Fayette County’s Commission District 3 Race: What the Chamber Forum Revealed

This is the second of two columns covering the May 5 candidate forum at Peachtree City Christian Church, jointly hosted by the Fayette Chamber of Commerce, the Peachtree City Rotary Club, and the Fayetteville Rotary Club. The first column focused on the State Court Judge race. This one focuses on the District 3 seat on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners.

The District 3 seat is open because Commissioner Edward “Edge” Gibbons is not seeking reelection. The seat carries real responsibilities. The Board of Commissioners sets the county budget, funds public safety, maintains roads and infrastructure, oversees zoning in the unincorporated portions of the county, and decides how taxpayer dollars are spent. 

Three candidates filed for the seat: Republicans James Clifton and Phil Crane, and Democrat Chandra Wright. May 19 is the Republican primary, which means Crane and Clifton are competing for the Republican nomination on that day. Wright is unopposed on the Democratic side and advances to the general election in November.

The three candidates met on the Chamber stage and answered eight questions in front of a full room. The forum revealed that one candidate has been preparing for this seat for years, one would be ready for the role from day one, and one is running on slogans that have very little to do with what the office actually does.

But before we go into the details, let’s meet the candidates.

The Candidates

Phil Crane was born in Peachtree City in 1990. He graduated from McIntosh High School in 2008 and earned his Doctorate in Chiropractic from Sherman College in 2016. He and his wife Gillian own a chiropractic practice in Peachtree City, where they welcomed their son Philip in November 2025. Crane ran for Peachtree City Council in 2021 and 2022 but lost each race. Rather than walk away after those losses, he stayed engaged. He served on Peachtree City’s SPLOST Advisory Group reviewing capital projects, and he currently serves on the Fayette County Board of Health. He has been a regular presence at County Commission meetings for years and has been endorsed by Edge Gibbons, the retiring commissioner whose seat he is seeking.

Chandra Wright brings a less common combination of experience to this race. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Southern University and A&M College and began her career at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the Chicago area, where she led software development initiatives and managed global projects. After moving into community development work, she relocated to Peachtree City in 2016 and joined the city’s Planning and Development Department, where she gained direct experience in zoning, growth management, and the policies that shape how communities develop. She earned a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Georgia State University. She currently serves on the Fayette County Democratic Committee and on the Executive Board of the Georgia Federation of Democratic Women. Running as an unopposed Democrat, she advances to the November general election regardless of the May 19 outcome on the Republican side.

James Clifton is an attorney who founded The Clifton Law Firm and operates law and real estate businesses in Fayetteville and Newnan. He was born in Fayette County and holds law licenses in Georgia, Florida, California, Texas, and the District of Columbia. Clifton has run for office four times in the past twelve years. He ran for Georgia Senate in 2014 and Georgia House in 2016, finishing sixth and last in those primaries respectively. He ran for Peachtree City Council as former mayor Steve Brown’s running mate in November 2025 and lost to Michael Polacek. The county commission race is his fourth attempt at elected office.

The Elephant in the Room

If you’ve read my previous columns, you know I have been very critical of James Clifton, and for good reason. Since losing his Peachtree City Council race last November, Clifton has been promoting a conspiracy theory that Peachtree City and the Fayette County Development Authority are quietly working together to annex Coweta County land for a data center. The mayor of Peachtree City, the council member who proposed the annexation study at issue, and the president of the Fayette County Development Authority have all denied the claim in writing. Clifton himself acknowledged to The Citizen that his evidence is, in his own words, “circumstantial,” yet he continues to push the claims to others as fact.

