Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice
Three Georgia political candidates gathered Thursday at Koncept House, 141 Mangum St. SW, for the Roundtable of Black Community Impact, centering the concerns of attending Black voters ahead of upcoming primaries.
Moderated by Khadijah Robinson, a general partner at Big Adventures and head of the Lift Incubator Program with the Center for Black Entrepreneurship, and Dawn Montgomery, a Black Press USA reporter and culture critic. The roundtable brought together Jason Esteves, candidate for governor of Georgia; Mo Ivory, candidate for Fulton County Commission chair; and Dr. Everton Blair Jr, candidate for Georgia’s 13th Congressional District seat, left vacant following the death of longtime Rep. David Scott.
Robinson said the gathering was designed not as an endorsement, but as a vehicle for transparency.
“We are in a very interesting time in our history, one that I think warrants us really being very intentional about holding our elected officials accountable,” Robinson said, “and particularly accountable to our communities, to the people that they actually represent.”
Esteves, running on a platform of health, wealth, and opportunity, spoke directly to what he called a disconnect between Democratic messaging and the daily realities of Black Georgians.
“If you were struggling to make ends meet, if you were struggling to rent or buy a home, then you couldn’t care less what is happening with Donald Trump,” Esteves said. “You care about what’s happening in your community.”
He outlined commitments to expand Medicaid, lower private health insurance costs, create pathways to homeownership and small business ownership, and invest in a free technical college system. On HBCUs, Esteves pledged to appoint a Board of Regents member specifically to represent public HBCUs, make those institutions financially whole after decades of underfunding, and position them as pipelines to careers.
“I’ve been to those campuses, all the way down to the landscaping, very different,” he said, “and that’s a lack of resources.”
Esteves also cast his campaign in broader terms, situating Black Georgians as central to the state’s identity and future.
“I want Georgia to be a state where you can thrive, no matter where you live, no matter who you are,” he said. “When I think about the Black community in this state, we have contributed to the greatness of what Georgia is today in many ways, whether it’s the business community, the arts, the infrastructure.”
Ivory, a current Fulton County District 4 commissioner seeking the chair position, has built a career in law, education, and media around making complex systems accessible to everyday people. She brought that same directness to Thursday’s roundtable, drawing attention to what she called decades of neglect across four critical areas: the county jail, the courts, health care access in South Fulton, and election integrity.
“Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity,” Ivory said. “Fulton County needs new leadership.”
She said her first act as chair would be ordering a forensic audit of the county budget, something she said has not been done in 30 years. Ivory also highlighted a stark geographic disparity in how Fulton County resources are allocated, arguing the county’s billion-dollar budget rarely reaches the communities that need it most.
“It always goes federal, state, skip the county, goes straight to the hype of Atlanta,” she said, “and this budget right here is a billion-dollar budget with a B, and it’s not being spent on the south side of Fulton.”
Ivory, who would become the first African American woman and first Latina to chair the Fulton County Commission if elected, was unambiguous about her motivation. “I came to serve and to have an impact,” she said.
Blair, the former Board Chair of Gwinnett County Public Schools and the first African American elected to that role, spoke with equal urgency. The son of Jamaican immigrants who settled in Georgia’s 13th District, Blair said the American Dream his family pursued is increasingly out of reach for the district’s residents, pointing to corporate homebuying, long commutes to job centers, rising utility costs from data centers, and unaffordable health care.
“Georgia’s 13th Congressional District does not have representation,” Blair said. “We have a gap in the resources and the infrastructure that should exist in the district office right now.”
He pledged to open satellite offices in each of the district’s six counties and outlined a nine-point Black economic agenda focused on education, health care, small business investment and redirecting federal spending away from what he called “endless wars.”
“I see a huge opportunity for us to build a new generation of leaders in Congress,” Blair said, “those who will stand up and reinvest that money into working families’ pockets.”
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