Four Republican nominees for statewide office in Georgia spoke to about 100 local people during a lunch event Wednesday, Oct. 7 in the Main Street Farmers Market venue at Visit Statesboro. Early voting begins Tuesday, Oct. 13, for the Nov. 3 general election.
It was a campaign fundraising event for the GOP candidates, but no contributions were required for the informal buffet or to listen. The first three candidates to speak are running for state government offices – Greg Dolezal for lieutenant governor, Brian Strickland for attorney general, and Tim Fleming for secretary of state. Last to arrive and speak was the one candidate for federal office, Congressman Mike Collins, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate challenging Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff.
State House Speaker Jon Burns, whose legislative district includes part of Bulloch County and who along with his wife Dayle Burns was listed at top among the hosts of the event, gave welcoming remarks and introductions.
Lt. Gov. contender
The first candidate to speak, Greg Dolezal, GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, noted that this is the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, a milestone of self-rule.
“That is the uniquely American idea, that our rights don’t come from a king, they don’t come from government, they don’t come from man, but our rights come from God, and the reason that we say that we believe in capitalism and oppose socialism is not because capitalism is perfect – because it’s not – but it is the economic system that is most closely aligned with the idea of liberty, individual liberty, that is encapsulated in our Constitution,” he said.
He wasn’t the last speaker to mention “socialism,” as Republicans are lately trying to brand Democrats as socialists, and a minority of Democrats nationally, but not necessarily any of the Georgia candidates, do actually identify as “Democratic Socialists.” But then, 2026 is also a year when Democratic and other activists have organized “No Kings” rallies against policies of Republican President Donald Trump, some of whose actions and opinions have been called “fascist” by protestors.
“Socialism and collectivism, which ultimately ends up in communism, which always ends up with a tyrant with a gun killing the people, by the way, throughout all of human history, that economic system is antithetical to the values that we find in our Constitution,” Dolezal continued.
So far a state senator from Cumming in Forsyth County, he has represented Senate District 27 since first being elected in 2018 and served as Senate majority leader from 2023 to 2025. The job he is seeking now, lieutenant governor, includes serving as the Georgia Senate’s president. Originally one of seven Republican candidates in the May primary, Dolezal secured the nomination in a June runoff.
So now he faces the Democratic nominee, Josh McLaurin, in the general election.
A.G. candidate
Brian Strickland, who was first a state representative and is still, through this year, a state senator, thus gained about 14 years experience in the Georgia General Assembly. The lawyer from Henry County also chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, and since winning the Republican primary for attorney general, he is facing the Democratic nominee, Tanya Miller, in the general election.
Strickland’s wife Lindsay and their two young sons, Beecher and Charles Willis, were with him at the luncheon. In fact, Beecher, 6, accompanied his father to the microphone, and Charles Willis, who is a little older, joined them on stage before he finished speaking.
“Everything is on the line in this election. Every time we have an election, politicians say this is the most important election of your lifetime, but for Georgia, y’all, this is the biggest election that we’ve ever had,” Strickland said. “We live in a state that people want to be in. … The most conservative estimate says 129 people a day are choosing to move to Georgia from other states.
“They’re flocking to Georgia from states like California, New York, Virginia, Minnesota, Michigan because the crazy politicians in those states have priced them out, and they haven’t had the backs of law enforcement with violence on the rise in those states,” he continued.
He didn’t call out “socialists” as such but said the “radical left” is setting policies that do not support law enforcement or law and order.
“We are blessed to be a state with conservative leadership,” Strickland said.
Sec. of State hopeful
Tim Fleming previously served almost eight years as a Secretary of State’s Office staff member, back when Brian Kemp, the current governor, was secretary of state. Fleming then served as Kemp’s first chief of staff in the governor’s office for several years. From Newton County where he was previously a county commissioner, Fleming since January 2023 has been District 114’s representative in the state House.
In that role he has carried forward “legislation around election integrity issues, licensure reform, cutting red tape,” he said. These are also issues for the Secretary of State’s Office, which includes the Elections Division but also handles corporate registration, regulation of charities and licensing of various professions.
“I’m running to be your next secretary of state, and I will fight hard every day to ensure that we have fair, transparent and trusted and secure elections,” Fleming said. “I want to ensure that Georgia has the most trusted elections in the United States of America.”
He added that the next secretary of state will be deciding what Georgia will use as its next statewide voting system. During a special session in June, the General Assembly passed legislation outlining the process, and Burns as House speaker appointed Fleming to a special committee that has started work on this issue, he noted.
Over 600,000 Georgians have licenses issued by the Professional Licensing Division, and both Fleming and Burns said this licensing is the most frequent reason citizens call legislators’ offices for “constituent services” help.
Fleming said, “It’s taking weeks if not months” to get a license or even a renewal, and he wants to simplify and speed up the process. New licenses were issued in five days and renewals were automatic when he served there under Kemp, he said.
Democratic secretary of state nominee Penny Brown Reynolds is Fleming’s opponent in the general election.
And then, Collins
Congressman Mike Collins, from Jackson, has represented Georgia’s 10th District in the U.S. House of Representatives for four years, having first been elected in 2022 and re-elected in 2024. In his career outside of politics, he and his wife, Leigh Ann, started a trucking company that grew from just one truck to now employ about 100 drivers.
Collins’ best-known accomplishment in Congress has been as the original House sponsor of the Laken Riley Act. Riley was the 22-year-old nursing student murdered while jogging near the University of Georgia at Athens on Feb. 22, 2024. Her since-convicted murderer, José Antonio Ibarra, originally from Venezuela, had had entered the United States illegally and had some prior arrests.
Athens is in Collins’ district, and the legislation he introduced requires the detention without bond of non-citizens who are arrested for certain crimes, ranging from shoplifting and other thefts to any crime that results in death or serious injury.
Collins had advanced only about two minutes into his Statesboro remarks when he mentioned the Laken Riley Act and the fact that Ossoff, since January 2021 one of Georgia’s two U.S. senators, did not vote for it.
“I’m in a battle myself with a guy who had every opportunity – Jon Ossoff had every opportunity – to help me pass Laken Riley, and he failed at that,” Collins said. “You know, if that was in a private business, and he’d have been in the private sector, he’d have been fired. He failed his constituency twice, not helping fix the problem and allowing that border to be wide open.”
Signed into law by President Trump on Jan. 29, 2025, the act has since “been responsible for removing over 20,000 illegal criminals from our country, making us safer,” Collins said.
He told potential Republican supporters that voter turnout will determine the outcome of the election. Collins also claimed that Ossoff “votes over 90% of the time with Bernie Sanders” and supports a “Democratic Socialist guy in Michigan that wants sharia law.”
State Sens. Billy Hickman and Max Burns, state Reps. Butch Parrish, Lehman Franklin and Bill Hitchens, District 19 Republican state Senate nominee David Sikes and District 57 Republican state House nominee Brad Anderson were also listed as hosts of the luncheon.