05/22/2026
Congratulations to Dr. Jasmine Clark on winning the Democratic primary for Georgia's 13th Congressional District yesterday! She is now poised to become the first Black PhD scientist ever elected to Congress.
Dr. Clark, a PhD microbiologist, Emory University professor, and four-term state representative from Lilburn, won the race outright, without a runoff. She is now the heavy favorite to win in November in the deep-blue district east of Atlanta. "Whenever you're the first," she said Monday, "it's almost like you become representative of what that will be. And so I do not take that lightly."
In 2017, the year after Donald Trump's first election, Dr. Clark decided she'd had enough. "These are not normal times," she said when she announced her congressional run, "and I cannot sit back and watch my community come under attack while our leaders in Washington fail to show up." She ran for the Georgia House in 2018, flipped a seat Republicans had held for more than two decades, and has defended it through four elections and three rounds of Republican-drawn redistricting.
She has spent eight years doing something almost no one else in the Georgia statehouse could do -- bringing a working scientist's eye to legislation on public health, education, and voting rights. When Governor Kemp's office manipulated COVID data during the pandemic, she called it publicly. "When Kemp and Georgia Republicans distorted facts and manipulated data to push their radical agendas," she said, "I exposed the truth."
Dr. Clark entered the race last year by challenging longtime incumbent David Scott, who had represented the 13th for more than two decades despite growing concerns from fellow Democrats about his health and fitness for office. Scott had filed to run for yet another term. He died in April at the age of 80 -- one of several House Democrats to die in office in recent years, accelerating an urgent conversation inside the party about age and succession.
"I think the call for generational change is basically a call for lack of stagnation and making sure that we're moving forward as a country," Clark said. "We have to be intentional about making sure that the institutional knowledge doesn't leave with us."
In Congress, Clark has said she intends to fight to protect Medicare, codify reproductive privacy rights, and defend federal research funding -- particularly for prostate cancer and triple-negative breast cancer, which hit Black patients at higher rates and in more aggressive forms. The Trump administration has slashed public health funding and medical research across the board, and the cuts have landed especially hard in Atlanta, home to both Emory and the CDC.
"Looking at our public health system," she said, "it's an absolute mess in a way I couldn't have even imagined it could get." She knows what defunding that research means at the ground level. "There are people in this district that will get the scariest diagnosis they will ever get in their life," she said. "And they're going to want to know what is out there that can prolong my life or save my life. And that stuff comes from research."
"It's just a perspective that's not in the room right now," she said. "I'm not saying people aren't fighting for these things -- but they're not fighting for them from the perspective I'm fighting for them. Having a PhD in microbiology. Having that science lens."
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To learn more about Dr. Clark and her campaign, visit https://www.jasmine4ga.com/
For women considering running for office at any level, there are several organizations that can help including Emerge America (https://emergeamerica.org), Vote Run Lead (https://voterunlead.org/), and She Should Run (https://www.sheshouldrun.org)
For books to teach kids about the importance of voting and how elections work, visit our blog post "Mighty Girls Get Out the Vote" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=31606
To introduce children to trailblazing female political leaders in the U.S. -- both historically and in modern times -- visit our blog post, “Remember the Ladies: 25 Children's Books on Women in Politics” at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=11162
For books for children and teens about the importance of standing up for truth, decency, and justice, even in dark times, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364
And for our favorite t-shirt honoring women throughout history who were willing to shake up the system, check out the "Well behaved women seldom make history" t-shirt -- available in a variety of styles and colors for all ages -- at https://www.amightygirl.com/well-behaved-women-history-shirt
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