Mitch Skandalakis

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Mitch Skandalakis was a Georgia politician who achieved brief national attention when he upset Martin Luther King III in a 1993 special election for Chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. He had previously served as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives.

Skandalakis was re-elected to a full term in 1994, running as a moderate Republican and openly courting gay voters. In 1998, he hired former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed as his campaign manager and ran for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia as a right wing conservative. Reed appeared in advertisements for Skandalakis vouching for his social conservatism and personal integrity.

Skandalakis placed first among five candidates in the Republican primary, then defeated conservative State Senator Clint Day, scion of the Days Inn motel family in a bitterly contested primary run-off. Although successful with Reed's help in winning the Republican primary, Skandalakis's strategy of negative campaigning backfired in the general election. He lost in a landslide to the Democratic candidate, State Senator Mark Taylor, who had served as Governor Zell Miller's floor leader.

Skandalakis and Reed were widely blamed for the defeat that year of Republican candidates for Governor and Attorney General. Reed, who had months earlier appeared in advertisements vouching for Skandalakis's integrity, immediately began distancing himself from Skandalakis, who settled a libel suit filed by Taylor over the truthfulness of his television advertisements.

Skandalakis subsequently pled guilty to lying to federal investigators in a public corruption investigation. He was sentenced to a six month prison term, effectively ending his political career. An attorney by profession, Skandalakis was disbarred from the practice of law by the Supreme Court of Georgia.