Six candidates, including David Scott’s daughter, compete to finish his term
U.S. Rep. David Scott died in his Washington home hours after casting votes on the House floor. His youngest daughter is now among the six candidates in the special election that will decide who finishes his term.
Marcye Scott said she knows her father’s agenda, including his project funding requests, known as earmarks. She wants to make sure she helps finish what he started in Georgia’s 13th Congressional District.
“Right after my dad passed, a lot of the City Council or the commissioners and chair people, they wanted to know what was going to happen with these projects,” she said during a recent interview. “And that’s really why I’m running: to complete that.”
Her biggest competition in the July 28 special election is former Gwinnett County School Board Chairman Everton Blair. He says his experience holding office makes him best equipped to be effective during what will be an abbreviated term that ends in January.
“There’s no one else in the race who has been elected in the district like I have been, and who’s led like I have,” Blair said.
Early voting in the special election began Monday. The ballot includes Scott, Blair and two other Democrats: perennial Henry County candidate Tony Brown and Carlos Moore, an attorney who once served as a judge in Mississippi before he was barred from the bench.
Two Republicans are also on the special election ballot: Caesar Gonzales, who lost to David Scott in the 2020 general election, and Fayth Park, a political newcomer running on a conservative values platform.
Voters in the heavily Democratic district will choose among all of the candidates regardless of party. If no one receives more than half the votes, the top two will advance to an Aug. 25 runoff.
Since Congress takes all of August and October off, in addition to breaks for holidays, the eventual winner is expected to see only about nine weeks of action at the U.S. Capitol.
Blair, who lives in Lilburn, was among the candidates who initially qualified to challenge Scott in the Democratic primary in May. David Scott died on April 22, shortly before the start of early voting.
Blair finished that primary in third place. But before voting was even underway, he had already decided to also run in the special election. He is the only candidate to sign up for both.
He noted that the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority, will be tackling spending bills, military policy and, possibly, fallout from the midterm elections if President Donald Trump challenges any results. He said he could lend his voice to give Democrats in Congress fresh muscle.
“The special (election) presents another opportunity for us to claw back and assert our power and start to center some of the things that we want to do regarding the data centers, and tax reform, putting more money in people’s pockets and all that stuff that I’m excited about,” he said.
Like her father, Marcye Scott has faced criticism for living in the city of Atlanta. That is outside of the 13th District, which wraps around the perimeter of Atlanta’s suburbs from Gwinnett down to DeKalb, Rockdale, Newton, Henry and Clayton counties. But federal laws only require candidates for the U.S. House to live in the states they hope to represent.
She has picked up big-name endorsements like Ambassador Andrew Young and U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams.
Scott said her experience comes from decades of helping her father behind-the-scenes on his campaigns and with popular community events. She said she knows best what his priorities were, including the $40 million in earmarks requests, and codifying into law a scholarship for students at historically Black colleges and universities that now bears his name.
“I’m not new to this,” she said. “I know exactly how to do it.”