Candidate on ballot for Georgia appeals court accused of living in Tennessee

An attorney vying for election as a Georgia Court of Appeals judge is fighting a challenge to his candidacy that accuses him of living with his wife at her Chattanooga home overlooking the Tennessee River.

Jeff Davis appeared before a judge in Atlanta on Tuesday in an attempt to prove that he’s been a Peach State resident since 1988. He said he “spends a lot of time” with his wife in Chattanooga, but that his “legal residence” is in Georgia and has been for 36 years.

That he prefers to buy his groceries at a Publix in Chattanooga, is a member of the Chattanooga Golf and Country Club, and until recently had a Chattanooga gym membership doesn’t make him a Tennessee resident, Davis said.

Davis’ eligibility to run in this month’s election is being challenged by Augusta attorney Randolph Frails. If Frails succeeds in his bid to oust Davis from the race, the appeals court seat will go to attorney Tabitha Ponder, a part-time Cobb County magistrate judge who is the only other candidate.

Early voting began on Monday for the May 21 nonpartisan election to replace Judge Yvette Miller, who is retiring.

Davis’ complicated residential history was probed for almost nine hours during Tuesday’s hearing. Davis, a former director of the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission, must be a Georgia citizen to serve on the court.

When qualifying in March, Davis listed his address as an apartment on M.L.K. Jr Dr in Atlanta and swore that he’d been a legal resident of Fulton County for one consecutive year and of Georgia for 36 consecutive years. He said Tuesday that he’d since bought a home in Rossville, just south of the Tennessee border, where he now lives.

Davis, 60, said his wife, Mary Beth Conklin, will continue to live at her home in Chattanooga, where one of her sons attends high school. The couple wed in November after getting engaged in May 2023.

Frails’ attorney, Julie Oinonen, said Davis has primarily lived outside Georgia since 2019, in North Carolina and Tennessee. She said the Georgia homes he claimed to live in during that time were either occupied by his two adult sons or rented out as vacation properties.

Davis’ claim that he lived from August through April with his sons, ages 28 and 23, in a two-bedroom unit at the Platform Grant Park Apartments in Atlanta is “preposterous,” Oinonen said. She said Davis didn’t have an apartment key, mailbox key or access card for the complex until his residency was challenged, though his name has been on the lease since March 2023.

“It’s not enough for Jeff Davis to say ‘I had my name on my kids’ lease agreement,’” Oinonen said. “Lip service does not cut it.”

Davis said he regularly stayed at the apartment. He said he would sleep in one of the two beds while one of his sons either slept on a sofa or at their mother’s home.

Between October 2022 and August 2023, Davis owned a house in Flintstone, close to Tennessee. He rented the property as a vacation home for a total of 160 nights and said he regularly stayed there when it wasn’t booked by guests.

Davis said he needed the rental income while caring for his sister in Chattanooga, after her husband’s tragic death. Though he spent a “significant” part of 2022 and 2023 at his sister’s and wife’s homes in Chattanooga, he never intended to live there, Davis said.

Frails claimed to have received Davis’ cellphone location data from Verizon. He alleged that it indicates Davis spent no more than 20 nights in Atlanta and visited the Flintstone address five times at most in the year before he qualified for election.

Davis said his intent to reside in Georgia is what matters, not the number of days or nights he spent at a particular location.

When leasing the Atlanta apartment in March 2023, Davis listed his address from 2019 to 2022 as being in North Carolina. Davis said he owned a house in North Carolina during that time but didn’t live there. He claimed he lived in part with his sons at a rented home on Montgomery Ferry Drive in Atlanta and with a girlfriend in nearby Ansley Park.

Bryan Tyson, Davis’ attorney, said the fact that Davis temporarily stayed out of state did not void his Georgia residency. Tyson said that since 1988, Davis has exclusively paid taxes, voted and registered his car in Georgia. Davis is only licensed to practice law in Georgia and doesn’t have the necessary documents to establish residency in Tennessee even if he wanted to, Tyson said.

He said Frails’ challenge “has been a cloud over Mr. Davis’ campaign,” and that voters should get to decide the election.

Judge Stephanie Howells said she’d decide “as soon as possible” whether to uphold Davis’ candidacy. Her decision will go to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has the final say.

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