The three candidates appearing before the Oconee County Democratic Party last week were competing with each other for the party’s nomination for District 3 on the state Public Service Commission.
Each made it clear, however, that the real opponent is the existing Public Service Commission itself and incumbent Fitz Johnson.
“I believe any of us can do a better job” than Johnson, Daniel Blackman said.
Blackman and Robert Jones were present in person at the Democratic Party meeting at the Oconee County Library in Wire Park on Thursday (May 15), while Peter Hubbard was linked in via Zoom.
Keisha Sean Waites was unable to attend because of scheduling conflicts, Party Chair Harold Thompson told the 40 persons in the room as well as the eight connected via Zoom.
Jones, who spoke first, emphasized his background serving on a Public Service Commission in California, working for a utility company, and working for Microsoft.
Blackman, who ran unsuccessfully for the Public Service Commission in 2020 and then served in the Biden administration, focused on his political experience.
Hubbard, the third to speak, detailed his work as a clean energy advocate for the Georgia Center for Energy Solutions, a nonprofit he founded.
Delayed Election
The June 17 primaries contain the names of candidates for two of the five Public Service Commission Districts: District 2 and District 3.
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| Oconee Democrats 5/15/2025 |
District 3 consists of only three counties: Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton.
District 2 consists of 38 counties from eastern metropolitan Atlanta to the Savannah River and from Hart County to Chatham County.
The Democratic Primary Ballot contains only Alicia M. Johnson running for District 2 and Blackman, Hubbard, Jones, and Waites for District 3.
The Republican ballot lists incumbent Tim Echols and Lee Muns for District 2 and only incumbent Johnson for District 3.
Although candidates must live in the District they seek to represent, they run statewide, meaning Oconee County voters using the Democratic ballot will select among Blackman, Hubbard, Jones, and Waites for District 3, even though District 3 consists of only Fulton, DeKalb, and Clayton counties.
Oconee County voters using the Republican ballot will choose between Echols and Muns, who are seeking to represent District 2, including Oconee County, on the Commission, but voters in all five Districts will be able to participate in the primary.
That complicated voting arrangement has been challenged, and one challenge, which was unsuccessful, resulted in the delay of the election for District 2 and District 3 Commission members. The six-year terms for Echols and Johnson were supposed to have expired in 2022.
The residency of Blackman, who ran unsuccessfully for the Commission from District 4 in 2020, also is being challenged, according to a story in The Atlanta Journal Constitution on Friday (May 16). The challenge is that Blackman is not properly registered in District 3.
Jones
“So my introduction is,” Jones told the assembled Democrats, “I know my stuff.”
Jones said “I spent the first three years of my career working for the California Public Utilities Commission. I was regulating the energy company. I was regulating the telecommunications company. I was deregulating telecommunications.”
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| Jones 5/15/2025 |
“I then left there and worked for a utility company for 20 years,” he said. “I left there and then went to Microsoft. I was at Microsoft for eight years. Went around the world, helping customers move applications into the data center.”
“So I look at the Commission today and the way it's operating,” he said. “It's vastly underperforming what it should be.”
Jones said that “the monopoly influence” has “compromised the Commission to where now it's serving utility interest rather than us” and that is what “compelled me to jump into this race.”
Jones said he wanted to run for the Commission last year but could not because the election was cancelled.
“So I've been preparing for this for a couple of years now,” he said. “So the issues of data centers, the issues of the environment, the issue of how the Commission is operating, that's what's compelled me to get into this race.”
In response to a question on priorities, Jones said he wants “regulatory reform–this whole process of having you pay for things before they’re built has to go,” he wants “Georgia to be the nation's leader in rooftop solar energy,” and he wants “to internalize the social costs of environmental harm” in setting rates.
Blackman
Blackman told the audience that “I understand that the regulatory process is not just about lower utility bills.”
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| Blackman 5/15/2025 |
“It's about kids that wake up every day in North Georgia and rural Georgia and struggle from respiratory illnesses, about communities that are overwhelmingly impacted, especially seniors who are amongst the highest respiratory impacted individuals in the country.”
“And a lot of what you're going to hear from the Public Service Commission candidates is absolutely correct,” he said. “There's no transparency. Our rates are too high, and we're doing too much to avoid the most serious question.”
“And that is a cost burden that is coming not only in our generation,” but on future generations.
Plant Vogtle, the four-unit nuclear power plant near Waynesboro that has had continuing cost overruns “is something that we in Georgia will be paying for over the next 50 years,” Blackman said.
“We are dealing with companies and organizations that, no matter how far behind schedule or over budget they are,” he said, “their shareholders are making a profit and they're never on the hook for what happens to those of us in this room--to working families.”
Blackman, who served as the Southeast Regional Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency in the Biden Administration, said he would draw on that experience to work with people with different backgrounds around the state.
He also promised that if elected “I will not take a dime from a utility company, from a utility executive, or from their wife that we may have never heard about.”
Hubbard
Hubbard said he and his three colleagues face “a systemic sort of challenge. We all have to live in a certain district, but anyone in the state can vote on us.”
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| Hubbard 5/15/2025 |
“As a result,” he said, “not only has there been a majority, not just a majority of Republicans, on the Public Service Commission, but unanimous control. So you don't even have that one voice who can speak up for residential rate payers--all of you.”
Hubbard said he earned an undergraduate degree in astrophysics and then did graduate work in international relations and economics before going into the energy industry.
“Currently, right now, I'm a solar and storage developer,” he said.
“For the last six years, basically in the entire term of a Public Service commissioner, without being paid a dime, just because I'm passionate about this,” Hubbard said, “I've been going down in front of the Public Service Commission and arguing for more clean power and less fossil gas and coal and other things like that.”
Hubbard said he has done these things through his nonprofit, Georgia Center for Energy Solutions.
“As a commissioner,” Hubbard said, you have discovery rights, you can actually ask questions of the power company, and they're compelled to respond. So I'll use that authority.”
“I'll stop the rate increases with my authority,” Hubbard said, and “I’ll hold the power company...and my colleagues on the Commission accountable.”
Video
Each speaker was given 20 minutes to talk, and the brief summaries above capture only small parts of what each said.
The video below is of the entire meeting on May 15 and includes all of the comments by the three candidates.
Jones began his comments at 6:09 in the video.
Blackman began speaking at 26:34.
Hubbard began his comments at 45:25.
Early in-person voting for the June 17 primaries begins on May 27 and runs through June 13, with Saturday voting on May 31 and June 7, at the Oconee County Administrative Building, 7635 Macon Highway, north of Watkinsville.
Elections for the two Public Service Commission Districts will be on Nov. 4, when municipal elections also will be on the ballot.
1 comment:
Since 2023, the all-Republican commission has approved 6 rate increases for Georgia Power customers, mostly for the enormous construction overruns at Plant Vogtle and to subsidize the infrastructure to support the growing Data Center industry. Even if you get your power from Walton EMC, you are not totally shielded from rising electricity costs. Walton buys power from a wholesaler, Oglethorpe Power, who owns 30% of Plant Vogtle, so those cost problems ultimately find their way into Walton's rates.
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