Houston County District Attorney George Hartwig wins reelection

Incumbent Houston County District Attorney George Hartwig won reelection by 2,831 votes against challenger Chief Assistant District Attorney Erikka Williams.

That’s 51.93% percent of the vote for Hartwig, compared to 48.07% of the vote garnered by Williams. The voter turnout in Houston County was 71.25%.

The final count comes after the Houston County Board of Elections was counting thousands of absentee ballots into the afternoon Wednesday.

According to GPB’s Grant Blankenship, the board had some 20,000 absentee ballots to count, starting Wednesday morning. Some of those ballots had to be “adjudicated,” or reviewed by a three-person panel comprised of a representative from each major party and an election official.

Early and Election Day voting totals showed Hartwig, a Republican, was leading Democrat challenger Williams by 29,883 votes (55.96%) to 23,513 votes (44.04%). Those totals did not include the thousands of remaining absentee ballots.

Williams said she expected the gap between her and Hartwig to shrink when absentee ballots were finalized, and that did happen.

Hartwig was leading by 6,370 votes before absentee votes were counted, with that spread decreasing to 2,831 votes when all was counted.

“It would be a miracle for me to pull it out,” Williams said early Wednesday afternoon. “But God’s in the miracle making business. We remain hopeful.”

Williams was “pleased as punch” with her performance at the polls.

“To be the first woman to run for this position (in Houston County) and to run as the Democrat in a largely Republican county and to get such a large portion of the vote, it’s still a very amazing thing and I’m proud of myself for that,” she said.

Williams ran unopposed in the Democrat primary.

Hartwig ran unopposed in 2012 and 2016 for the four-year seat. He was unavailable for comment Wednesday. Hartwig previously served as legal counsel for the Department of Human Services, Division of Child Support Services. He was also prosecutor for the Houston County District Attorney’s Office for nine years before that.

He’s also had a private law practice in Macon and has a background in law enforcement in Florida.



Telegraph reporter Becky Purser contributed to this story.

This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 12:39 AM.