He has also straight up lied to support his conspiracy. At one point, after obtaining recordings from a January city council retreat, Clifton posted a video to Facebook titled “The Peachtree City data center conversation that supposedly never happened.” The audio he used was of FCDA President Niki Vanderslice discussing a data center project in Fayetteville that had been reviewed by the Fayetteville Planning and Zoning Commission two days before the retreat. Vanderslice was not discussing Peachtree City. Clifton stripped the context, applied a Peachtree City label, and told his followers the recording was proof that city officials had been planning a data center behind their backs. He has never corrected the video or acknowledged that the audio was about Fayetteville (I documented the full details with screenshots and the video here). When confronted with facts like these, Clifton does not address them. He tells his followers the coverage is a political attack, frames himself as the target of a campaign to silence him, and moves on to his next post without engaging with what was actually documented.

What Clifton is ultimately doing is using a manufactured threat to build a base of supporters for his county commission campaign. That is something voters should seriously consider, but for the purposes of this article, I will assess Clifton’s forum appearance on its own terms.

How the Forum Was Conducted

The Chamber’s rules called for a 90-second opening statement from each candidate, 60 seconds to answer each of eight questions, and up to two minutes for a closing. Sixty seconds is enough to make a focused point but not enough to ramble, which is part of the value of a format like this one. What it reveals over the course of an evening is whether a candidate understands the actual scope of the office they are seeking, whether they can speak with specificity about how the County Commission operates, and whether they have done the preparation that produces concrete examples rather than slogans. That is the lens I will use through the question-by-question analysis below.

Question 1: Economic Development Priority

Edward Smith, Director of Institutional Client Services with the JTC Group, opened the questioning with a 2025 cost-of-community-services study showing that residential properties in Fayette County cost $1.05 in services for every dollar of property tax they generate, while industrial properties cost only $0.55. Given that gap, what would each candidate’s main economic development priority be?

Crane named sports medicine as a target sector and tied it to the new US Soccer presence in our area and the broader sports activity in the community, including pickleball, soccer, and baseball. He noted that a $550,000 home is roughly net zero for tax revenue versus services consumed, which framed his priority around closing that gap with the right kind of commercial growth.

Wright drew on her time inside the Peachtree City planning department to describe the residential-to-commercial tax balance as something planners actively manage rather than treat as a fixed condition. She framed economic development as a partnership in which the development authority does the recruiting and elected officials set the guardrails, with the responsibility to negotiate agreements that put residents first.

Clifton offered a critique rather than a priority. “Growth just for the sake of growth is not progress,” he said, with his memorable line about paving over a strawberry farm to build a parking lot. He did not name a sector, an industry, or any specific approach to economic development.

The clear winner of this question is Crane. He answered the question that was actually asked, named a target with a real connection to assets the community already has, and framed the response around the math that the question opened with. Wright was a close second because her framing demonstrated direct familiarity with the underlying mechanics of how planners and economic development professionals actually balance the residential-commercial mix. Clifton was third because the question asked for a priority and he offered a position.

Question 2: Comprehensive Transportation Plan

Maurice Ungaro, Town Manager for the Town of Brooks, asked about the county’s five-year update to the Comprehensive Transportation Plan and the regional trail and multi-use path plan being developed alongside it.

Clifton said he had filled out the survey, planned to attend a meeting on May 12, and supported many of the initiatives being discussed. He then pivoted to declare his opposition to the TDK extension.

This pivot is worth pausing on. The TDK extension is a Peachtree City Council matter, not a county matter. The county does not own the road, does not control its zoning, and does not have a vote on whether it gets extended. Edge Gibbons made this exact point in his April 29 endorsement letter for Crane: “The TDK Boulevard extension is also under the jurisdiction of the Peachtree City Council, not the county.” Clifton choosing to promote this position when asked about a county-level transportation plan suggests he is still campaigning on city-level issues from a county-level seat.

Wright did not draw hard policy lines on transportation specifically and instead focused on the importance of coordination with the Atlanta Regional Commission and the individual municipalities. Her three-part framework for traffic relief, which involves increasing flow, getting cars off the road, and considering bypass options, was structurally sound but did not get to specific policy positions.

