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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Members of the conversion crew take a break as the main scoreboard is lowered to the floor to be worked on as the arena gets ready for the next concert at State Farm Arena, Thursday, October 2, 2025, in Atlanta. The crew was working on creating a stage for the Friday, Oct. 3 Maxwell concert. (Jason Getz/AJC)

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