7 min read
Fulton County has a new leader, and she arrived with a mandate and a work list.
Moraima “Mo” Ivory won the race for chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners on November 3.
She took 75 percent of the vote against Republican Eric Tatum and was never in danger on election night.
The win makes her the first Black woman and the first Latina elected to lead the board.
It also puts a Black woman in charge of the most populous county in Georgia.
Major Takeaways
Mo Ivory won the Fulton County chair race with 75 percent of the vote.
She is the first Black woman and first Latina elected chair of the county board.
Her agenda leads with the county budget, the crowded Rice Street jail, and funding for the courts.
She also backs a new hospital in South Fulton and a forensic audit of county spending.
Mo Ivory, chairwoman elect of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. Photo via the Ivory campaign.
Fulton County Voters Demanded New Leadership
Ivory had to clear a hard fight inside her own party before she ever faced Tatum.
She defeated longtime incumbent Robb Pitts, ending his long run in the chair seat.
By November, the question in Fulton County was not whether change would come, but how big it would be.
“The residents in Fulton County have made their voices heard loud and clear, that they want new leadership in Fulton County,” Ivory said.
She does not arrive alone at the Government Center in January.
Democrats will hold six of the seven seats on the commission.
New members Maggie Goldman, Jodi Merriday, Rohit Malhotra and Helen Willis join the board with her.
Malhotra takes the District 4 seat Ivory gave up, and he will be sworn in within days.
The rest of the new board takes office in January.
Ivory has already invited the lone Republican on the board to work with the majority on community needs.
She has also promised to restore decorum to public meetings after years of combative arguments at the rail.
“It means innovation,” she said of the new era. “It means transparency, accountability, and a new Fulton forward.”
A Lawyer, a Professor and a Delta
Ivory brings an unusual mix of careers into the chair seat.
Her path ran through broadcasting, law and education before it reached county government.
She is an attorney and a law professor at Georgia State University.
There she directs the Center for Entertainment, Sports and Intellectual Property Law.
Voters first sent her to the board from District 4, and she has served there since January 2025.
She is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated for 35 years.
She pledged at Spelman College in the spring of 1990.
That sisterhood is part of the organizing tradition we traced in our Divine Nine report on the midterm wave.
“I am going to be the first African American, Latina, female chair, who is a lawyer,” Ivory said.
“And that means something to me, and I am going to read and I am going to research and I am going to be all in it.”
Commissioner Mo Ivory inside the Fulton County commission chamber. Photo via The Porch Press.
The Jail and the Courts Come First in Fulton County
Ask Ivory where her term starts, and she gives a straight answer.
“My top priority as soon as I come in in January will be to pass a budget,” she said.
“And then after that, it will remain the things that I mentioned in my campaign, which is to fix the jail, fund the courts, and build a hospital in South Fulton.”
The jail she means is the Rice Street jail, long plagued by overcrowding and poor conditions.
County plans for a new jail shifted after the county moved to acquire the Atlanta City Detention Center.
Ivory notes that she was the only commissioner who did not vote for the earlier new jail plan.
She wants the board to weigh whether that plan still makes sense before another dollar follows it.
Her logic ties the jail to the courts in one sentence.
“If you cannot move cases through the courts, then you are always going to have people crowded in the jail,” she said.
For Black families in Fulton County, that is not an abstract point about government process.
People sit in that jail waiting on court dates, and every delay lands on a family, a job and a household.
A Hospital for South Fulton and an Audit of the Books
Health care sits near the top of her list, and South Fulton sits at the center of that fight.
Ivory points to Grady South, a planned new hospital in Union City, as a chance to close a medical gap.
South Fulton residents have long traveled far from home for routine and emergency care.
“We need to have a corridor of healthcare between the two Grady hospitals,” she said.
She also wants a hard look at the county books in her first 100 days.
Her plans include examining county spending, procurement and operations, possibly with a forensic budget audit.
“I do not think that you can move forward until you know where you are,” she said.
She believes unused money inside the current budget can help pay for the jail and court fixes.
“Yeah I do,” she said when asked if that money exists. “People are hurting.”
Housing rounds out the agenda, with stronger affordable housing partnerships across the 15 cities of Fulton County.
She has also named protecting local elections as a goal for the new commission.
The Fulton County Government Center in downtown Atlanta. Photo by Warren LeMay via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
Black Women Now Lead the Big Counties of Metro Atlanta
Ivory joins a circle of Black women who already run county governments across metro Atlanta.
Lisa Cupid leads Cobb County, and Carlotta Harrell leads Henry County.
Nicole Hendrickson leads Gwinnett County, the most racially diverse county in Georgia.
Alieka Anderson Henry leads Clayton County, and Lorraine Cochran Johnson leads DeKalb County.
A decade ago, none of these counties had ever elected a Black woman as chair.
Now Black women lead six of the big county governments that ring and hold Atlanta.
The women lean on each other as they govern, trading calls and advice across county lines.
Harrell brings 20 years in law enforcement and parents who were civil rights freedom fighters.
Hendrickson has said voters in 2020 were craving leadership with compassion and commitment to community.
Ivory said the pattern plainly on election night, celebrating the statewide wins led by Governor elect Keisha Lance Bottoms.
“Black women have taken over the reins in Georgia,” she said.
Our Atlanta edition will keep tracking what this leadership means for the city and its suburbs.
The Work Starts in January
Ivory knows a historic first buys her a headline, not a pass.
She asked voters to judge her administration by tangible results.
“I want them to see the problems that have been plaguing the county being taken care of,” she said.
At her election night gathering, her daughter Janie praised the choice behind the win.
“She could have been anything else, and she is choosing to be a public servant,” Janie Ivory said. “That is a testament to her character.”
The tests come fast: a budget, a jail decision, court funding and a hospital fight.
County government is where Black Atlanta meets the state most directly, in the jail, the courts, the clinics and the ballot box.
Ivory closed her first interview with a promise about who that government belongs to.
“I want them to know that their county is open to them, and that we give a Fulton about you,” she said.
Follow the governing chapter of this historic season at Urban City Podcast.