Crane named the actual cast of stakeholders required to address Highway 54/74. He listed Peachtree City, Fayette County, Coweta County, Fayetteville, Tyrone, Sharpsburg, the Atlanta Regional Commission, and the Georgia Department of Transportation, and he framed the path system as a real lever for traffic reduction by getting more people on golf carts and fewer on the roads. He pointed toward future grade-separated crossings as a planning priority that the county should be thinking about now rather than later.

Crane wins this question. He demonstrated familiarity with which entities actually have authority over which segments of road, which is exactly the kind of jurisdictional literacy this question was probing for. Clifton’s answer showed the opposite, since he raised a city-level issue when asked about a county-level plan. Wright was solid in her answer but did not match the specificity Crane offered.

Question 3: Housing Affordability

Letrissa Frieson, Chair of the Fayette Board of Realtors, asked what specific strategies each candidate would support to balance growth with housing affordability for working families, teachers, first responders, and young professionals.

Crane was honest about where he draws the line philosophically. He does not believe it is government’s job to provide affordable or attainable housing directly, but he correctly identified the lever a commissioner does have, which is negotiation during rezoning requests. He gave the example of negotiating tree retention requirements as a way to influence what gets built and at what scale.

Wright made the most policy-substantive case of the three. She cited the roughly 345,000-unit gap statewide identified by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs and made an explicit case for workforce housing that allows teachers, police officers, fire personnel, and seniors to live in the community they serve. Her answer reflected a familiarity with how other counties across Georgia have actually solved the problem through grants, partnerships, and innovative housing programs.

Clifton used his sixty seconds to argue against multifamily housing, high-density housing, and apartments. He proposed competitive wages for public employees as the affordability solution.

This is the second place where the jurisdictional issue matters, and it matters more here than in any other answer Clifton gave all night. Clifton’s promise to oppose high-density housing in Fayette County runs into a basic infrastructure reality. The unincorporated parts of Fayette County, the only parts the County Commission has zoning authority over, do not have a countywide sewer system. Everything is on septic, and septic systems do not support apartment-density development. The county’s own Comprehensive Plan states this clearly. Within the cities, where sewer does exist, zoning decisions are made by city councils rather than the county commission. As Edge Gibbons wrote in his endorsement letter, “Apartments require sewer and cannot be approved in the unincorporated county.” Clifton is promising to enforce a constraint that physical infrastructure already enforces, on land where the County Commission cannot act in the first place, which makes his answer a slogan rather than a policy position.

Wright is the winner of this question. She answered the question with the most depth, the clearest grasp of what workforce housing means, and the most awareness of how it actually gets built. Crane was a strong second for being honest about the role of government and identifying a real mechanism a commissioner can use. Clifton was third because his central promise, stopping apartments in unincorporated Fayette County, addresses something that the infrastructure already prevents and the office he is seeking does not control within the cities.

Question 4: Airport Partnership

Ken Fleming, Chair of the Atlanta Regional Airport at Falcon Field, asked whether the candidates view the county’s relationship with the airport as mutually beneficial, and how that partnership should be strengthened.

Clifton called it a great partnership and noted that Falcon Field is the third busiest airport in the state. He praised its self-sufficiency through jet fuel sales and hangar rentals and said he would work with the authority to increase business growth around the airport. He added a note of caution about not making the airport so busy that residents become uncomfortable with the number and size of flights, which is an understandable concern for a district representative but an unusual emphasis in a question about strengthening the relationship.

Wright spoke to the airport’s role for executives and the broader business community and described what a commissioner’s actual work on this partnership would look like: supporting land management decisions, helping with budgeting, and coordinating with the development authority when opportunities for expansion arise. Her answer treated the airport as a partner that deserves cooperative governance, and it was the most grounded in what the office would actually do on a day-to-day basis.

Crane described the airport as essential to the county’s economic profile and was the only candidate to raise a specific operational concern: the airport has grown busy enough that a control tower is becoming a safety question, and he proposed exploring T-SPLOST funding as a way the county could help. He acknowledged that the county does not fund the airport directly, which makes the proposal more of a constructive idea than a commitment the office can deliver on its own.

