For a few weeks in late May, it looked like Athens, Georgia, was on the verge of a first for the American South: electing a self-described democratic socialist as mayor of a major city.
Tim Denson, a school board member and former county commissioner known around town for showing up at concerts, had just won 38% of the vote, ahead of Dexter Fisher, an Athens-Clarke County commissioner, who received 27%.
Denson is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and seemed to be riding the same current that had recently lifted democratic socialist candidates in Democratic primaries in Colorado, New York, and Pennsylvania.
Then came the runoff—and $95,000 in outside spending from a nonprofit called A Public Voice Inc., routed through a newly formed independent committee called Athens Forward. A Public Voice has a long history of bankrolling Republican politics in Georgia, including prior spending supporting Gov. Brian Kemp. This time, it spent to boost Fisher.
By the time voters returned to the polls June 16, Fisher had overtaken Denson, winning roughly 53%of the vote to Denson’s 47% to become Athens’ first Black mayor and, in his own words, a “voice of reason.”
Fisher had received a slew of endorsements ahead of the primary, including from the Black Clergy of Athens. He did not respond to an interview request for this story, but his campaign has previously stated it had no knowledge of or connection to the outside spending on his behalf. Campaigns are legally barred from coordinating with independent committees.
Athens is not the only place in Georgia where money with ties to outside interests has shaped the tenor of a local Democratic primary this year.
Dark money’s paper trail in Athens
Denson is a familiar presence in Athens and had previously run for mayor. But that name recognition wasn’t enough to survive a monthlong mail blitz.
Between the May primary and the June runoff, Athens Forward—the committee funded by A Public Voice—sent out a wave of mailers and ads attacking Denson.
Hampton Barrineau, a volunteer on the Denson campaign, described the mailers as “an intentional effort to confuse voters” and distort Denson’s record.
A Public Voice’s paper trail is part of a network of interlocking 501(c)(4) “dark money” groups documented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which do not have to disclose their donors.
In 2022, the group gave $175,000 to the Georgia Action Fund, a super PAC that backed David Perdue’s primary challenge to Kemp. Years earlier, in 2018, it gave $72,000 to a super PAC called A Better Georgia PAC that supported Kemp’s first run for governor.
Barrineau said that kind of spending is especially distorting in small local races, where campaigns rarely have the resources to compete with it. “Races [should be] decided by the people living in those areas,” he said, not outside actors.
Follow the money to Win For America
Athens isn’t the only Democrat-heavy area where a flood of outside spending swamped a low-profile primary this year.
In Georgia House District 62, an open, safely Democratic seat covering parts of Fulton County, four little-known Democrats ran to succeed outgoing Rep. Tanya Miller.
Three of them had raised between $8,000 and $11,000 total by the spring disclosure deadline. Then a group called American Future PAC spent more than $354,000 on mailers backing one of them, Kenn Collier, a youth-violence-prevention advocate who entered politics after his son was killed in a shooting. Collier went on to win his primary election.
American Future PAC’s website frames itself as a group electing “strong, bold Democrats.” But according to reporting from Atlanta Civic Circle and the Atlanta Community Press Collective, its money comes from Win For America, a PAC funded by the sports-betting industry — DraftKings, FanDuel, and similar companies — that has spent nearly $8 million on Republican primaries in Georgia this cycle. Collier told the Atlanta Community Press Collective his loyalty was to voters, not donors.
“My allegiance is to the working people of this district, and that will never be for sale.”
The impact of PACs on local races
Political scientists who study local elections have found that voters in these races are, by design, working with less information than they have in high-profile contests.
In races where most voters have never heard of the candidates and there’s little competing coverage, campaign finance watchdogs argue that even modest spending can meaningfully shift perception. Candidates have essentially no legal tools to respond, since they cannot coordinate with the outside groups spending on their behalf.
Advocates at the Brennan Center for Justice argue that this dynamic is a feature of the current campaign finance system, not a glitch.
“A handful of wealthy special interests dominate political funding, often through super PACs and shadowy nonprofits that shield donors’ identities,” the group writes.
Their proposed fix is to change the underlying incentives: expand public financing for campaigns, particularly small-dollar matching programs that let candidates compete without relying on big checks, from PACs or otherwise.
New York City offers a working model. Its public campaign finance program matches small individual donations at up to an 8-to-1 rate on the first $250 of each contribution, turning a $100 donation into as much as $800 in matching public funds.
That system helped Zohran Mamdani, the most prominent democratic socialist to win major office in America, build a campaign capable of taking on a corporate-backed establishment rival, Andrew Cuomo, without matching him dollar-for-dollar in outside spending.
Georgia has no comparable program. Until it does, races like Athens’ mayoral runoff and the Georgia House District 62 primary may keep offering a preview of how easily a well-funded outside group—conservative, industry-backed, or otherwise—can outspend the candidates actually on the ballot.
