Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state representative and outspoken progressive, is taking an affordability agenda to the Peach State in her bid for governor. Romman, who rose to national prominence during the 2024 Democratic National Convention, told Salon that she believes a Democrat can flip the governor’s office with a focus on expanding Medicaid, raising the minimum wage and cracking down on corporate landlords.
In an interview with Salon, Romman said that Georgia is ready for change, citing reporting from Moody’s Analytics’ Mark Zandi that 22 states, Georgia among them, are already in a recession. This is partially due to policies instituted by the Trump administration, such as tariffs and federal job cuts.
However, Romman added, other economic problems in the state are the result of decades of Republican governance. For example, Georgia’s minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 per hour since 1999, making it one of just two states with a lower minimum wage than the federal rate of $7.25 per hour, though it generally defaults to the higher rate.
“My pitch to voters is that we’re running for a Georgia that we can afford and where we belong, and we want to raise the minimum wage, reopen hospitals, invest in small businesses, feed hungry kids and take homes back from corporations,” Romman said.
She said that she arrived at this agenda through a decade-plus organizing experience and through listening to everyday Georgians in one-on-one conversations. Recently, those conversations have been happening via her volunteer canvassing effort, which launched on Oct. 25 and has already seen about 1,000 sign-ups. Six months out from the Democratic primary in May, her campaign is already canvassing in Atlanta, Athens, Savannah and Norcross.
“People keep trying to fit a square peg in a circular hole, and it’s just not working. We keep forgetting that the world is different.”
Romman’s campaign has been buoyed by the recent Democratic wins in races for the state Public Service Commission, which regulates major utilities in Georgia, including Georgia Power, a utility company that, along with Republicans on the commission, has come under scrutiny due to new datacenter construction that threatens to drive up electric bills in the state.
Acknowledging the comparatively low turnout in the election, Romman said that these elections were validating for her theory that people can be driven to turn out in the state if politicians are able to clearly delineate how they plan to address pressing material issues in the state.
“I want to be clear. People keep saying it’s about ‘affordability.’ It’s ‘What are you going to do about affordability?’” Romman said. “Because if all you say is the word affordability six times, I don’t know what that offers to people, but if you’re able to say ‘Here’s why your prices are going up and here’s what I’m going to do about it,’ that goes a really long way, but that requires some courage in naming who the culprits are.”
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Part of what sets her apart from some of her opponents, like Kiesha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, and Geoff Duncan, the former Republican lieutenant governor, is her refusal to accept donations from corporations or special interests.
Romman added that Democrats in Georgia can’t afford to put up a centrist Democrat or former Republican for governor in the state because “We tried it last year, and we lost.”
“We worked really hard to attract Trump voters, and ultimately lost our own people,” Romman said. “If this were the old way of politics, I could understand the wisdom of that thinking. But people keep trying to fit a square peg in a circular hole, and it’s just not working. We keep forgetting that the world is different.”
She went on to underscore the importance of winning the governor’s race in 2026, not just to deliver economic change for Georgia residents, but also because of the power the governor has to defend their constituents from President Donald Trump’s increasingly authoritarian immigration crackdowns and the security of the 2028 presidential election.
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In the interview, Romman, the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia state House and first Palestinian elected to any office in Georgia, also addressed last year’s DNC, in which Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign refused to give a Palestinian American, as a representative of the Uncommitted campaign, a speaking slot. Romman, who was one of the proposed speakers and who voted for Harris in 2024, said that many Democrats in elected office have yet to reckon with the fact that Harris’s position in support of Israel was a liability with Democratic voters in the 2024 election. And that the issue, while not a top concern for some voters, is seen as a litmus test by many.
“But if you look at polling and you ask people, what are their top five issues, this issue does not come up. It’s usually not ranked in their top five. It’s not a priority issue. But here’s the thing, when you have conversations with voters, they will tell you things like, ‘if you can’t be honest about what we saw with our own eyes, how can I expect you to have my back?’” Romman said. “Specifically, if you see children being bombed and dismembered and you can’t be honest about that, how can I trust you to have my back when it comes to negotiating on my behalf, against special interests, against PACs, against these sorts of big forces in our ecosystem?”