Crane wins this exchange, but narrowly. He brought the most specific issue to the table and showed he has thought about how the county could play a supporting role even where it does not have direct authority. Wright was close behind with the most practical answer about what the day-to-day work of this partnership actually looks like. Clifton was third because his answer, while supportive, did not engage with any specific way to strengthen the relationship.

Question 5: Tax Abatement and Small Business

Edward Smith returned with a question about how to support local small businesses, who pay the full tax burden, while large incoming corporations sometimes receive aggressive abatements that make the playing field uneven.

Crane proposed expedited permitting for new businesses, a possible first-year property tax relief mechanism for new local businesses, and a serious investment in vocational and technical education. He was the only candidate to draw the explicit connection between workforce development and small business retention, which is consistent with the vocational and technical school he has been advocating for throughout his campaign. He also brought the personal context of a household in which he, his wife, his father, his brother, and his sister-in-law are all small business owners in town.

Wright made the case that large corporations should be taxed at a level that funds grants and technical assistance for the small businesses that actually anchor the local economy. She acknowledged the high failure rate of small businesses in their first five years and argued that early-stage support, training, and resources are where the public dollar makes the most difference. Her framing treated small business retention as a system that requires both revenue strategy and direct services, which is more sophisticated than most answers a forum like this produces.

Clifton declined the premise of tax abatements philosophically. He argued that abatements pick winners and losers and that boom-and-bust cycles result when ten-year abatements expire and companies leave. His positive prescription was to maintain low millage rates, fiscal discipline, and the existing per-employee occupational tax structure rather than a gross revenue model.

Crane is the winner here. Both he and Wright proposed early-stage tax relief for new small businesses, but Crane went further by connecting that relief to a longer-term workforce development strategy through vocational and technical education, which closes the loop on retention in a way no other answer did. Wright’s broader framing of using corporate revenue to fund small business grants and training was substantive and sophisticated. Clifton’s answer was a coherent philosophy on abatements, but the question asked what he would champion to support and retain small businesses, and his response did not offer a specific tool the office controls.

Question 6: Comprehensive Plan and Rezoning

Maurice Ungaro returned with a question about the role of the Board of Commissioners in rezoning decisions and how those decisions should be weighed against the future land use map and the broader comprehensive plan.

Clifton said variances and rezoning requests should be the exception rather than the rule, and that his long-term vision is to keep Fayette County low-density and suburban.

Wright described comprehensive plans as living documents that need to be revisited as community needs shift, while making clear that zoning requests inconsistent with the plan create real governance problems. Her answer reflected the way someone who has worked inside a planning department thinks about the relationship between long-range vision documents and the specific applications that come before a board.

Crane brought a specific recent example. Over the last several months of County Commission meetings, the rezonings have actually been moving in the direction of lower density, with one and two-acre lots being rezoned to five-acre lots, which decreases rather than increases pressure on infrastructure. He framed the role of the commission as following the citizen-led land use plan and being accountable to the residents who shaped it.

Crane wins this question as well. He demonstrated that he has been watching the actual meetings, and the example he cited is the kind of evidence that signals a candidate has done the work to understand what the office is doing. Wright was a strong second for the most accurate description of how comprehensive plans should function in relation to rezoning. Clifton’s answer was acceptable but generic, and a preference for low density is not by itself a rezoning framework.

Question 7: Housing Diversity

Letrissa Frieson returned with a question about the importance of housing diversity given the difficulty employers report in recruiting workers because of limited housing options at varying price points.

Crane spoke to the lifecycle reality of housing. His first house in Peachtree City was $180,000, and his current home is more expensive. Empty nesters with two people in a 4,000 square foot house may want to downsize, which opens that home for a younger family, which in turn allows a starter home to come back on the market. He acknowledged that the question of how government should facilitate this lifecycle movement is genuinely hard, and that honesty was more useful than a slogan would have been.

