Three special elections for seats in the state House and Senate will head to runoff elections next month.
None of the candidates earned a majority of the vote to win outright, teeing up April 7 runoff elections between the top two vote-getters in House districts 94 and 130, as well as Senate District 53.
Next month’s winners will serve for the remainder of the year and have a chance to run for a full term as incumbents in November.
House District 94
Democrats Venola Mason and Kelly Kautz were headed to a runoff, according to preliminary vote totals on Tuesday. The district spans parts of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties and leans overwhelmingly Democratic. No Republican ran for the post.
Mason is an education consultant and Kautz is the former mayor of Snellville.
The seat became open after state Rep. Karen Bennett stepped down in January before being charged in a federal investigation into pandemic-era unemployment insurance fraud. The Stone Mountain Democrat pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making a false statement.
House District 130
Former State Rep. Sheila Nelson held a commanding lead in the race to represent the Augusta-area district. Nelson said she left office in 2023 to take care of her mother.
But the contest for No. 2 was razor thin. Republican Thomas McAdams led Democrat Karen Gordon by just a handful of votes, according to preliminary vote totals.
State Rep. Lynn Heffner, D-Augusta, resigned from the seat in the Legislature earlier this year, saying her home sustained damages during 2024’s Hurricane Helene and she could no longer meet the constitutional requirement to live in her district.
Senate District 53
In the deep-red northwest Georgia state Senate district, Republican Lanny Thomas was headed to a runoff with Democrat John Zibluk, according to unofficial vote totals.
The seat became vacant after Colton Moore decided to run for former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional district.
“Our campaign team did an awesome job. Now we go back to work to face our Democratic opponent,” said Thomas, mayor of Trion and a former city council member.
The sole Democrat, Zibluk, a communications professor at the University of Tennessee—Chattanooga, thanked his “excited and dedicated base” and said going forward he’ll focus on his message, which includes policies such as affordable health care and housing and economic development.
“We had an energized base that was tired of the same-old same-old,” he said. “Our donors were local, along with a lot of my old high school and college friends. But our message resonated. Our campaign is about public service.”
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