The next chairperson of the seven-member Fulton County Board of Commissioners will be chosen tonight. Election Day is back, and this time the runoff results are final. The Georgia primary election for the county’s Board of Commissioners chair is between the incumbent Robb Pitts and Fulton County District 4 Commissioner Mo Ivory. Both candidates have plans to make Fulton County, the largest county in Georgia with over 1 million residents, better for everyone.
Over the past 10 days, Pitts and Ivory dropped by The Atlanta Voice office to discuss why they should be re-elected or elected the next Fulton County Board of Commissioners chair.
Pitts, having served Fulton County in numerous capacities over several decades, is the more experienced of the two. Ivory, elected to the board of commissioners last year, can be considered the breath of fresh air residents might be looking for.
On the topic of experience, Ivory has been called out for not waiting her turn, so to speak. During her interview, she disputed those claims, calling them distractions and “campaign rhetoric.” Ivory received the majority of the votes during the primary election.
“Voters are not so novice that they can’t see what that is, which is the reason why voters voted for me the first time (in 2025), so they obviously voted for me again and put me in the first position,” Ivory said.
Pitts says that voter turnout and the results are closely tied to the strong Black female response this year. “Political experts and analysts have attributed that to Black women voting for other Black women,” said Pitts. “If you start at the top, that strong Black female vote compelled our great candidate for governor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, to win without a runoff. Then you keep on down the line.”
Back to the issues, both have plans for the Fulton County Jail, which has become a national embarrassment.
“Admittedly, there have been problems at the jail, but the Board of Commissioners is not responsible for running or managing the jail. Our responsibility is to provide the funds to run the jail, which we do,” said Pitts, who has been on record as saying he does not support building a new jail. “What do I support? A plan that calls for two things: the renovation of the existing Rice Street facility, and we’re going to build a 1,500-bed medical facility on that same footprint.”
Ivory agrees that the jail situation must change, but does not agree that a renovation is the answer.
“We need to solve the jail crisis; we can’t live in a city where we live by the ideals of Dr. King, where everybody should be treated equally, and this is the way we’re treating our inmates,” she said. “The conditions at the Fulton County Jail are unacceptable.”
She added that there are two issues that must be addressed: the overcrowding and the structure itself.
“We have to fix both of those issues. One way we fix it is by funding our courts. If the cases don’t move quickly through the courts, people linger in jail,” she said. “So that’s what I have always been saying, fix the jail, fund the courts, and build hospitals.”
On the topic of hospitals and medical care, Pitts explained a three-phase plan that is currently in the works to make hospital visits in Fulton County more accessible. He wants to build a medical complex in South Fulton County that can assist patients at all levels, not just as an emergency room. A free-standing medical office building and a 200-bed hospital are part of what he is calling a $900 million-dollar project. The costs break down as follows: $300 million from Fulton County, $300 million from the Grady Hospital System, and $300 million from the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority.
“The significance of that is, if you live in certain parts of South Fulton County, it would be quicker for you to drive to Macon than to drive to downtown Atlanta,” Pitts said of the need for a new hospital.
Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice
“You must give people healthcare, because if people don’t have proper healthcare, and they can’t do the things they need to do as a healthy person, which is work, they get involved in other things,” Ivory said.
The funding piece is a realization Ivory knows won’t be easy to secure, but it needs to be done. “We deserve more than one hospital in South Fulton when there are already five in North Fulton, so we need to have some healthcare equity, and I’m looking forward to working on that,” she said.
Asked why he should receive the Democratic nomination and move on to face the Republican candidate for chair, Tiffany Henyard, Pitts said, “Because I have had the honor and privilege of being chair since 2017, and I have served with distinction and class. I have never embarrassed my constituents.”
Ivory, answering the same question, said this is a critical time in Fulton County’s history, and critical issues facing the county’s residents need to be solved and not repeated.
“I haven’t seen solutions to major crises that we have, that include protecting elections, and we haven’t been able to resolve them in decades,” she said. “After I got on the commission, I saw the way it was operating, I felt it was dysfunctional, and so I felt the only way to resolve these issues was to change leadership.”
Ultimately, the voters will decide. Polling stations throughout Fulton County will close at 7 p.m.
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