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NGA CAN's Progressive Picks: Pickens County on May 19, 2026
- May 15
- 6 min read
About These Voter Guides
NGA CAN creates voter guides to help our community make informed progressive choices in Georgia's elections. Our diverse membership includes progressives across the full spectrum of values, ages, backgrounds, and priorities. This guide reflects our shared commitment to equity, justice, and accountability.
What you should know about these picks: NGA CAN evaluates candidates based on progressive values: support for economic fairness, voting rights, reproductive freedom, civil rights, public education, and accountable government. We acknowledge that no candidate is perfect. We also know that in many races, multiple strong candidates exist. These guides help you understand why we made our choices so you can vote according to your values.
How to use this guide: Read about the races that affect you. Check your sample ballot at https://mvp.sos.ga.gov to see which races and candidates appear on your specific ballot. Early voting runs April 27 through May 15, 2026, at the Pickens County Recreation Department, 1329 Camp Road, Jasper. Election Day is Tuesday, May 19, 2026, 7 AM to 7 PM.
Find your polling place at https://mvp.sos.ga.gov.
Statewide Races
For NGA CAN's picks in statewide races (Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Agriculture Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, State School Superintendent, Labor Commissioner, Lieutenant Governor, U.S. Senate, and Public Service Commission), see:
Federal Race
U.S. House District 11 (federal Congress)
All of Pickens County is in U.S. House District 11, the seat currently held by Republican Barry Loudermilk. Two Democrats are on the May 19 primary ballot.
Barry Wolfert (D)
Wolfert is a longtime Atlanta-based business owner who has called Georgia home for more than three decades. He earned his bachelor's degree from Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration in 1988, started his career in the hospitality industry, and co-founded the Wolfert and Wrenn Real Estate Team at Keller Williams in 2013, where he has spent more than 20 years helping families across the district find homes. He came to this race with a concrete legislative plan. His top priority is affordable healthcare for everyday working Americans. He is targeting seats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees federal healthcare policy, and the Ways and Means Committee, which controls ACA funding, so that from day one he can introduce or co-sponsor legislation to re-fund the enhanced ACA subsidies for three years while a longer-term solution is built. He has been one of the few candidates in this cycle continuing to talk about the collapse in ACA enrollment that followed the subsidy lapse. Enrollment dropped from roughly 1.5 million Georgians in early 2025 to around 950,000 by April 17, 2026, leaving more than half a million people newly uninsured.
Read NGA CAN's full interview with Barry Wolfert: https://www.ngacan.org/post/meet-barry-wolfert-running-to-reclaim-georgia-s-11th-congressional-district
Chris Harden (D)
Harden is an attorney from Cherokee County. He grew up in Rossville in northwest Georgia, earned his bachelor's degree from Georgia State University with a major in Political Science and Pre-Law and a minor in History, and a law degree from Atlanta's John Marshall Law School. He worked as an attorney in juvenile courts in northwest Georgia and founded Harden Law Firm, LLC in downtown Woodstock with his wife, where he focuses on estate planning and probate. He describes himself as "a moderate Democrat focused on results, not rhetoric," and his platform centers on strengthening public education, expanding affordable healthcare access including reproductive care, and what he calls restoring common sense and stability in government. He has put reproductive rights at the front of his messaging and has spoken publicly about women in Georgia who have been forced to carry nonviable pregnancies because doctors fear losing their licenses.
NGA CAN's Progressive Pick: Barry Wolfert
Wolfert brings a specific, actionable healthcare agenda at exactly the moment Georgians are losing coverage at scale. His decision to keep the ACA subsidy lapse on the table when most politicians have moved on to other headlines is the kind of focus we want representing District 11. We respect Chris Harden's work and his clear voice on reproductive rights, and we encourage voters to read both candidates and decide for themselves.
