If you expected Jason Carter to brood after this month’s stinging election defeat, you’d be disappointed.

Two weeks after his loss to Gov. Nathan Deal, the Atlanta state senator talked of building upon the network of supporters his campaign cultivated across Georgia and preparing Democrats for future clashes in what “truly is a battleground state.”

He spoke of a campaign that “moved the ball gigantically down the field” for his party and cast his loss as a consequence of a national GOP wave that led to Democratic defeats in left-leaning bastions like Massachusetts and Maryland. The only thing he would have done differently, he said, would have been to schedule his November 2013 announcement a few months earlier.

And although he’s not committing to another run for office, he’s certainly not closing the door on one.

“We’ll see. The world changes. Two years is an eternity in politics and four years is two eternities,” Carter said in his first interview since his defeat. “You don’t know. But I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.”

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Ernie Suggs, a reporter at the AJC since 1997, reviews a selection of articles he has contributed to during his time with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, as of Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (Miguel Martinez/AJC)

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University of Georgia students are seen entering and leaving the main Library on the Athens campus on Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (Miguel Martinez/AJC)

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