Oconee County Superior Court Chief Judge Lisa Lott granted a temporary restraining order on Thursday afternoon requiring the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration to remove the challenge of voters it approved on Oct. 1 and to cancel a hearing on those challenges scheduled for Thursday (Oct. 24) evening.
Judge Lott issued her decision following a nearly 90-minute long hearing on Monday (Oct. 21) on a request by Oconee County resident Susan Noakes for the restraining order.
Incumbent Democratic District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez and Kalki Yalamanchili, challenging her on the Nov. 5 ballot as an Independent, agree that there have been problems in the District Attorney Office in the last four years.
They disagree to some extent on the severity of the problems, and they disagree on the causes. They disagree most strongly on the solutions.
The Oconee County Democratic Party turned its final meeting before the Nov. 5 election over to the seven candidates running with party support, giving each a chance to say once again why voters should support them.
Legislative candidates Gareth Fenley, seeking to represent the 46th Senate District, which includes all of Oconee County, Andrew Ferguson, running in House District 120, and Eric Gisler, running in House District 121, were on hand.
Oconee County Schools administrators have presented the Oconee County School Board with six memorandums governing the relationships between nearby schools systems and police and sheriff’s offices regarding school resource officers (SROs).
School Superintendent Jason Branch told the Board members at their work session earlier this month that he was providing the six documents “for your review” and that the Board should inform him “if there's thoughts or items that you want to share with us” after reviewing them.
The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration spent 90 minutes at the beginning of the month reviewing on a case-by-case basis challenges to the ability of 75 registered Oconee County voters to cast a ballot for the Nov. 5 election.
After reviewing each of the challenges made by Oconee County residents Victoria Cruz and Stephen Aleshire, the Board voted to sustain the challenge in 66 of those cases.
Kalki Yalamanchili, who is challenging incumbent Democrat District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez as an Independent on the Nov. 5 ballot, raised more than six times the amount of money Gonzalez raised in the three months leading up to the fall campaign.
Since the beginning of the year, Yalamanchili has raised $471,028, or nearly five times the $95,332 raised by Gonzalez.
Democratic incumbent Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, and Kalki Yalamanchili, who is challenging her on the Nov. 5 ballot as an Independent, were respectful of each other in the nearly 90 minutes they spent on Tuesday night responding to questions in a candidate forum.
But from the very beginning, it was clear they have very different views of what has transpired in the four years Gonzalez has held the District Attorney Office.
