Cobb County’s first Black female commission chair announced this week she plans to run for reelection in 2024.
Chairwoman Lisa Cupid, the first Democrat to lead the county in decades, presides over the last of the major metro counties to shift to Democratic control in the midst of rapid political and demographic shifts in recent years.
At her annual state of the county address to the Cobb Chamber Monday, Cupid said she plans to run for reelection “even with some of the challenges that we’ve had.”
“I believe that I have the fortitude to be able to move our county forward and not shy away from having these hard conversations,” Cupid told business leaders at the Coca-Cola Roxy Theatre luncheon.
Cupid was first elected to the Board of Commissioners to represent South Cobb’s District 4 in 2012, where she served until she was elected countywide to be the board chair in 2020. That year, she defeated Republican Chairman Mike Boyce, marking the end of a Republican majority on the board.
Cobb County’s partisan and cultural divide has been a constant theme of Cupid’s tenure. In 2022, the majority-Black Democratic board faced several political challenges amid ongoing resistance to change in a county that was a conservative stronghold only a few years ago.
Cupid’s outspoken support for affordable housing, transit expansion and other progressive initiatives have drawn no shortage of criticism from a vocal conservative minority.
“I will be seeking another term in office as chair of Cobb County because I think it’s important for us not to just talk about these things, but we have to be able to trust leadership that is willing to move these things forward,” Cupid said.
In 2022, voters in four parts of the county tried to form new cities, three of them in conservative areas that cast their movements in part as a rebuke of Cupid and the board’s Democratic leadership. Only South Cobb’s Mableton, a majority-Democratic area, succeeded.
Her reelection campaign launches amid an ongoing legal battle over the county’s controversial move to change its own district map last year.
Republican state lawmakers in 2022 changed the county districts to preserve the two Republican seats on the board and draw East Cobb Commissioner Jerica Richardson, a Democrat, out of her district. In response, the county amended its own district map, a move decried as unconstitutional by state officials and some constituents alike. The lawsuit’s first hearing is scheduled for July 7 in Cobb Superior Court.
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