Kalki Yalamanchili became emotional Tuesday as he turned to his wife, Caitlin.
She was months removed from breast cancer treatments last fall when he announced he would run for district attorney for Clarke and Oconee counties. Just over a year later, as he announced his victory in front of a crowd of supporters, he didn’t try to hide tears when he addressed his wife.
“It wasn’t fair for me to ask you to do it, but I think you knew this was something I had to do to be able to look at myself in the mirror,” Yalamanchili said.
Unofficial tallies show Yalamanchili, the independent challenger, handily defeated incumbent Democrat Deborah Gonzalez in the race for the Western Judicial Circuit. He dominated in conservative Oconee County, with 76.5% of the votes. And he eked out a win in left-leaning Clarke County — where voters outnumber the neighboring county nearly 2-to-1 — garnering 51% of ballots cast.
Elsewhere, in the Chatham County district attorney’s race, incumbent Shalena Cook Jones claimed a 9,000-vote victory over Republican Andre Pretorius, despite several high-profile leaders in Savannah’s Black community, including Mayor Van Johnson, questioning her leadership. And in Fulton County, incumbent District Attorney Fani Willis, who came under fire for bringing election interference charges against former president Donald Trump last year, easily defeated Republican Courtney Kramer.
Gonzalez won over voters in 2020 with a plan for progressive reforms. She promised to put resources toward root causes that lead to criminal behavior, with an emphasis placed on marginalized communities.
But critics, including fellow Democrats, described Gonzalez as ineffective, citing staff shortages, courtroom losses and repeated violations of the mandate to keep victims informed about their cases and notified of their rights.
For Gonzalez, scrutiny intensified earlier this year after 22-year-old Laken Riley was killed on the University of Georgia campus.
Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan national who authorities said entered the United States unlawfully, was charged with murder in the death that became a flashpoint in the debate over border security. Gov. Brian Kemp and State Rep. Houston Gaines, both Republicans from the Athens area, questioned Gonzalez’s ability to successfully prosecute Ibarra, and Gonzalez ended up tapping Sheila Ross, a special prosecutor, to handle the case.
Yalamanchili previously spent six years as a prosecutor at the district attorney’s office in Athens. He started his own private practice in 2018 and teaches a criminal litigation course at the University of Georgia’s School of Law.
With his wife recovering from cancer and two young sons, Yalamanchili said he felt called to the DA’s race because of his love for Athens, where he has worked for more than a decade, and Oconee County, where the family resides.
Caitlin Yalamanchili — a prosecutor in the Piedmont Circuit, which is made up of Banks, Barrow and Jackson counties — gave her husband her blessing.
“I certainly was hesitant in the beginning to have him start that journey,” she said. “But knowing how important it is to have somebody that cares and knows how to do that job so that you can help people, I knew that he had to do it.”
Gonzalez has said her attempts to “change the entire system” prompted backlash throughout her term.
“When we tore down one wall of the old way of doing things and started to focus on another wall, people who did not want change would start rebuilding the wall we just tore down,” she said.
Gonzalez lost support from progressive Athens mayor Kelly Girtz and two left-leaning county commissioners, who both publicly endorsed Yalamanchili. Girtz said last month that he aligned with Gonzalez philosophically but that her office lacked functionality, which created lags between arrests and prosecutions.
Gonzalez pointed to external factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, that she said created difficult circumstances for her office, adding that a second term would have given her time to execute her vision for the position.
“I’m proud of what we’ve done considering the challenges that we’ve had,” Gonzalez told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution before votes were tallied Tuesday.
Yalamanchili takes office Jan. 1. He said work preparing to take over the office is already underway.
“People in this community have shown up on this Election Day to make the change that we need to restore and build a DA’s office that’s committed to delivering justice for victims,” Yalamanchili said.
In Savannah, Cook Jones said Wednesday her victory reflected a “clear mandate” by Savannah area voters that they still have an appetite for restorative justice reform and that she’s the right candidate to lead that charge. The Democrat’s first term was marked by controversy, staff defections and complaints about her offering plea deals to defendants accused of violent crimes. Pretorius, her challenger, once worked in her office.
Cook Jones won better than 53% of the vote. Her office scored several major courtroom victories in the weeks leading up to the election, such as a conviction in the case of a mother accused of killing her toddler son and dumping his body in a dumpster and a conviction of a man accused in a fatal stabbing.
In Atlanta, Willis, a Democrat, garnered 68% of the vote to claim victory against Kramer, who aided in election-related litigation for Trump’s legal team following his failed 2020 run for president.
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