Tricia Pridemore
In a rather unsurprising move Governor Nathan Deal on Wednesday appointed Tricia Pridemore to the Public Service Commission to fill the vacancy created by the departure of Stan Wise.
The longtime Deal ally resigned her position as executive director of the Governor’s Office of Workforce Development in 2014 to run for Congress in the state’s 6th district, but was defeated in the primary by Bob Barr and eventual winner Barry Loudermilk. She is also a former member of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority Board of Governors and the Cobb-Marietta Coliseum and Exhibit Hall Authority, and served on Deal’s transition team in 2011.
Pridemore will serve the rest of Wise’s expiring term, which means she enters into a re-election campaign as soon as she is sworn into office. While the incumbency boost will likely mean she goes unchallenged through the May 22nd Republican Primary, she has already drawn opponents for the general election in the form of Democrat Doug Stoner and Libertarian John Turpish.
While Turpish is still working on getting his website up and running, Stoner promises to be a real threat in the November general election. The former state Senator was narrowly defeated by current-gubernatorial candidate Hunter Hill in 2012 and has name recognition across the state. He is likely to come out guns blazing on the issue of Plant Vogtle’s continued funding – as a Senator he authored legislation that would have limited utilities from collecting fees for projects that went beyond their original completion date.
Said Deal on the move, “I would like to thank Stan Wise for his more than two decades of dedicated service to our state and I wish him the best in his future endeavors. Tricia has significant experience in both the private and public sectors, and I am confident she will be an effective member of the Public Service Commission.”
