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Warner Robins, one of the largest and fastest-growing cities in Georgia, will have a citywide special election on March 16, 2021, to fill the post vacated by Daron Lee, who resigned. Qualifying is January 6-8; the fee is $252. https://www.wrga.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=399
The seat will be on the ballot again in Warner Robins's November general election, as will “posts” (districts) 3 and 5 and the mayorship.
As an aside, it really is not that hard to post a notice that's in an accessible format. It's ridiculous that a city with nearly 80,000 people is posting election notices in JPEG format only.
When he won the seat, Daron Lee was the first Black person to ever win a citywide election in Warner Robins. He cited the need to take care of his aging parents when he resigned, but there have been deep tensions in city government over slow progress on racial inclusivity.
Four people qualified to seek Post 1 on the Warner Robins City Council: Catherine Harless, Derek Mack, David Reid, and Jeffery Walker. I'll give a bit of info on each of them in followup tweets. https://www.wrga.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=401
I have not been able to find any information about Catherine Harless online – not even so much as a Facebook page. However, the state voter file indicates that she is a consistent Republican primary voter. (Her race is marked as unknown.)
Derek Mack, who is Black, is a military veteran who has ties to local Democrats (and is himself a Democrat). He is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/derek.mack.37 and is accepting donations via CashApp ($macktion1) and PayPal ([email protected]).
David Reid, who is white, is a local community activist who runs the Facebook page Enough is Enough in Warner Robins, which he started nearly three years ago after a shooting at a local Barberitos restaurant. The page provides information about council meetings and so on.
The page is at https://www.facebook.com/EnoughInWarnerRobins/; he's pinned a post announcing his candidacy.
Some more context about the page: https://wgxa.tv/news/local/warner-robins-residents-police-react-after-fatal-restaurant-robbery
Some more context about the page: https://wgxa.tv/news/local/warner-robins-residents-police-react-after-fatal-restaurant-robbery
Jeffery Walker, a Black Democrat, has run for city council at least five previous times, most recently coming in last (fourth) place in the 2017 election for this same seat, in which he received 8.94% of the vote. He has described himself as a retired pastor in previous reports.
David Reid has not voted in a primary election in Georgia since at least 2014, and searches of state and federal campaign finance records using the last name Reid and giving the city as Warner Robins don't turn up any contributions by him.
On October 24, 2020, Catherine Harless donated $28.50 to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., and $1.50 to Trump's leadership PAC, for a total of $30.00. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=catherine+harless&contributor_city=warner+robins
(I had to download the contributions as a CSV to see who they were earmarked for.)
Hmm. Reid may have deactivated a personal Facebook account in the past month or so. (This post no longer loads on the actual site.) https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Amz3P1FS5oREJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FWarnerRobinsPD%2Fposts%2Fgreetings-wrpdplease-look-into-upping-our-enforcement-of-texting-while-driving-s%2F1282304228527170%2F%20
