Georgia Recorder: PSC races go to runoffs
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Georgia Public Service Commission race will be settled by June runoff
Johnson, Hubbard also appear to be set for a rematch this November
By:Alander Rocha-May 21, 20264:00 am
Josh Tolbert and Bobby Mehan, Republican candidates for Georgia’s District 5 Public Service Commission race, participates in the Loudermilk-Young Debate Series on Tuesday, April 28, 2026. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
The field of candidates to fill an open seat on the state Public Service Commission dwindled after Tuesday’s primary elections.
Only the District 5 Republican primary is heading into a runoff, while voters will likely see a rematch of last year’s District 3 race between a current commissioner and a former commissioner after former Commissioner Fitz Johnson appeared to narrowly win the GOP primary.
The commission, a state board that regulates Georgia’s major utilities, including Georgia Power, whose decisions directly impact residential energy bills, used to be largely overlooked but has recently been under scrutiny for approving several energy bill increases over two years that resulted in about $500 increase per year for the average household.
In District 3, Democratic incumbent commissioner Peter Hubbard, who flipped the seat in the 2025 running against soaring power costs and promising to lower costs by prioritizing clean, renewable energy, will likely face Johnson in a rematch of last election.
Johnson, who was appointed to the seat by the governor in 2021, faced a primary challenger but seems to have narrowly clenched the Republican nomination with 50.2% of the vote to advance to the November election. But Johnson isn’t celebrating yet and said that he is holding off commenting “until after the certification of the vote.”
The primary races for District 5 were more crowded, with three candidates on each side hoping to fill a seat left open by outgoing Commissioner Tricia Pridemore, who instead ran unsuccessfully for Congress.
The field is set on the Democratic side, with Shelia Edwards, a communication professional and energy advocate, defeating lawyer Craig Cupid and Clark Atlanta University professor Angelia Pressley with nearly 56% of the vote.
Edwards, having previously won the Democratic nomination for a PSC seat in the 2022 primaries, gained a heavyweight endorsement from former U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young, as well as several state lawmakers, such as state Sen. Ed Harbison and state Rep. Viola Davis. Edwards did not have a chance to run in the 2022 general election after that year’s Public Service Commission elections were delayed by a lawsuit challenging the commission’s at-large voting system.
In phone interviews leading up to the election, Edwards pointed to her years-long efforts to claim a seat on a commission, saying that she’s been advocating for lower energy costs long before Democrats had a viable chance of being elected.
In a statement on Wednesday, Edwards thanked voters “for the opportunity to bring ‘service’ back to the heart of the Public Service Commission.”
No Republican running for the District 5 nomination secured at least 50% of the vote, however, and engineer Josh Tolbert and mediator Bobby Mehan, who received about 41% and 31% of the vote, respectively, will face off in the June primary.
Both Tolbert and Mehan have promised to push back when Georgia Power requests further rate increases. Tolbert, who said he can use his engineering training to navigate hard-to-understand technical data and has been a frequent public speaker at commission meetings, said in an interview leading up to the May 19 election that Georgia Power needs to be incentivized to be efficient. He said that, for example, because fuel costs are largely passed on to customers, Georgia Power might not have an incentive to burn less fuel or even shop around for better prices, which he said should be examined more closely.
“We need to make sure there’s some scrutiny that the Public Service Commission needs to have,” Tolbert said earlier.
Mehan previously said that, if elected, he would not vote for rate increases during his six-year term and, in an interview, said he would encourage Georgia Power to “budget very conservatively” to avoid having to ask for rate increases as frequently as they have in the recent past. He also suggested having “a discussion about taking a little bit of a haircut on the profit margin,” bringing it more in line with other utilities across the country, and that the utility could also absorb some of the fuel and storm recovery costs that are passed on to customers.
“They don’t need to lose money. They have shareholders that they have to represent. However, I do think that Georgia Power has the appetite to be altruistic and give back,” Mehan said.
Republicans currently hold a majority on the commission, with Democrats currently holding two of the five seats. But Democrats are hoping to flip the power structure on the commission. If Edwards can secure a win in November and Hubbard is able to hold his seat, Democrats could “start to do the real work of lowering people’s power bills,” Hubbard said after qualifying to run in early March.
“We’re going to be making the case this year that we need to finish the job, and despite the fact that we’ve got a beachhead with two Democrats on the Public Service Commission, we’re still not going in the right direction,” Hubbard said.
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Alander Rocha is a journalist based in Atlanta. He previously worked for KFF Health News and the Red & Black, Georgia's student newspaper. He is a Tulane and Georgia alumnus with a two-year stint in the U.S. Peace Corps.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.