Inside Primary Night as Georgia Goes Into Overtime
May 22, 2026 · 1:57 PM EDT
ATLANTA, GA — It was finally game night. The Battery, an upscale development in suburban Cobb County adjacent to Truist Park, filled up with cars that had braved Atlanta’s infamous rush hour traffic. But the main event wasn’t the Braves: it was the opening round of matchups to decide the political future of the Peach State.
Now one of the nation’s premier swing states, Georgia is set to host competitive general elections for both Senate and governor in November. On Tuesday night, “The ATL” watched returns come in as primary voters decided nominees in key races that have drawn both national attention and millions of dollars in spending.
The Battery is a fitting location for campaigns to gather to learn about their future. The Metro Atlanta suburbs have upended the political dynamics in the state over the past decade, driving Democrats into contention after years in the wilderness. Mitt Romney carried Cobb County with 55 percent of the vote in the 2012 presidential race. Four years later, Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential nominee to lose the county in four decades (the last Democrat to win it was favorite son Jimmy Carter). Since then, the area has only continued to rocket leftward, thanks to an increasingly diversifying electorate and anti-Trump suburbanites.
Across town, at the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta, the clock showed the 7 p.m. poll closing time quickly approaching. Campaign staffers frantically gave instructions to volunteers wearing white “Keisha Lance Bottoms for Governor” t-shirts as they prepared for attendees to arrive.
Hotel bar employees set up drinks to be sold for $16 each. Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T.” played in the background. Two employees set up an American flag on the stage. The media stood on press risers in the back of the ballroom, with broadcast reporters packed shoulder to shoulder, receiving updates from control rooms through their earpieces.
The atmosphere in the ballroom was less suspenseful than anticipatory. Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, was the frontrunner to secure the Democratic nomination for governor. As the only person in the race with widespread name recognition, she had held a consistent advantage over her rivals, including former state Sen. Jason Esteves, former DeKalb County CEO Mike Thurmond, and former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.
Bottoms’ home base of Fulton County delayed reporting its results until 11 p.m. after a precinct went into lockdown due to a nearby manhunt. But even without most of Atlanta, Bottoms’ lead over her opponents was large enough for the Associated Press to call the race in her favor at 10:30 p.m.
Even before the race was called, Marcella McCray and Tracy Edgar were already looking toward the general election. The two had spent their Election Day setting up decorations for the event. Edgar, who had phone banked for Bottoms, was optimistic.
“I feel very confident about November. I think people are tired of the old stuff that’s been going on with the other party,” Edgar said. “We’re tired, we’re hungry, some people have lost jobs, people can’t afford gas, everybody’s just tired.”
Edgar wasn’t just tired of 24 years of a Republican in the governor’s mansion. She was also fed up with the onslaught of ads on the other side of the aisle.
“It’s constant. If you can’t run a campaign on positive stuff, then you probably don’t need to be running,” she told Inside Elections.
The race to succeed Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has indeed grown particularly nasty on the GOP side. While Lt. Gov. Burt Jones quickly secured the backing of Trump and was the clear frontrunner over Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and state Attorney General Chris Carr, the campaign was shaken up when billionaire Rick Jackson entered the race in February.
The Republicans running statewide had plenty of disagreements — but not, it seems, on the best place to throw a party. Carr, Jackson, and Senate candidate Derek Dooley all held their watch parties at The Battery within walking distance of each other.
On most nights, Coors Banquet Bar is packed with Braves fans adorned with Matt Olson jerseys. Tonight, the uniform was campaign hats and “I Voted” stickers. Carr walked around greeting supporters. A podium in the corner of the room stood ready for him to speak later in the night.
Fruit platters and charcuterie boards were largely untouched. Of the venue’s many TV screens, only half were tuned to the election results (on Fox News, naturally). The others were following baseball games, including the Braves, who were en route to an 8-4 victory over the Marlins in Miami.
The scoreboard was less generous to Team Carr. At the moment, he trailed in fourth behind Jones, Jackson, and Raffensperger. Carr and Raffensperger had aligned themselves more closely with the establishment wing of the party; Jones and Jackson had signed on with Trump. It was clear which team was headed to the playoffs.
Deron Dowhower, a longtime friend of Carr, was frustrated with the way the race had played out.
“It’s par for the course. It’s just the way it’s done these days, unfortunately,” said Dowhower, who attended high school with Carr in the neighboring suburb of Brookhaven. “The best, the most fit to govern is not the one who wins these days. It’s the one who has the most money, the most eyeballs, the most either disinformation or misinformation.”
