(Georgia Recorder) – Two Georgia Democrats are facing off to secure the party’s nomination for the District 3 seat on Georgia’s Public Service Commission. Keisha Sean Waites, a former state representative and Atlanta City Councilwoman, is competing against Peter Hubbard, a clean energy advocate, on the July 15 ballot.
The runoff election comes after last month’s statewide special primary where no candidate received 50% of the vote, although Waites came close. With 58,022 votes, Waites won over about 46% of voters in the primary, and Hubbard trailed 16,110 votes behind her with about 33% of the vote. Robert Jones, a third challenger, accounted for the remainder of votes. Daniel Blackman also campaigned as a District 3 Democratic candidate but was disqualified for failing to meet residency requirements, and any votes cast in his favor were not counted.
District 3 includes Clayton, Fulton and DeKalb counties, but commissioners are elected statewide and must live within the district for 12 months to be eligible.
Despite being the frontrunner in last month’s primary, Waites is a newcomer to the realm of utility rates and energy demands. But the Georgia native argues her experience at the statehouse and city hall would help her if elected to the commission. Waites left the council in 2024 for an unsuccessful run for the Fulton County Clerk of Superior Court last year. She is also a former candidate for the Fulton County Commission and U.S. Congress.
“I think when you look at my legislative record, when you look at my history and work of community service, all of those things clearly set me aside from my opponent,” she said.
Hubbard, who has lived in Georgia for the past decade, has dedicated his career to energy policy and politics. He ran unsuccessfully for the Georgia House of Representatives in 2022.
In 2019, he founded the Georgia Center for Energy Solutions, a nonprofit aiming to fight for clean energy and lower power bills. On behalf of the nonprofit, Hubbard has provided testimony at numerous commission hearings over the years.
“I’ve presented increasingly detailed, sophisticated analysis, so I don’t have to learn on the job. I’m ready to hit the ground running,” Hubbard said.
Waites acknowledged Hubbard’s experience but questioned his effectiveness.
“I’m trying to figure out if Peter was so effective, then why are we even having the conversation we’re having right now?” Waites said, referring to the uptick in utility bills.
Rising utility bills and increased energy demands have emerged as top concerns for voters across the state. Democratic candidates have seized on that voter angst and are vowing to work to lower utility bills.
“Like the 10.8 million (other) Georgians, I’ve had one of these colossal skyrocketing bills, and so has my mom, and so has my dad and the people that I love and care about in the community that I live in,” Waites said.
Waites said she is concerned about Georgia Power’s profit margins over the last decade, and she has also proposed a tiered rate system to help combat rising rates that would provide relief to lower income Georgians. She also wants to ensure that the financial burden from data centers does not affect Georgia families.
Hubbard argued that commissioners cater to large corporations and has cast himself as the candidate who can best recenter the commission’s focus on Georgians.
“There’s a larger commitment to address the injustice and inequity that we’re seeing in how power prices are set,” Hubbard said. “In particular, I think there’s just a true lack of accountability and disregard for the public at the Public Service Commission and I think that that is truly what distinguishes me as the nominee, as someone who is going to go in and fight for Georgians.”
While both candidates support lowering utility bills, they both share concerns about the effectiveness of a recent rate freeze. Since 2023, the average Georgia Power customer is paying $43 more each month. Last week, current commissioners unanimously approveda plan from Georgia Power that will freeze current rates through 2028, though customers’ bills could still rise next year.
With storm clean-up fees and fuel cost adjustments likely awaiting Georgia Power ratepayers in the future, Waites compared the freeze to purchasing an airline ticket and still being stuck with additional baggage and seat charges.
“The fees, the riders and the fuel cost adjustments are still there and can fluctuate at any time,” Waites said. “So Georgia Power can come back and say, ‘hey’, they can submit a proposal and ask for it to be reviewed. So the rate freeze is really disingenuous.”
Hubbard says the freeze “locks in” six rate increases approved by commissioners over the past three years. He said the promise of at least $2.89 of monthly relief on power bills in previous long-term plans have since been abandoned.
“They’re saying, ‘hey, look, we’re going to freeze rates so there’s no downward pressure,’ which is really a fiction, from the point of view of the Republican policy,” Hubbard said. “They just have never delivered on downward pressure on rates.”
The future of nuclear energy in Georgia has also dominated campaign messages.
Worried about the potential health impacts of toxic coal ash ponds, Waites said she does not see a problem with nuclear energy. With confidence that the sun and wind are both constant renewable resources, she would like to see increased conversation surrounding wind and solar energy.
“When you look at the $296 million that we’ve given out of incentives to incentivize data centers to come to Georgia, I think that we can start to put some programs in place to introduce more families to solar,” Waites said.
While Hubbard’s nuclear support corresponds with its carbon-free nature, he said he is acutely aware of the costs associated with the energy source. He says that while Plant Vogtle helped reduce the state’s carbon footprint, this was not a cheap accomplishment. The expansion project was years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget when it was completed last year.
“Once you have the nuclear plant, it’s cheap to dispatch, it’s cheap to run, but it’s very expensive to build,” Hubbard said. “So that’s the part that concerns me, is if we’re proposing to build any new nuclear (plants) there must be strict cost controls.”
Both candidates hope to advance to November’s general election for a chance to face appointed Republican Commissioner Fitz Johnson. Commissioners typically serve six-year staggered terms, but a long-running legal challenge targeting the system for electing commissioners means that the District 3 winner will serve a one-year term and be back up for election next year.
A lawsuit challenging the at-large voting method for the district-based commission seats is pending with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That case, originally filed in 2020, argues that the statewide elections dilute the voting strength of Black voters. Only one Black commissioner has ever been elected under the system. Johnson, who is Black, was appointed to the seat by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2021.
The District 3 race will be on the November ballot with the District 2 race between Republican Commission Tim Echols and Democratic challenger Alicia M. Johnson. District 2 represents a wide swath of southeast Georgia, stretching from Hart County to Savannah.
There will be one week of early voting that will start Monday, July 7. With only a 2.5% turnout in the June primary, the Democratic runoff is also projected to see low turnout. Some counties will only operate a single early voting location to accommodate an anticipated limited number of voters. Voters can check their registration status and polling place location at the Georgia Secretary of State’s My Voter Page.
If this year’s Georgia Public Service Commission election stays on track, it will be the first time since 2020 that voters have been able to elect members to the panel.