Wright made the case that life changes drive housing needs. People change careers, take pay cuts, age into different needs, or face new tax realities, and a community that wants to keep its first responders, teachers, and longtime residents needs housing options across price points. Her example of a safety officer being able to live in the community he or she serves landed because it captured something real about why housing diversity is not a luxury but a function of public safety and community health.

Clifton returned to his anti-high-density theme and argued that the issue is low housing supply, with builders preferring to build large homes on five-acre lots.

Crane and Wright share the win on this one. Both engaged the actual question with humanity and specificity. Crane brought the lifecycle frame and Wright brought the career-and-life-change frame, and they complemented each other well. Clifton used the question as another platform for his core position rather than engaging diversity as the topic, and he continued his pattern of returning to the same handful of slogans regardless of what is being asked.

Question 8: Intergovernmental Collaboration

Ken Fleming closed out the questions with a broad one. What steps would each candidate take to strengthen intergovernmental collaboration in support of economic development and long-term planning?

Clifton said his attorney skills make him good at finding middle ground and listed the surrounding counties he would reach out to, including Coweta, Spalding, Clayton, Henry, and Fulton.

Wright gave what was arguably her strongest answer of the evening. She spoke about relationships, curiosity, and her time inside the Peachtree City Planning Department as the place where she developed her understanding of the intersection of people, policy, and politics. She argued that no single agency can solve the county’s problems alone, which framed cross-agency relationships as an operational necessity rather than a soft skill. Her career path from corporate technology into public planning is itself an act of the kind of cross-sector bridge-building this question was asking about, and she connected that history to the question naturally rather than as a rehearsed talking point.

Crane pointed to a track record. Since his council races, he has spent years building working relationships with local officials and community leaders, including his service on Peachtree City’s SPLOST Citizens Advisory Group and the Fayette County Board of Health. He also raised the structure of the airport authority as worth examining, since the county currently sends ad valorem revenue to the airport without representation on the authority itself.

Wright and Crane share the win on this question. Both candidates demonstrated real foundations for collaborative work rather than simply claiming they could do it. Wright connected her career directly to the cross-agency coordination the question was asking about. Crane pointed to specific bodies he has already served on and a concrete governance question he is already asking. Clifton listed counties he would call, which is a statement of intention rather than evidence of preparation.

What the Closings Revealed

Wright closed first and used her two minutes to emphasize her commitment to serving full-time, attending HOA and community meetings, and remaining in active conversation with constituents between board votes. Her closing was consistent with the rest of her answers. It described what the job requires and how she would approach it, and it kept the focus on the people she would represent.

Clifton closed second and used his two minutes to recap his platform: low-density zoning, fiscal discipline, smart traffic, support for law enforcement and schools, and full transparency. He framed the race as a choice between resident-first leadership and unchecked growth, and he told the audience he is “already delivering results,” a questionable claim for someone who does not currently hold office or a municipal or county volunteer position. The closing was important because it confirmed something the eight questions had already suggested. Even when given the chance to demonstrate engagement with the specifics of county governance, his answer continued to be the campaign brochure. Voters listening for evidence that he understood the office got, instead, a final repetition of the slogans.

Crane closed last and used his time to walk through what he has done since his 2021 race. He named the SPLOST Advisory Group and the Fayette County Board of Health, made the point about working with elected leaders across municipalities and neighboring jurisdictions, and stated plainly that he stands on his own two feet and is accountable to voters rather than to a small group operating behind the scenes. That line was probably the sharpest moment of the evening, and it landed because there is a real difference between a candidate building a platform around demonstrated work and one building a platform around grievance.

Listen for Yourself

While I’ve gone into detail on what happened at the forum, you do not have to take my word on any of this. I recorded the forum and have made the audio available so anyone interested can listen, judge for themselves, and verify what I have written. The forum is part of the public record, and you should feel free to evaluate it directly. 

Click here to listen to the candidate forum.

The Verdict: The Case for Crane Is Clear

Wright is a strong candidate. Her policy and planning background is real, her answers consistently demonstrated the most theoretically sophisticated grasp of how local government operates, and she made a credible case for being able to do the job from day one. The November general election will be a substantive race, and I plan to write about it in more detail when we get there.

