Georgia’s never had a woman governor. Melita Easters plans to change that.
In another life, you could imagine Melita Easters as a grand society hostess. Her South Georgia accent, strawberry blonde bob and affinity for pimento cheese recipes all recall a time when powerful women in Georgia might have hosted parties instead of running them.
But in reality, Easters is a thoroughly modern power player in Georgia politics, constantly working her social and professional networks to get pro choice, Democratic women elected to the Georgia Legislature. Eventually, she says, one will make it to the Governor’s Mansion, too.
“There are many, many examples of smart, strong, well-funded women candidates who have lost to mediocre men in Georgia,” she told me.
Misogyny is alive and well in both parties, she said.
“I just view working to elect women as my form of resistance and trying to make the world a better place for my grandchildren.”
Easters has eight “practically perfect” grandchildren, but she’s not your average grandma.
She grew up in tiny Lenox, Georgia, pop. 752. Lenox is “so close to hell you can see Sparks,” the local joke goes, referring to the name of the nearby town. That’s where Easters found her earliest political inspiration among her mother’s cookbooks, where a recipe for Senate white bean soup was printed on thick Congressional stationery. The recipe had been sent by the Easters’ congresswoman, U.S. Rep. Iris Blitch, the first woman elected to Congress from Georgia.
“There was always evidence to me with that recipe that women could be in politics,” she remembered.
After college, a highly publicized divorce, and time as a journalist and press aide for Democratic campaigns, Easters co-founded Georgia WIN List after her friend, Mary Margret Oliver, lost the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor in 1998 in a runoff to Mark Taylor. Oliver had originally finished in first place of six candidates on Election Day.
“She was the most qualified woman ever to seek statewide office,” Easters said. “A group of us who had supported her said, ‘Enough is enough with the good ole boy system. We’ve got to do something.’”
The result was a local version of EMILY’s List, the Washington-D. C., based PAC founded to elect pro choice Democratic women to Congress. What began as a volunteer and fundraising group in Georgia added candidate recruitment, endorsements and eventually campaign trainings for potential candidates and staff alike.
Since then, WIN List has helped elect more than 100 women to the Georgia Legislature, including 53 women currently serving. The WIN List Academy has trained 2,300 women to run for office or work in campaigns with classes on field operations, fundraising, messaging and communications, and the legislative process.
Among the first class of the WIN List Academy were U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, and former state Sen. Jen Jordan, the Democratic nominee for attorney general in 2022. State Rep. Stacey Evans joined the board just after she graduated from law school. Dozens more populate the General Assembly as members or staffers.
In ways large and small, they all faced some version of the challenges Easters had originally set out to make better.
“When we started, it was harder for the women to raise money. They weren’t taken as seriously,” she said. “At the General Assembly, they were still kind of patted on the head and called ‘little lady.’”
Over time, female candidates said the group became the teacher, network, funding source and sounding board they never have had before — essentially a new old girls network.
State Rep. Ruwa Romman, R-Duluth, said an early WIN List endorsement and late influx of cash helped at critical points in her first race for the state House, specifically when her opponent sent out an attack mailer in the final weeks of the campaign.
“We always expected (an attack ad), but we didn’t think it was going to come that late,” said Romman, now a Democratic candidate for governor. “When I called Melita, Georgia WIN List was able to essentially rush a donation to my campaign to cover a responding mailer.”
State Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, was a seasoned business leader by the time she ran for office the first time, but she said an endorsement from WIN List gave her early credibility in a special election with a short window to build a campaign.
“It’s a validator,” she said. “It lets people know that you are a serious candidate to be endorsed by Melita Easters at Georgia WIN List.”
The original inspiration for WIN List, state Rep, Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, credited the group with putting an organizational structure around Democratic women in Georgia that never existed before.
“The women running now are very highly qualified, very organized, very hard working and that doesn’t happen by accident,” she said.
For all of the gains that Democratic women have made in the Legislature over the years, a woman has never been elected governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general or U.S. senator. And on the key issue of abortion, the laws in Georgia have become more restrictive, not less, even with more women serving.
Easters said the abortion issue is critical for women and for voters, even as polls show it has fallen near the bottom of Georgians’ primary concerns, while the economy and affordability have become more pressing and immediate.
“When you have people in your community going hungry, you don’t think as much about abortion,” she said. “But women are upset about abortion. We’ve had some dramatic headlines in Georgia in recent years about the draconian nature of the bans we have.”
Looking ahead, WIN List is already recruiting and training for the 2026 elections. Easters said she’s confident that Georgia will eventually elect Democratic women to the state’s top posts and that WIN List will be a part of boosting their campaigns, too.
“The curve is headed in the right direction,” she said. “The more success you have in recruiting and electing women, the more you have a force to say, ‘They did it. You can do it too.’”
Amen. And pass the pimento cheese.
About the Author
Patricia Murphy is the AJC's senior political columnist. She was previously a nationally syndicated columnist for CQ Roll Call, national political reporter for the Daily Beast and Politics Daily, and wrote for The Washington Post and Garden & Gun. She graduated from Vanderbilt and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
