As Nikema Williams enters the 5th Congressional District race, she will vacate her state Senate seat, triggering another special election that likely will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot for some Buckhead voters.
Williams is the state senator in District 39, which spans much of Atlanta and includes parts of southern Buckhead. Williams, who is also the chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, is now the party’s replacement nominee for the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis in the Congressional race for a seat that represents parts of Brookhaven and Buckhead.
Williams must leave the state Senate seat to run for Congress, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. Williams was running unopposed for re-election on the Nov. 3 general election ballot, leaving the seat vacant and the entire race without a candidate.
That means a special primary election will be called, consisting solely of Democratic candidates, according to Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson Walter Jones. The winner will get the Senate seat. The election likely will be scheduled for Nov. 3 as well, he said.
That’s not the only special election that local voters are likely to see Nov. 3 in the wake of Lewis’s death. Besides the election for the next two-year Congressional term, a special election will be called to fill the remaining few months of Lewis’s existing term. That race could have the same or different candidates. It was not immediately clear whether Williams would run to fill Lewis’s term as well.