State Races
Georgia State Senate District 51
NGA CAN's Progressive Pick: Gary St. Lawrence (D)
St. Lawrence is a 62-year-old Blairsville-area Democrat who openly describes himself as a "conservative Democrat" and a "fiscal conservative and social liberal." He is a 10-year U.S. Army veteran, an IT professional and IT manager, and a journalist and author with what he says is 45 years of political journalism and investigative reporting experience at every level of government, from zoning boards to presidential campaigns. He frames the case for his candidacy around 24 straight years of unbroken Republican control of every branch of Georgia state government, which he calls "a shambles of corruption, redundancy, inefficiency and allegiance to corporations and rich donors."
His platform is more substantive than the "conservative Democrat" label might suggest. He wants to raise Georgia's state minimum wage, currently the lowest in the country at $2.13 per hour for tipped workers and $5.25 for everyone else. He supports legalizing marijuana, especially for medicinal use and pain relief. He wants to rewrite Georgia's 42-year-old Quality of Basic Education (QBE) funding formula to push more dollars directly into classrooms. He wants to create a fully state-funded retirement and pension program for Georgia's firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics. He calls complete healthcare "a basic human need" and wants to build or upgrade hospitals and clinics across rural Georgia and add medical staff. He also prioritizes expanding services for veterans and seniors, increasing affordable housing in every county, and keeping religion out of politics.
A few positions are worth weighing carefully. He calls for getting "ALL ideologies out of public schools, not just the 'woke' ones," a both-sides framing many progressives will find unsatisfying given the specific direction of recent state and federal book bans and curriculum restrictions. He leans into his identity as a "truck-driving, gun-owning, church-going Army Veteran," which is the kind of messaging needed to compete in a deeply rural Republican district but signals he is not a Bernie-style progressive.
However, St. Lawrence is the only Democrat on the May 19 ballot, and Senate District 51 is one of the few open Republican-held seats in our region in 2026. Voting for him in the primary keeps a Democratic option on the November ballot in a race that matters for state Senate margins.
Georgia State House District 11 (state legislature)
This is a state legislative seat in the Georgia General Assembly in Atlanta. It is a different office from U.S. House District 11 above, even though they share the same district number.
All of Pickens County is in Georgia State House District 11. Ryan Fountain is the only Democrat on the May 19 primary ballot for this seat. The Republican incumbent, Rick Jasperse, has held the seat since 2010 and is uncontested in his own primary, so the November 3 general election will be Fountain vs Jasperse.
NGA CAN's Progressive Pick: Ryan Fountain (D)
Fountain grew up in Ball Ground in a household led by a single mother of four, and his platform is built on his lived experience with poverty and the Medicaid gap. He is running on three core pillars: the Georgia Achievement Fund (state surplus dollars invested in students), the Worker's Security Act (closing the Medicaid gap), and the Grocery Price Transparency Act (regulating large chain grocery stores).
Progressive voters should note one position to weigh carefully. On reproductive rights, Fountain has proposed what he calls a "10 Week Heartbeat Amendment" framed as a compromise. That sits to the right of where most NGA CAN members are on this issue.
All Other Pickens County Local Races
Important note: All other local races on the Pickens County ballot are in the Republican primary. There are no Democratic candidates running for Pickens County Commission, Board of Education, or other countywide offices in this primary.
Local races with Republican primary only:
County Commission District 1: Josh Tippens (R, uncontested)
Board of Education Post 2: Nick Weaver (R) vs. Steve Lowe (R)
Board of Education Post 3: Brian Cleghorn (R) vs. Danielle Phelps (R)
Board of Education Post 5: Joe Wigington (R, uncontested)
NGA CAN has not researched Republican-only races.
About NGA CAN
NGA CAN is a volunteer-led progressive civic network with approximately 50 active members and 3,800 newsletter subscribers across Cherokee, Pickens, Bartow, Forsyth, Cobb, and surrounding Georgia counties. We work to advance democratic participation, government accountability, and progressive values in our communities. Learn more at https://www.ngacan.org.
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