More than two-thirds of contributions of $500 or more that went to Fitz Johnson, the Republican candidate for Georgia Public Service Commission District 3, came from people and entities tied to the companies the Commission regulates, according to an Energy and Policy Institute review of campaign finance data. 

Josh Tolbert, the Republican candidate in District 5, received 39 percent of his contributions above $500 from people associated with regulated interests, and almost all of it came from a single Alabama family that owns a coal company, the Drummonds. Democrat Peter Hubbard, the District 3 incumbent, received 2.7 percent of his contributions above $500 from people associated with regulated companies. Shelia Edwards, the District 5 Democrat, reported none.

The contribution data continues a pattern that has held for several election cycles in Georgia, in which some candidates, particularly Republicans, have received the bulk of their support from people and entities who have business ties to regulated entities.

Hubbard faces off against Johnson in a rematch of the 2025 election in which Hubbard, who ran on a platform of utility accountability, won by almost 26 points.

PSC contributions excluding loans, 1/1/25 – 7/31/26

Candidate	Total contributions	Total contributions $500+	% of total from contributions $500+	$500+ contributions from donors associated with regulated entities	% of $500+ contributions from donors associated with regulated entities
Fitz Johnson (R, Dist. 3)	$306,929	$286,341	93.3%	$199,900	69.8%
Josh Tolbert (R, Dist. 5)	$37,993	$36,143	95.1%	$14,200	39.3%
Peter Hubbard (D, Dist. 3)	$378,699	$238,075	62.9%	$6,500	2.7%
Shelia Edwards (D, Dist. 5)	$21,427	$9,505	44.4%	$0	0.0%

Georgia Power’s lawyers, contractors, trade associations contribute to Johnson

The political action committee of Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders, Georgia Power’s main law firm which represents the company in court and in rate proceedings before the commission, contributed $5,000 to Johnson. Two Troutman attorneys that practice at the Commission, Brandon Marzo and Steven Hewitson, gave $8,400 each to Johnson. Troutman’s biography of Marzo states that he was an attorney for the Georgia Public Service Commission from 2002 to 2004, serving as primary counsel to its Natural Gas Section, and before that worked in the Consumers’ Utility Counsel Division of the Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs. He joined the firm in 2004.

A second cluster runs through utility construction-related businesses. 3E, LLC, which installs and maintains infrastructure for investor-owned natural gas utilities via two subsidiaries, gave $8,400. Todd Day of Gunter Construction Company, which builds gas pipelines and works with Atlanta Gas Light, a Southern Company subsidiary, gave Johnson $8,400.

Two more contractors gave the maximum $8,400 each, and each runs a company that works for Southern Company’s Georgia utilities. Brad Rhoades is president of Southern Pipeline, which lists Southern Company Gas on its website under “Who We Serve”. Kyle Ormsby is president of Southeast Connections and of the South Gas Division of its parent, Artera Services. Artera contracts to Southern Gas Company. Ormsby also used to work at Southern Gas Company’s predecessor, AGL Resources, for 16 years, according to Artera.

Trade associations and industry political committees contributed to Johnson too. The Georgia Utility Contractors Association PAC, whose members hold construction and maintenance contracts with regulated utilities, gave $10,900. Darrell Beasley, whose Beasley Group owns biomass generation that sells power to Georgia Power, purchases which are regulated by the PSC, gave $8,400. 

The Regulators Roundtable PAC, the political arm of a utility- and industry-funded group that exists to support Republican candidates in elected utility commission races, gave $8,400. In an email to Southern Company, Georgia Power’s corporate parent, the president of the Regulators Roundtable pitched the group as a means to counter “liberal organizations.” Southern Company has not reported direct donations to the Regulators Roundtable, but Southern gave $25,000 to its parent organization, GOPAC, last August and former Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers, contributed $5,000 the same week. The political action committee of Gas South, a regulated gas marketer, contributed $25,000 to Regulators Roundtable last September 2025. Earlier this year, Regulators Roundtable PAC also gave the $8,400 maximum to Tolbert’s primary challenger, Bobby Mehan, who lost.

Nearly all of Tolbert’s utility-associated contributions were from Drummond

$13,200 of Tolbert’s $14,200 in utility-associated contributions came from the Drummond family of Alabama. Drummond Company is a privately held Birmingham coal producer founded in 1935, with mining operations in Alabama and Colombia. Federal energy data shows Drummond selling coal to Georgia Power’s Plant Bowen as recently as 2023, and to Alabama Power’s plants Barry and Gaston in 2023 and 2024, through the company’s marketing subsidiary Interocean Coal Sales.

The company has faced sustained allegations related to its Colombian operations. Families of murdered Colombian labor leaders sued Drummond in Alabama federal court under the Alien Tort Statute, alleging it paid the paramilitary group AUC. The Eleventh Circuit dismissed that litigation in 2015 on the grounds that the alleged harm occurred outside the United States. In 2023 Colombia’s attorney general moved to try the company’s current and former Colombia heads for allegedly funding right-wing paramilitaries. Drummond has consistently denied the allegations, and was recently awarded over $200 million in a defamation case regarding accusations of human rights violations.

