ATLANTA - A pair of former state legislators will face off in a June 8 runoff for the 9th District congressional seat... and a Gainesville car dealer has captured the state Senate seat vacated by one of them.
Unofficial returns show Tom Graves and Lee Hawkins as the top finishers in the eight-person race to succeed Nathan Deal in Congress.
With 92 percent of precincts reporting, Graves had 35 percent of the vote and Hawkins 20 percent.
Graves, a 40-year-old developer from Ranger, ran with support from tea party and anti-tax groups. Hawkins, a 59-year-old dentist from Gainesville, had cast himself as a mainstream conservative in the solidly Republican district.
Deal stepped down in March to seek the GOP nomination for governor.
In Georgia, a runoff is held if no candidate earns 50 percent plus one vote.
In the race for the District 49 state Senate seat formerly held by Hawkins, Butch Miller easily outdistanced two other candidates.
With 90 percent of the precincts reporting, all of them in Hall County, Miller, a Republican, had 10,541 votes or 77.9 percent; Republican Jimmy Norman 1,886 votes or 13.9 percent; and Libertarian Brandon Nivens 1,112 or 8.2 percent of the vote. No returns had been posted as of 9:30 Tuesday night from the small section of Jackson County also included in the 49th district.
(AccessNorthGa.com's Ken Stanford contributed to this story.)
Wednesday
October 9th, 2024
6:18AM