The race in front of voters on May 19, however, is the Republican primary between Crane and Clifton, and the gap between them across eight questions and a closing statement was significant. Crane named specific stakeholders, surfaced specific operational issues, pointed to specific recent decisions, and demonstrated specific service on specific bodies. Clifton repeated his slogans, returned to his core platform regardless of what was being asked, and used a forum about county-level governance to campaign on issues like the TDK extension that the office he is seeking does not control.

That last point is the heart of the case against Clifton. His website lists three banner positions: no data centers, no apartments, and no MARTA. Each one of those positions has a problem, and the problems are not small ones.

On data centers, the County Commission does not approve data centers within municipalities, which is where the data centers in Fayette County have actually been approved. Those decisions belong to the city councils where they are proposed. The conspiracy theory Clifton has built his campaign around concerns Peachtree City annexing Coweta County land, which would also be a Peachtree City Council matter. The County Commission does have zoning authority over unincorporated Fayette County, but no data center has been proposed there, and Clifton is not running on opposing one that has.

On apartments, the unincorporated county does not have a countywide sewer system, and septic does not support apartment-density development. The Comprehensive Plan makes that point directly, and any serious candidate should know that. “Stop apartments” as a county commission slogan is a promise to enforce a restriction that the physical landscape already enforces. Within the cities, where apartments could theoretically be built, zoning is a city council decision.

On MARTA, no one is seriously proposing to bring MARTA into Fayette County. There is no active proposal on any agenda anyone is setting. “No MARTA” as a campaign position is an answer to a question nobody is asking. It is on the list because it sounds popular, not because it is on the table.

Two of Clifton’s three banner positions are about outcomes the office cannot deliver, and the third is an answer to a question that does not exist. Slogans like these are designed to sound popular without informing anyone of anything. They depend on voters not knowing how the office works. That is the deeper problem with Clifton’s candidacy. It is not just that his platform is mismatched to the office. It is that the mismatch appears to be the strategy. Tell voters you will stop something that is not happening or that you cannot stop, let the slogan do the work, and never get into the substance of what the seat actually decides.

Crane’s platform stands in clear contrast. Vocational and technical education, a county-wide aquatics facility, infrastructure investment in the county water system, and fiscal discipline are all things a county commissioner has a vote on. He has spent the past five years doing the work it takes to be ready to make those votes, on the SPLOST Advisory Group, on the Fayette County Board of Health, and at County Commission meetings he attends as a citizen rather than as a candidate. He is not a flawless candidate. Wright matched or exceeded his policy depth on housing and intergovernmental collaboration, and his airport tower proposal was a constructive idea that he himself acknowledged sits outside the county’s direct authority. But the difference between Crane and Clifton is not about polish. It is about whether a candidate has bothered to learn what the office does before asking voters to put him in it.

Edge Gibbons, the retiring commissioner whose seat is being filled, made the same case in his April 29 endorsement letter. Gibbons wrote that he has personally seen Crane at countless County Commission meetings, and he stated directly that he has not seen Clifton at any of them.

The case for Crane is clear. He is the better-prepared candidate by a wide margin, his platform is built around things the office actually decides, and his record of engagement is something he can point to rather than something he claims.

He is the right choice for District 3.

Where and When to Vote

Election Day is Tuesday, May 19, with polls open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Any voter in line before 7:00 p.m. will be allowed to vote. 

Early voting continues across Fayette County through the end of this week:

• Monday, May 11 through Friday, May 15

Early voting locations and hours:

• Fayette County Elections Office at 175 Johnson Avenue, Fayetteville, GA 30214: Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• Peachtree City Library at 201 Willow Bend Road, Peachtree City, GA 30269: Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• Tyrone Town Hall at 950 Senoia Road, Tyrone, GA 30290: Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• Fayetteville Library at 1821 Heritage Parkway, Fayetteville, GA 30214: Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.