Christopher L Drummond is the youngest son of former Drummond Company CEO Garry Neil Drummond, who ran the company from 1973 until his death in 2016. 

Christopher first supported Tolbert in his run for Georgia State Senate. On October 14 and October 21, 2025, Christopher gave Tolbert’s then-State Senate Campaign $3,300 and then $1,800. On the same two days, in the same two amounts, so did his wife Alexis, filing under her former name, Alexis Doron. 

On April 30, 2026, the Drummond Charitable Trust contributed $8,400 and $4,800, the maximums for the primary and the runoff, respectively, to Tolbert’s PSC campaign. Tolbert’s Senate campaign, which he lost, closed out at zero, reporting $26,816 raised and the same amount spent, so none of the 2025 Drummond money carried over to Tolbert’s committee for his PSC campaign. Tolbert lent his PSC campaign $91,800 of his own money, more than twice what the committee has raised from donors.

The Drummond Charitable Trust is registered at 450 Alton Road, Unit 2907, in Miami Beach, Florida. Florida corporate records show that unit is the principal address of Gang Warily Holdings LLC, whose manager and registered agent is Christopher L. Drummond. “Gang warily” is the motto of Clan Drummond. 

The Drummond couple’s joint contributions to Tolbert’s Senate campaign, dated Oct. 14 and Oct. 21, 2025, came roughly six and seven weeks after a Sept. 1, 2025 incident that Birmingham prosecutors would later charge as felony domestic violence by strangulation. On June 30, 2026, Alexis Drummond sued him in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama, in a complaint pleading assault, battery, false imprisonment and tort of outrage, among nine counts. Weeks earlier, on June 5, a court in Monaco convicted him of intentional violence against a spouse and sentenced him to 45 days in jail, according to reporting by AL.com. Charges in Alabama are pending and, as of publication, he has not been convicted of them.

Georgians for Lower Energy Rates, funded and controlled by Drummond

Georgia law places no limits on the amount of money that people or businesses can spend in the form of independent expenditures to support candidates. Georgians For Lower Energy Rates, a Georgia independent expenditure committee, spent $48,433 supporting Tolbert in the Republican primary runoff, on get-out-the-vote texting and digital advertising placed in the days before the June 16 vote, according to the reports it filed with the state. Its entire funding was two $25,000 payments from the GNNP Drummond Trust, located at the same Miami Beach address as the Drummond Charitable Trust. Counting that spending alongside the direct campaign contributions, the Drummond family contributed $63,200 into one Public Service Commission district race.

Of the independent expenditures reported statewide in Georgia this cycle, Drummond’s four transactions are the only ones aimed at a Public Service Commission race. Georgians For Lower Energy Rates LLC was registered in Georgia on May 7, 2026, thirteen days before the first Drummond payment, using a commercial registered agent and listing no members or officers. The committee’s chairman is Trey Newton, who lists a Lubbock, Texas address that is a UPS Store mailbox. Its treasurer is Aaron Adams, who lists an address in Huntsville, Alabama. Neither Newton nor Adams responded to questions from the Energy and Policy Institute.

Hubbard’s regulated-entity associated contributions

Hubbard’s regulated-entity associated total was $6,500 from three donors. Stanley King, founder of the engineering consultancy S. L. King & Associates, which has directed projects for “utilities throughout the Southeast,” gave $5,000. Rutherford Poats, a senior consultant in the energy group at Charles River Associates, which works extensively for Georgia Power across its dockets, gave $1,000. Tharon Johnson, a registered Georgia lobbyist whose 25 clients include AT&T Services and Comcast, both regulated by the commission, gave $500. The rest of Hubbard’s contributions over $500, roughly $231,575, came from donors with no identified tie to a regulated company.

Methodology

The Energy and Policy Institute analyzed contributions to each Republican and Democratic candidate for the Georgia Public Service Commission to check for ties to regulated entities.

Regulated entities are those who have rates set by Commission proceedings, or whose operations are subject to Commission oversight. EPI counted the following as “associated” with a regulated entity:

• Law firms and employees of law firms representing regulated entities
• Lobbyists registered to represent regulated entities
• Executives, employees, and retirees of regulated entities
• Companies, and the people who work for them, with known financial ties to regulated entities ​​or their affiliates that could be significantly affected by Commission actions. For example: A construction or fuel contractor to a utility qualifies; a bank which happens to hold utility accounts does not.
• Corporations with no public profile that are owned by or associated with people from or representing regulated entities

Some contributions were untraceable. EPI treated those contributions as not being associated with a regulated entity.

EPI excluded candidate loans from this analysis, as we have in previous analyses of Georgia PSC races. A loan is money a candidate advances to his or her own campaign. Tolbert lent his two committees $95,989 and Hubbard lent his $48,935.

For this analysis, EPI did not assess contributions below $500 because the majority of contributions to the candidate were higher than this threshold, and smaller contributions have less risk to create conflicts of interests between the donor and the public official.

To view the original source data and EPI’s classification of each contribution, please visit this link.