Until the 2024 election cycle, none of AJA High School’s Toco Hills families resided in Georgia State House District 86, which includes neighborhoods such as Clarkston and parts of Decatur. Now, half of the heavily Jewish Toco Hills community lives in this district, too.
The revised 86th district, signed by Governor Kemp in December 2023, includes parts of North Druid Hills with streets such as Empire, Houston Mill, and half of Biltmore. It is represented by incumbent Democratic Rep. Imani Barnes, who’s opposing Republican candidate, Dr. Barry Zisholtz (or Dr. Z, as he is widely called), is running to support the interests of the Jewish constituency new to the district.
The diverse makeup of District 86 poses a challenge for both candidates to reach its various constituencies.
According to Rep. Barnes, networking is the key to staying in tune with the needs of the whole district. She focuses on “staying involved with local stakeholders who understand the subject and the issue more than I do.” Rep. Barnes said she’s particularly “strong when it comes to fighting for our youth” and has engaged in conversations with students, parents, school boards, and security officers to draft policy. Another major constituency she represents is the refugee community in Clarkston, where she’s hosted meet and greets with constituents. As a woman of color and member of the LGBTQ community, Rep. Barnes has “a passion for helping [her] community,” regardless of “what race or culture you are.”
With the reshaping of her district, Rep. Barnes said she is prepared to represent Toco Hills now, too. She grew up in the area and looks forward to “understanding the specific issues” of that community in her next term.
As an Orthodox Jew and member of the Toco Hills Jewish community, one of Dr. Zisholtz’ main priorities is standing up against antisemitism and representing the Jewish constituents of District 86. “With all that is going on on college campuses and in Israel, the least I can do is stand up for the Jewish people,” he said. Growing up attending frequent protests in New York to support Soviet Jewry, Dr. Z learned to fight against hatred, and he now plans to support Jewish students on college campuses if elected, particularly at local Emory University.
Dr. Z works to meet members of his district outside of the Jewish community; he and his team have knocked on 11,000 doors so far. Dr. Z plans to host town halls in the district’s various neighborhoods if elected, including “the immigrant community of Clarkston, the black community of Memorial or Woodridge, or the Jewish community on Lavista Road.” He acknowledged the support he has received from throughout the district to help canvas, and he hopes to impart a belief “that we can be more unified if we work together as a community… to not allow all of this hatred to fester.”
Local Policy Issues
While Rep. Barnes and Dr. Z both place importance on their constituencies’ interests, they differ in their focus in addressing those needs.
During her term, Rep. Barnes’ predominantly focused on the safety and needs of students, especially those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. In particular, she secured “$12.6 million to help get lunch for students” in public schools, “whose parents can’t afford for them to eat lunch and breakfast.” Though a bill she developed to provide breakfast and lunch for all Georgia public school students was not passed (HB510), she plans to continue her fight for school meal programs and other student interests. Specifically, Rep. Barnes is set on ensuring students safety through her Safe Teens Act (HB914), an initiative that would return drivers ed classes to high schools, giving “more teenagers practice behind the wheel before they get their driver’s license” without placing a large financial burden on their parents, and legislation she drafted last year creating “silent alarms” in schools that would alert students of an emergency without tipping off an intruder.
In contrast to Rep. Barnes’ legislation, Dr. Z’s approach to educational legislation centers around his “favor of school choice” and the voucher program. The program would give students who qualify the equivalent of approximately $6,500 in the form of a voucher to apply to a charter or private school tuition. Dr. Zisholtz believes that the program is a “really good option for kids” who qualify by living in a “failing school district” with parents that make under $120,000 a year. Despite allegations that school vouchers would divert funds away from public schools, Dr. Z believes that the vouchers would give students from lower and middle class backgrounds an opportunity to access quality education outside of the worsening public schools. He pointed to the success of states like Florida and Arkansas, in which “everybody gets a voucher.”
As professionals in the medical sphere, both Dr. Z, a retired surgeon with 36 years of experience, and Rep. Imani Barnes, a scientist with a nearly completed PhD in public health, share perspectives on healthcare. In particular, the two believe that Medicaid should be expanded. According to Dr. Z, hospitals are “going out of business because people are going to emergency rooms without any insurance,” and the hospitals cannot “absorb all of these costs” required to help everyone that walks in the door. To address this issue, Dr. Z plans to “fight with the insurance companies to lower their premium and deductibles” on a local level. In her time in office, Rep. Barnes has been fighting a similar battle, attempting to expand Medicaid to make healthcare more affordable for financially disadvantaged communities.
