This November, two transgender candidates will be on the ballot for Georgia’s House of Representatives. One of them is running in Bartow County and already facing transphobic attacks from the majority conservative district.
Bella Bautista, the Democratic candidate for Georgia House of Representatives District 14, is on the ballot this fall. While she ran uncontested, Bautista’s election still marks the first time an openly transgender woman has won a primary in Georgia.
Bautista will face Republican incumbent Mitchell Scoggins in November.
Bautista was inspired to run for office while advocating at the Capitol for transgender rights last year through her non-profit This Doesn’t Define Me.
“I always felt called back to [the Capitol],” she told Georgia Voice. “I’m not doing this to make history, I’m doing this because I just happen to be the only person in my district who’s running to stand up against corporate greed.”
Bautista has a clear priority leading her campaign: end tax breaks for data centers. In March 2025, preliminary plans for “Project Bunkhouse,” an 8.6 million-square-foot, $19 billion data center, were released. The facility is set to be located in Bartow County, just south of Cartersville Highway.
“These data centers are receiving billions of dollars in tax breaks, which is crazy because we’re in a time where our governor has actively cut hundreds of millions of dollars from essential programs going to the homeless, going to disabled veterans, going to our education sector,” Bautista said. “We’re cutting all this money that is going to people on the ground, but at that same time we’re giving these corporations massive tax breaks that they do not pass on to the everyday person.”
This priority reflects the thesis of Bautista’s grassroots, people-focused campaign. She’s fighting for the everyday Georgian and campaigning on both sides of the aisle. Other issues she’s supportive of are instituting a freeze on electricity prices, combatting data surveillance, and investing in the infrastructure of her home district.
“Cartersville is seeing a huge amount of growth,” she said. “Our roadways don’t have the capability to handle all of the people that are moving here at once, and Cartersville is quickly becoming an unaffordable place.”
Bautista joins Bentley Hudgins, who’s running in House District 90, as the two transgender candidates on the ballot in November. If either is elected, they will be the first trans candidate to hold office in Georgia.
Related story: Georgia could elect first openly transgender, nonbinary lawmaker
Bautista said that she was ready for transphobic attacks from Republicans in her district, and only a day after the primaries, her campaign posted a response to a transphobic post calling for the nearly 2,000 voters who supported her to be run out of the county.
“I knew [my gender identity] was going to be their main talking point and their only talking point,” she said. “…They won’t properly address my priorities, because they know they’re solid. This is why people on all sides of the aisle have pledged to support my campaign because I’m running on things that are actually affecting us day to day.”
