COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — Tuesday night in the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit, voters turned the page and elected Don Kelly as the district attorney. It comes after four years of rough sledding in that office.
This would have been Stacey Jackson’s night, but Jackson died earlier this year after a lengthy illness.
“First of all I would have never come back but for Stacey getting appointed as the DA And he had to talk me into it. I had a good job. It wasn’t far away. I liked the people I worked with. And I didn’t know what would happen,” said Kelly. “But I believed Stacey could win an election. And I came back to work under the idea that Stacey could win this election. I had no plans of running. And unfortunately, when he got sick and couldn’t qualify, I went and talked with him and his parents. And made the decision to qualify. So that what we had done over that two years since he got appointed didn’t go back. We didn’t want to back slide.”
Kelly was appointed DA by Gov. Brian Kemp in May after Jackson’s death. His path to election was not an easy one. He ran as a republican and fended off a challenge from criminal defense attorney Anthony Johnson.