State Senate District 12 candidates waiting for residency challenge decision

ALBANY – Both sides in a case involving a legal challenge to residency in a Georgia Senate race are awaiting a judge’s ruling in the matter a month after a hearing in a Dougherty County courtroom.

Corey B. Morgan, a former Camilla City Council member who came in second in the May 19 primary in state Senate District 12 to Albany businessman Edward Brown, filed the challenge in the days following the Democratic primary contest.

Brown’s attorney, Chris Cohilas, filed a motion to dismiss the case and a hearing was held on July 1 in front of a judge who is not a member of the Dougherty Judicial Circuit.

Morgan, who himself was ruled ineligible to seek re-election in Camilla after a judge ruled he was not a resident of the city, contends that Brown was not a resident of the district for the two years required to be eligible to seek office. In his challenge, the former council member alleges that Brown had registered to vote in a Nov. 5 Virginia election. 

Court filings indicate that Brown cast his ballot in that election by mail in October 2024.

Brown obtained a Georgia driver’s license on Sept. 20, 2024, and updated his voter registration to Wexford Drive address in Albany at the same time.

“The judge listened to the evidence,” Albany attorney Maurice King, who represented Morgan after Morgan initially filed paperwork himself in the case, said. “It’s clear that Mr. Brown voted in Virginia. If he was a resident of Georgia, he would not have voted in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

“Under Georgia law, the clearest indicator of where your domicile is where you vote and where your vote is counted on election day.”

Among the defenses that Cohilas gave in a filing related to Brown’s request for a dismissal of Morgan’s case, is that no challenge was made within the legal period allowed after qualifying in the election. Paperwork was also improperly served, and Brown was never properly served with paperwork in the case.

Brown’s acts of securing his Georgia driver’s license and establishing his residency in Georgia in September 2024 also show that he met the legal requirements to run on the Nov. 3, 2026, ballot in the state, the response said.

Those technicalities on paperwork should not cloud the issue, King said, who blamed the Dougherty County Clerk of Court’s office for some of the issues that occurred during the period that Morgan was representing himself in the legal case.

“I think, basically, it was not his (Morgan’s) duty,” he said. “It was the clerk’s duty. The clerk did not recuse a Dougherty County judge. Cohilas and the defense have had notice since it was filed.”

Ultimately, the attorney said, the senior judge who was selected to hear the case should rule according to the law.

“The gist of the case is that Mr. Brown is basically an ineligible candidate,” King said. “He had not been in Georgia the required time to qualify for that seat.”

Morgan is seeking to either be named as the winner in the election or, barring that, for a new election, the attorney said.

As for Brown, Cohilas said that his residency is not a question.

In his response, he said that the Georgia Secretary of State denied Morgan’s petition seeking to challenge Brown’s qualifications and that Morgan did not meet the pre-election qualification challenge. 

“There’s no defense needed,” he said. “He’s a citizen of the state of Georgia. He was born here, raised here. All this is just noise. He won the election You have somebody who lost by 3,700 votes” challenging the election.

Brown won in the three-way contest with 7,881 votes. Morgan finished second with 4,129 votes and Albany firefighter Tracy Taylor was third with 2,636 votes.”

The case is a turnabout in that in the Camilla case Cohilas represented a group of residents who were seeking to remove Morgan from the council based on his residency. 

The Georgia Court of Appeals in December 2023 upheld a judge’s ruling on Morgan’s residency.

“It’s ironic now coming from someone who was elected where they did not live,” Cohilas said of Morgan challenging another candidate’s residency.

Prior to the May 19 primary, Terrence Fowler Sr., who filed paperwork as a Republican in the District 12 race, was ruled ineligible based on his address and his having voted in a December 2025 election in Fulton County.