Democratic voters in Fulton County will choose between incumbent District Attorney Fani Willis and Christian Wise Smith, a former prosecutor and current criminal defense attorney, as their choice for the county’s DA for the next four years.
The primary vote is happening against the backdrop of the high-profile RICO prosecutions against former President Donald Trump and rapper Young Thug, but the bulk of the Fulton prosecutor’s job holds high stakes for thousands of regular people arrested and accused of crimes every year.
As the county’s chief prosecuting officer, the district attorney gets paid $133,806.34 per year to oversee a team of investigators and attorneys who wield enormous power over the lives of people accused of crimes, the majority of whom are Black. They decide which cases to prosecute, how much money to ask a judge to impose for bail while someone awaits trial, and what sentences to recommend to the judge after securing a conviction.
The next district attorney will also face a major backlog of cases that began to build up during the pandemic in 2020 when the courts were shut down.
The DA also presents cases and serves as legal advisor to grand juries, which are legal panels made up of ordinary citizens and are responsible for deciding whether to indict someone accused of a crime, and which charges they should face.
The district attorney’s office controls a budget of $36.6 million, according to 2023 figures.
With that much power, it’s easy to see why Willis — whose office has faced several controversies over the past year — faces challengers from the left and the right. Republican Courtney Kramer is the first from her party to qualify in the Fulton County DA’s race in 30 years.
Kramer, who previously worked in the Office of White House Counsel in the Trump administration in 2018, told reporters that she decided to run last August when the indictment against the former president was announced. Her campaign did not respond to Capital B Atlanta’s interview request.
Kramer has no Republican primary opponent and so won’t face a challenger.
In a county where more than 70% of voters cast ballots for President Joe Biden in 2020, the race to watch will be Tuesday’s primary, where Willis is being challenged by fellow Democrat Wise Smith, a former assistant district attorney in Fulton County who founded the nonprofit National Social Justice Alliance.
Wise Smith also ran as a primary candidate in 2020 when Willis ultimately defeated then-incumbent DA Paul Howard.
Throughout her tenure as DA and reelection campaign, Willis has emphasized her office’s focus on guns, gangs, and drugs. However, the headlines about Willis’ office have often centered around her more high profile cases. She has garnered support from many Atlantans for her election interference case against Trump and his allies, but also criticism over the use of rap lyrics as evidence in the case against Atlanta rapper Young Thug and his co-defendants.
The revelation that she had a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, one of the special prosecutors in the Trump case, drew criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. The Trump case is also largely seen as the main catalyst for the Republican-controlled state legislature to revive a prosecutor oversight commission with the power to remove elected prosecutors from office if they are deemed unfit. Willis’ campaign did not respond to Capital B’s inquiry for this story.
Wise Smith, unlike Kramer, has chosen not to make the election interference case or the special prosecutor controversy central to his primary campaign.
“For me, it’s all about what we could be doing for the families in Fulton County. What we could be doing to help folks who come in contact with the justice system,” Wise Smith told Capital B Atlanta.
Instead, he’s running on a platform of proactively offering diversionary opportunities for people arrested for low-level crimes, implementing an evaluation process to assess arrestees for things like mental illness or drug addiction, and offering some the opportunity to go through counseling, GED classes, and job training instead of serving jail time.
