ATHENS — Efforts to swing the Athens-Clarke County Commission to the right were defeated easily in elections on Tuesday, three months after the slaying of nursing student Laken Riley inflamed local politics.
Incumbents Melissa Link and Carol Myers, two of the most progressive members on the nonpartisan 10-seat commission, defeated conservative challengers Jason Jacobs and Sidney Waters, respectively. Link received 69% of 1,606 votes for District 2. Myers earned 73% of 1,300 ballots in District 8.
Athens-Clarke County sheriff John Q. Williams easily won reelection in the Democratic primary, earning 6,173 of 9,447 votes. Challenger Tommy Dorsey, an Clarke County School District police officer backed by local conservatives, received 3,274 votes.
Elections here were considered a referendum on the consolidated government’s progressive-leading leadership, which was accused by critics of being soft on crime and immigration in the wake of Riley’s February slaying.
Riley, a 22-year student, was killed on the University of Georgia’s campus. Police arrested Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan whom U.S. authorities say entered the country unlawfully, and charged him with murder.
Jacobs and Waters were among critics of a 2019 resolution the county commission unanimously passed in support of immigrants regardless of documentation status. Link was on the commission in 2019 and Myers, elected in 2020, said she would have voted for the resolution, too.
Williams faced scrutiny for the jail’s policy of not holding arrested undocumented immigrants past their release date for Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a warrant. The policy was enacted by Williams’ predecessor Ira Edwards in 2018. Williams said in March the Sheriff’s Office would strengthen its record-keeping practices in future interactions with undocumented immigrants.
The county had the state’s fifth-highest crime rate in 2022, according to the most recent data from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. More than a hundred people attended a “Make Athens Safe Again” rally outside city hall in early March.
At the same time, annual homicides have remained in single digits for more than a decade, and local officials have pointed to falling crime overall.
In another vote, Stephanie Johnson defeated Rashe Malcolm in ACC Commission District 6 with 58% of the vote. Incumbent commissioner Jesse Houle did not to seek reelection. Johnson previously worked in the county’s finance department and served as ACC Internal Auditor. She was fired by the commission in an unanimous vote in 2021.
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