Geoff Duncan visits Albany on ‘Protect Georgians’ Health Care’ gubernatorial campaign trail

ALBANY – The former Georgia lieutenant governor and 2026 candidate for governor Geoff Duncan made a stop in Albany Tuesday during his statewide tour. 

Duncan wanted to highlight the Trump administration’s attacks on health care through the statewide “Protect Georgians’ Health Care” tour. Stopping in Savannah, Homerville, Clarkston, Warner Robins, Augusta and Albany, Duncan pledged to stand up to Trump and bring down health care costs as governor. 

“Health care’s on everybody’s mind. It’s a moving target that just feels like it’s running away from all of us, whether you’re in an urban community, a rural community, and it’s figuring out ways to be innovative around it,” Duncan said.

Duncan’s tour follows recent reporting that a rural hospital in Lavonia is being forced to close its labor and delivery unit, and a hospital in Claxton is likely to close its intensive care unit due to Trump’s Medicaid cuts. Meanwhile, the state of Georgia is poised to lose $3.7 billion in revenue next year alone if Trump halts critical health care support from the Affordable Care Act, spiking costs for families all across the state.

As a Republican state representative, Duncan fought to expand access to health care in rural communities by writing the rural hospital tax credit to support struggling rural hospitals. 

“Under my governorship, I will never let a rural hospital fail,” he said. “It’s too important to the community.”

Duncan’s Albany visit consisted of a tour of Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital’s nursing Living & Learning Community in partnership with Albany Technical College. ATC staff showed Duncan the community’s state-of-the-art classrooms, simulation labs and housing units. He learned about the program’s annual goal of 200 nursing graduates and its programs committed to providing nurses in the Albany community.

Duncan said he was impressed by the program. Staffing is a major issue for hospitals, especially rural ones, across Georgia. He called Phoebe’s LLC an innovative solution to this problem. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this at the technical college level,” he said. “This is a fantastic example of when a community gets something right, creating this public/private partnership model, leaning into the hospital, leaning into the TCSG (Technical College System of Georgia,) the community and the city.”

Dr. Latrona Lanier, ATC’s associate of science nursing director, told Duncan that the program is changing the Albany community but is struggling to meet faculty needs to reach its goal of 200 nursing students a year. 

Duncan said the program could be a scalable model for not only health care work force solutions but also other sectors.

Along with health care, Duncan’s platform focuses on the “affordability crisis,” education and agriculture. 

“Southwest Georgia is facing a crisis like they’ve never seen before – an affordability crisis, a health care crisis and a Donald Trump crisis,” he said. “Most southwest Georgians wake up scared, nervous and upset about those things, and that’s what I’m focused on.” 

Duncan said his campaign trail also will take a look at affordable housing, seeking out scalable solutions. He said he’s also concerned about educational outcomes, ensuring pathways to improve public education in a way that’s “meaningful and generational.” 

Duncan said he’s worried about Georgia’s farmers and attacked Trump’s tariffs.

“When you’re farming your entire life and somebody comes in and just abstractly signs a piece of paper in the Oval Office, basically saying your crops are going to be worth a fraction of what they should be – that’s unfair,” he said. “We don’t have a friend in Washington, D.C., anymore.

Duncan called himself a “different kind of candidate” who doesn’t fit the standard mold, pointing to his party switch from Republican to Democrat. 

“I’ve left the Republican Party because they left me,” Duncan said. “Some of my folks in the Republican Party have asked me if I’ve lost my mind, and the answer is I haven’t lost my mind. I found my heart.”

He said his tour across the state has shown that Georgia’s communities are resilient, and many of its community members just need opportunities that remove barriers and give them a jump-start into their careers. He said the Democratic party provides him a better toolkit to provide those opportunities. 

He said he’s worried about a Republican winning Georgia’s governor race, saying Trump has already “hand-picked” the candidate he’d like to see. 

“If Burt Jones wins this race, he’s going to hand the keys to Donald Trump, and my guess is he’s going to stick the knife even further in the backs of southwest Georgians,” Duncan said. “He’s going to continue to have crazy tariff policies, which don’t make sense … he’s going to continue to create health care chaos … in a way that’s breaking families.

“The time is now for southwest Georgia to recognize that we need to put a Democrat for the first time in nearly 20 years in the governor’s mansion. I think Georgia’s best days are in front of us. I think southwest Georgia’s best days are still in front of us. I want to help lead all Georgians to those better days.”