While the vote to expand Medicaid did not go in Rep. Barnes’ favor so far, her plans for healthcare do not stop there. Throughout her time in office, Rep. Barnes fought and plans to continue to fight for mental health legislation. She developed the Georgia Empath Act (HB913) to “put psychiatric mental health units in our hospitals” and “fastrack” people in an active mental health crisis “straight to that unit instead of going through the emergency room process.” In the future, Rep. Barnes plans on stationing community officers and placing mental health professionals in police cars to help in the event that a person in custody is having a mental health crisis.
With the understanding that Medicaid should be expanded since so many of the district’s residents are hardly in a financial position to afford healthcare, the two candidates are also concerned over increasing housing prices and intend to focus on affordable housing legislation options. Dr. Z finds that financially-struggling families are “suffering” because they are forced to “choos[e] between medications, food, health insurance, and paying their rent” since they “don’t have the funds to cover all those expenses.” Rep. Barnes also sees that residents are burdened with the inflated cost of living associated with a lack of affordable housing and wants to continue to fight for increased support for housing assistance and “removing roadblocks for our health and well-being.”
Candidates’ Stances on Israel and Antisemitism
Barnes and Zisholtz agree that Israel’s war with Hamas and surrounding military threats is of national importance, with less relevance in the Georgia State House. Both told Palette that they view antisemitism as a hate crime. They differ, however, in their positions on recent Israel and antisemitism related legislation.
In December 2023, Rep. Barnes abstained from voting on House Resolution 4EX, which condemned Hamas terrorism and expressed support for the Jewish people. In March 2023, she voted against House Bill 30, which adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism into Georgia state law, and she abstained from a subsequent vote on the bill in January 2024 after it passed through the Senate.
For Dr. Z, a major “catalyst” for his campaign was Rep. Barnes’ voting practices on these pieces of legislation. He sees these votes as evidence of lack of support for the interests of the Jewish community from Rep. Barnes.
According to Rep. Barnes, however, her nonvoting on these bills is not a reflection of her beliefs towards the Jewish people or the State of Israel. She said that it is “overly simplistic” to “define [her] stance on Israel as a whole and [her] relationship with the Jewish community off of these two votes.”
Regarding the antisemitism bill, Rep. Barnes explained, “Georgia already has a comprehensive hate crime law, and it covers… all religions, all people without bias. ” With antisemitisms’ inclusion in religious hate crimes, Rep. Barnes felt that a separate law defining antisemitism would “create problems for other cultures and individuals within our state,” who would question “why the Jewish community got specific hate crime legislation and [their] community didn’t.”
Dr. Z, on the other hand, said he supports the antisemitism bill, which was signed into law on January 21, because it creates stronger legal punishments for antisemitic hate crimes that would not otherwise be classified as such.
Using IHRA’s definition clarifies what counts as antisemitic activity when prosecutors deal with hate crime motivated by religion, according to Rep. Esther Panitch of District 51, one of the bill’s sponsors. Research by the Antisemitism Research Center and the Combat Antisemitism Movement published this year shows that college campuses in states that have adopted the IHRA definition have lower rates of antisemitism, pointing to the potential for HB30’s impact on the state level.
Regarding House Resolution 4EX, Rep. Barnes clarified, “I definitely condemn Hamas, but I did not feel that the state should be tackling this issue.” She added that she needed “more information and education” at the time of the resolution’s vote but that she sees the October 7th terror attacks and the subsequent war as “a national issue,” one “we needed to handle as a nation and not just Georgia as a state.”
Dr. Z agrees that government actions pertaining to Israel and Gaza are federal in nature. Still, his campaign website platform includes “calling all terrorists, including Hamas, pure evil in no uncertain terms.”
Rep. Barnes hopes to engage in conversations and discuss ways “we can address [Israel] from a state level that makes an impact.” She said, “we have to sit down and talk,” because “I don’t know if these legislations will actually help… our immediate community.”
This story was originallly published in Atlanta Jewish Academy’s Palette on Nov. 5, 2024.
