Newsource reporters gathered information on each candidate in Northeast Georgia to prepare local voters for the midterm elections in this 2026 Election Guide.
Marc McMain
Office Sought: Georgia Senate, District 46
Party: Republican
Occupation: Owner of Town Values magazine, real estate agent
Years in Community: Lifelong resident
Candidate’s Election Priorities
Law enforcement, education, taxes, universal school choice, freezing property taxes, and reducing or eliminating Georgia’s state income tax
More Info for Voters
Website: marcforgeorgia.com | Social Media: @marcmcmain (Instagram)
Candidate FAQs
Q: Why are you running?
“Let’s break it down to the four pillars of my campaign,” McMain said in an interview. “I want to be a strong advocate for law enforcement. I believe we have a mental health crisis in our state, manifesting in the form of homelessness. It’s far more complicated than that, but that’s kind of a quick summary. Lowering our taxes because the average Georgian is just getting hammered right now. And also improving education and the school system.”
Q: What experiences have prepared you for this office?
“I think being self-employed for the past 30 years … raising a family, starting a business, going through the trials and tribulations of life, I think that prepares you to understand what the average Georgian is going through,” McMain said in an interview.
Q: What are the most important issues facing the state of Georgia and what would you do to address them?
McMain said he cares deeply about Georgia law enforcement, and said he wants to make sure local Georgians aren’t getting hammered by taxes and are able to afford the cost of living in Georgia. He also said he wants to make sure the younger generation has access to public education and also mental health resources.
“I’m also a strong advocate for addressing not just the educational side of our public school system, but the physical education side right now,” McMain said in an interview. “Adolescent diabetes and childhood obesity are through the roof, and so I think we can do more at a school level to improve diet and increase exercise output. That’ll help kids because I tell people, what good is it if we are smart but are not healthy?”
Q: What is one accomplishment you hope to achieve during your office if elected?
“I would love to give the help to our sheriffs that they’re asking for in making their job easier,” McMain said. “So if we call it an accomplishment, it is giving the sheriffs the tools they need to recruit and retain their law enforcement officers. That would be my big accomplishment.”
Q: What is one thing you want voters to know about you? What is your message to younger voters, such as UGA students?
“I understand being a young person,” McMain said. “I was broke as a teenager. I’ve experienced decent success in my life. I’ve been blessed, it all comes from hard work. I’ve been on both sides of the equation where you’re struggling. I’ve struggled. I’ve been in their shoes and I want to do everything I can to clear the path so that they have the same opportunities for the American dream that I had.”
Ray Smith
Office Sought: Georgia Senate, District 46
Party: Democratic
Occupation: Co-founder, Community Works Oconee
Years in Community: 15 years
Candidate’s Election Priorities
Housing, utilities/energy, healthcare, affordability, limiting corporate ownership, expanding solar energy and expanding medicare
More Info for Voters
Website: voteraysmith.com | Social Media: @voteraysmith (Instagram)
Candidate FAQs
Q: Why are you running?
“It all started a few years ago,” Smith said in an interview. “I have a 2.5-year-old son, and when he was born, it put the future in a new perspective. I was looking around and seeing how the world was going, and it was not going the way I wanted. I found myself in a position where I could run, and I decided to take the chance to try to make life a little better for the people in Georgia.”
Q: What experiences have prepared you for this office?
“I’m involved with Indivisible Georgia, district 10,” Smith said in an interview. “I helped co-found a nonprofit called Community Works Oconee. I’m on the steering committee for the Unitarian Universalist Georgia Legislative Action Network. I’ve engaged with the legislature quite a bit over the last two years, advocating for different policy priorities. I’m also a software engineer. I have a lot of expertise with AI and data centers becoming more important in our lives.”
Q: What are the most important issues facing the state of Georgia and what would you do to address them?
“Affordability, in general,” Smith said. “Everything is too expensive right now. This includes housing, healthcare, childcare, grocery bills and utilities. Everything is too expensive, and we can address that at the state level.”
Smith said some solutions would be incentivizing building more affordable housing, expanding Medicaid to make health insurance more available and encouraging doctors and nurses to move into rural communities to improve healthcare access. Smith also said that he believes a nonpartisan redistricting committee could fix Georgia’s electoral system.
“Gerrymandering is a real problem in Georgia,” Smith said. “My district is extremely gerrymandered. Democrats have a really good shot of making significant gains in the state house and senate. I think the impulse to gerrymander to make Georgia as blue as possible is a mistake.”
Q: What is one accomplishment you hope to achieve during your office if elected?
“I think we can pass universal childcare, a nonpartisan redistricting committee and expanded Medicaid,” Smith said. “I have a long list of things I would like to do, and policies I’d like to work on. Those are the ones I feel we have a good chance of getting done and would either fix something long-term or immediately help struggling people.”
Q: What is one thing you want voters to know about you? What is your message to younger voters, such as UGA students?
“I’m 34 years old,” Smith said in an interview. “If elected, I would be the youngest state senator in the chamber. Not the youngest ever, but the youngest in the chamber. The bottom line is that I care about my community, my family and the future of Georgia. I’m running so that the people who clearly don’t care about us will not be in office anymore.”
