfield County are Latino, according to data from the secretary of state office. And the northwest Georgia county had the seventh most Latino voters in the state as of 2024, according to a report from GALEO, a nonprofit working to increase civic engagement among Hispanics in Georgia.

Today, Republicans and Democrats are making a play for Latino support in the midsize city of Dalton. Grassroots engagement and targeted campaigning are part of an effort on both sides of the aisle to boost Latino turnout and win Hispanic votes ahead of the midterms.

By Ross Williams

Friday is the last day to vote early in Georgia ahead of Tuesday’s midterm election, and leaders from both parties have been poring over the record early voting numbers to try to figure out where their voters are turning out and where they need to marshal their resources.

Some of Georgia’s top races are expected to be tight. The governor’s race between Republican Rick Jackson and Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms is polling within the margin of error, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which rates the competitiveness of contests, recently shifted Georgia’s attorney general and secretary of state races from lean Republican to toss-up.

The early voting numbers are in flux, and unlike some other states, Georgia voters do not indicate their party affiliation when registering to vote. That makes using early voting information an imprecise measure, says Trey Hood, director of the survey research center at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs.

By Maya Homan

The U.S. Department of Justice will send Election Day monitors to six Georgia counties, all of which are considered Democratic strongholds. But election officials so far say they do not see the move as unusual. 

Last month, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced that roughly 1,000 monitors would be deployed across the country in what she called “the biggest DOJ election observer effort in history.” In Georgia, those monitors will be dispatched to Bibb, Chatham, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties. 

By Alander Rocha

Edwin Brant Frost IV, the founder of a conservative lending firm in Georgia, was sentenced on Monday to 15 years in prison for his role in running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors out of millions of dollars.

Frost, a 69-year-old and founder of the now-defunct First Liberty Building & Loan, was accused of leading a $140 million Ponzi scheme that officials say started around 2021 and scammed about 300 investors. Frost, who was convicted of wire fraud in May after he pleaded guilty, will also have to pay back over $76 million in restitution to victims. After he serves his sentence, he will have three additional years of supervised release.

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