Three candidates, John Grotheer, Ken Jackson and Tangie Reese Johnson, have qualified to run for the vacant District 1 seat on Statesboro City Council in the Nov. 5 special election.

Qualifying opened Tuesday, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. in the City Hall office of City Clerk Leah Harden and ended Thursday at 4:30 p.m. The special city election, for Council District 1 voters only, is being held the same day as the regular county, state and federal general election.

The winner will fill the unexpired term, through 2025, of former District 1 Councilman Phil Boyum, who resigned effective Aug. 1. 

John Grotheer previously ran for mayor in 2017. A Statesboro resident since early 2014, he has not served in elected office but has 20-plus years of experience as a professional working for other city and county governments. He served 13 years with the city of Covington as its city clerk and finance director, and later was finance director for the Bryan County government, based in Pembroke, for eight years before his retirement and served one month as interim county administrator.

“I … believe in an open, transparent government, one that is interested in listening, being responsive, and genuinely committed to serving all the citizens of the city of Statesboro,” Grotheer said in an announcement of his District 1 candidacy. “I have chosen Statesboro as my forever home and would like for it to remain a safe community and one that offers an outstanding quality of life.”

Ken Jackson, 43, is running for public office for the first time. Jackson owns Leap Joy Inflatables on Walnut St. in Statesboro and he said he is running primarily to represent the interests of small business owners in the city.

“I’m not a politician, but I want to make sure the concerns of small business owners are heard at every meeting,” Jackson said. “The city is getting bigger and more and more small businesses are springing up. Not just downtown, but all around the city. Sometimes I think we get overlooked and all the attention is paid to larger businesses.”

Jackson said he moved to Statesboro in 2005 from Jacksonville, Fla. He owned a number of mobile homes and started in Bulloch County as a landlord. While he’s mostly out of that business, he became a real estate agent, too.

Jackson said he started Leap Joy Inflatables in 2007 out of a storage unit as a side business. It remained his secondary focus until the COVID pandemic.

“I guess people were bored and had nothing to do,” he said. “We went from daily rentals to people renting the inflatables for a weekend or more. We did a good job with service and that has just continued. Leap Joy just keeps growing.” 

Tangie Reese Johnson has not sought elected office before. Currently a human resources coordinator at Georgia Southern University, she has been a Statesboro District 1 resident since 2017. Before taking a job with the GS Department of Human Resources that year, she was a police officer.

She served with the Dublin, Georgia, Police Department from July 2010 to November 2012 and with the Georgia Southern University Police from November 2012 to April 2017.

“I serve on the Statesboro Housing Authority board, and I’m always serving and volunteering in various roles within the city and within the community, as well as District 1,” Johnson said. “I believe that there is a vision for change, and I just feel that it’s time, and I think that our community can do more together than we can apart.”

The candidate qualifying fee for the seat is $330, which is 3% of the gross salary of a regular Statesboro City Council member for the previous year.

Under the City Charter, citizens qualifying for a council seat must be at least 25 years old and have been a resident of their district, in this case District 1, for at least 12 months immediately preceding the election, and be registered voters.

For would-be voters who aren’t already registered or need to update their information, the last day to register to vote before the special election – and also for the Nov. 5 general election – will be Oct. 7.

The Statesboro Herald will publish more complete stories about the candidates in the coming weeks.