ATLANTA (AP) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Democratic Georgia prosecutor who filed charges against former President Donald Trump over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, is facing a rare Republican challenger in her effort to re-election in the state's most populous county.
Courtney Kramer, a lawyer who interned in the White House counsel's office under Trump, said she wants to bring transparency and accountability to the office. But Willis, who easily fended off a challenge from the left during the Democratic primary in May, told The Associated Press she is confident she will win.
“She's going to lose and she's going to lose badly,” Willis said of Kramer. Willis said voters should give her four more years because of her record, which includes a pre-indictment diversion program she started and a program in schools to encourage students to choose alternatives to gangs and crime, as well as reducing the number murders and the backlog of unindicted cases.
Fulton County, home to about 11% of the state's electorate, is a Democratic stronghold where no Republican has run for district attorney since 2000. Willis has raised $2.1 million, compared to Kramer's $278,000, and is heavily favored to win.
Kramer, 31, who grew up in Fulton County and knows the political landscape, has visited Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, posted photos of himself with a “who's who” of MAGA personalities on Instagram and claims that many of the The former president's closest allies are in Georgia as friends. But she says that shouldn't stop anyone — even Democrats — from voting for her.
Her mantra for the campaign was: “It's not about right versus left, it's about right versus wrong.”
Willis, 53, became district attorney in January 2021 and rose to national prominence a month later when she announced she was investigating whether Trump and others broke laws while trying to overturn his narrow loss in the state's 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. In August 2023, she received a major racketeering indictment against Trump and eighteen others.
She spent 17 years at the office she now heads under her predecessor, Paul Howard, and subsequently worked as a magistrate judge and as a lawyer. She defeated Howard in a bitter 2020 Democratic primary fight.
She would like to serve three terms as a prosecutor and then teach at her undergraduate alma mater, Howard University in Washington, she told the AP. She created a domestic violence prosecution unit and said if elected to a second term, she plans to focus on creating more provincial resources for victims of these crimes.
The Trump case has won her fans among Democrats across the country while also making her a target of the former president and his allies. She is criticized by friends and enemies alike for her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired to lead the case. The presiding judge reprimanded her for a “huge error of judgement.” A preliminary investigation against the judge's ruling, which allowed her to proceed with the prosecution, effectively halted it, frustrating some Democrats who had hoped the case against the Republican nominee for president would go to trial before the general election .
Kramer said when she entered the race for district attorney in March that the charges against Trump prompted her to run for office, and accused Willis of pursuing the case for personal political gain. While some have speculated that Kramer wants to dismiss that case, she said she would recuse herself if elected because she served in the Trump White House and worked with two of the others charged, attorney Ray Smith and former GOP chairman David Shafer.
Some progressive Democrats and advocates chafe at Willis' tough-on-crime approach, saying she overuses gang and racketeering laws, unnecessarily complicating cases to get stiffer sentences. A high-profile example is the prosecution of rapper Young Thug, among others. The prosecution's case has dragged on for almost a year, with dozens of witnesses yet to be called, and the judge recently suggested the prosecution engaged in “very bad lawyering practices.”
Kramer said she would dismiss the case, arguing it has been poorly managed and is a waste of resources.
Willis, known for his resistance to threats and fiery responses to opponents, declined to discuss specific cases but rejected Kramer's criticism, calling her opponent ignorant and “completely unqualified.”
“She's never tried a case. She never practiced criminal law,” Willis said. “All she is is a right-wing politician trying to pursue right-wing politics.”
Kramer has been extremely active in Republican political organizations. She became a lawyer in December 2020 and assisted in an election challenge filed by Trump. She said her law practice has focused on civil litigation in recent years.
She acknowledged her lack of prosecutorial or management experience and said she has good decision-making and leadership skills. She said she would be transparent about the office's finances and work to process cases quickly. When asked several times about specific policies or goals, she said she had to wait until she came to power before she could make those decisions.
Kramer, like many others, criticized Willis for crowding at Fulton County's main jail, saying people have languished there while their cases remain uncharged and that violent crime has increased under Willis' watch.
But since Willis came to power, violent crimes have largely declined in the largest city within her jurisdiction. There were 157 homicides in Atlanta in 2020 and 135 last year, and according to police data, the numbers this year are down 13% from a year ago. The number of robberies and serious assaults has also fallen, and the number of rapes has steadily declined, but has increased this year.
Fulton County's main jail continues to be plagued by problems, but overcrowding in the county system has improved. Three days before Trump was indicted, there were 3,571 people in custody and 1,683, or 47%, had not been charged. As of Friday, there were 2,584 people in custody, of which 638, or 25%, had not yet been charged.