It wasn’t difficult to understand who Dowhower was talking about. You could even see him. Carr supporters only had to step out onto the bar’s patio to get a glimpse of the ritzy Omni Hotel towering above them, where billionaire Rick Jackson was holding his campaign’s election night watch party.
In a packed ballroom on the third floor of the Omni, Jackson’s guests could help themselves to crudités cups and popcorn. But even though the health care executive had spent over $80 million of his own money on his campaign to get there, he wasn’t going all out quite yet: a glass of wine at the cash bar ran $16.
Inside, the scene was lively as the Jackson campaign maintained a flow of high-profile supporters coming up to the podium, almost as a kind of opening act building up to the big finale. Among them were state House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones and state Insurance Commissioner John King.
King previewed some of the talking points to be used against Bottoms in November regarding her tenure as mayor during Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests.
“We’re ready to show the contrast,” King told Inside Elections. “I can’t wait to run a number of Atlanta police officers to show how they were treated when Keisha was mayor, and how she let the city burn, and now she wants to come back… and burn it again. Is that the strategy?”
After King spoke, the twin big screens flanking the stage lit up with Jackson’s signature campaign music video, “Win Big for Georgia.” While you could be forgiven for thinking the catchy country-pop song was performed by a big star, in reality the song and video, which recount Jackson’s journey from poverty to riches, were generated by AI. “From the hard road to the high road, I know what it takes. When the stakes are on the table, I don’t blink. I don’t break,” the speakers blasted as Jackson’s son Shane took the stage to introduce his father.
The man of the hour walked onto the stage as Strauss’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” the opening fanfare to 2001: A Space Odyssey, blared behind him. In most states, a candidate in second place would not be giving a quasi-victory speech on election night. However, Georgia state law mandates that if no candidate receives a majority of the vote, then a runoff is held. Jackson finished six points behind Jones, but the two are headed to a June 16 runoff.
In his speech, Jackson repeated many of the same lines that had appeared on the campaign trail and in his ads, emphasizing his rise from poverty, his Christian faith, and his outsider status while taking jabs at Jones.
“When we win, President Trump will be a winner. I’ll be President Trump’s favorite governor,” Jackson said. “As governor, I’ll be like Trump, but with a Southern tone.” After he finished, Jackson descended the stage to gladhand supporters.
Just down the street was Dooley, the former University of Tennessee football coach now vying for the GOP Senate nomination. Tomorrow night, Park Bench Battery was set to host karaoke. But on Tuesday it was home to his election watch party.
On one side, a bar lined with drinks, brisket sliders, and chicken satay. On the other, a stage backed by a massive American flag. In the middle, TVs tuned to NBC and the latest episode of “America’s Got Talent” as results slowly crawled in across the bottom of the screen.
The GOP primary to face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November pitted Reps. Mike Collins and Buddy Carter against Dooley, the son of the late Georgia coaching legend Vince Dooley and 2002 Georgia congressional candidate Barbara Dooley.
At around 10:00 pm, the entire room’s attention shifted as guests rushed to the front door to greet a new arrival. It was not Dooley. It was Gov. Brian Kemp.
Holding the hand of First Lady Marty Kemp, he slowly advanced through the venue greeting attendees and taking photos. After circling back around, he took a second to autograph one of Dooley’s campaign signs.
Dooley had leaned heavily on Kemp’s support throughout his campaign. Kemp frequently accompanied him on the campaign trail, and Kemp’s super PAC ran ads on his behalf. Kemp left national Republicans miffed after he passed on a bid of his own last May, but his support had proven critical to helping Dooley make a runoff with Rep. Collins.
After an aide came up to test the microphone one final time, Kemp came up to the stage to introduce Dooley, who he called a longtime family friend.
At the podium, Dooley told the crowd that Carter, who represents Coastal Georgia, had called him to concede the race. Dooley emphasized his electability while attacking Collins for being under investigation by the House Ethics Committee and for being vulnerable in the general election.
“Beating Jon Ossoff is not gonna be done by another D.C. politician,” Dooley said. “A vote for Mike Collins is a vote for Jon Ossoff for the next six years, but a vote for me is a vote for new leadership in the U.S. Senate.”
As Dooley concluded, the speakers played him off with James Brown’s “Dooley’s Junkyard Dawgs,” written in 1975 about the elder Dooley’s famous UGA football squad. Though he had been mocked by rivals during the campaign for his less-than-stellar track record on the field compared to his father, tonight he had forced the first game of his political career into overtime.
Democrats had settled their nominees for Senate and governor, while Republicans were now bracing for a final sprint to decide their candidates on June 16.
Four weeks left on the clock. Here we go.