State Senator Josh McLaurin (D) was elected lieutenant governor of Georgia on Tuesday, and he will preside over a state Senate that Republicans control 29 to 27. In 2003, when Republicans took the chamber with a Democrat in the job, the Senate stripped the lieutenant governor of most of his power there, the Georgia Encyclopedia says.
That Democrat was Mark Taylor, who had just been reelected in 2002, the year Sonny Perdue was elected governor. Republicans held the governorship and the Senate majority at the same time for the first time since Reconstruction. The Senate’s own report on the 2003 session’s first week said the new majority’s first official act was to rewrite the chamber’s rules. Control over committee chairmanships and major legislation went to the Republican president pro tempore, the encyclopedia says.
How much power McLaurin has depends on rules the Senate writes for itself at the start of each two-year term, by a majority vote of its members. Under the rules adopted in January 2025, the lieutenant governor chairs the committee that appoints the Senate’s standing committees and their chairs, and votes there only to break a tie. The committee has five members: the lieutenant governor, the president pro tempore, the majority leader and two senators the lieutenant governor appoints. With 29 of the 56 seats, Republicans have exactly enough votes to rewrite all of that when the new Senate adopts its rules.
Unofficial results from the Secretary of State, with every precinct reporting, show McLaurin beat State Senator Greg Dolezal (R) by about 12 points, 56% to 44%. The results are unofficial until the state certifies them. Dolezal reported raising $3.76 million, nearly all of it in loans, to McLaurin’s $1.01 million, in state campaign finance reports through Oct. 20 plus the two-day reports filed after it.
Democrats also picked up four Senate seats, all from Republicans. In Cobb and Bartow counties, Darcy Castro (SD-37) (D) beat State Senator Ed Setzler (R) by about 1,400 votes, the narrowest of the four. Eric W. Lee Sr. (SD-42) (D) won an open seat in Newton, Walton, Henry and Morgan counties. In Gwinnett and Barrow counties, Scott Tippetts (SD-45) (D) beat State Senator Clint Dixon (R). Laura Murvartian (SD-48) (D) beat State Senator Shawn Still (R) in a district that spans Fulton, Forsyth and Gwinnett counties. It was not enough to flip the chamber. Republicans went from 33 seats to 29, and a majority takes 29.