The Trojan Horse of Ringgold
The candidate who might prove the Catoosa GOP/GRA accountability rule paranoia was actually prophecy.
The political circus in Catoosa County is nothing if not entertaining, if a bit expensive for those footing the legal bills. For the last two years, the Georgia Republican Assembly (GRA) and the local Republican party leadership have been desperately trying to build a wall around the primary ballot. They wanted a gatekeeping function . . . a way to vet candidates and banish the impostors before the voters ever got a say. They were sued, they were held in contempt of court, and they were effectively told by a judge that their little affidavit scheme was counter to Georgia law.
The GRA lost the battle in the courtroom thus far (federal case is still alive). But they are poised to win the war in the court of public opinion, thanks to an unwitting benefactor named Nick Millwood.
Millwood, the recently resigned Mayor of Ringgold, has announced his candidacy for Georgia House District 3. He’s running as a Republican, which is his right under Georgia law. He is campaigning against the "gatekeepers," painting himself as champion against the Catoosa GOP leadership and their purity tests. He’s framing his run as a defense of democracy against the "thugs" who tried to block candidates in 2024.
It’s a nice narrative, really. There’s just one problem: Nick Millwood is the walking, talking vindication of every paranoid conspiracy theory the Catoosa GOP & GRA has ever spun about Republican primaries being infiltrated by wolves in sheep’s clothing.
We don't have to guess about Millwood’s political compass; we have the receipts. In Georgia, you don’t register by party. You prove your allegiance by the ballot you pull in primaries. And Nick Millwood’s ballot choices reveal a history that should disqualify him from a Republican nomination in any district, let alone one that gave Donald Trump 77% of the vote.
Let’s rewind to March 2016. While actual Republicans were holding their noses and voting for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio to stop a populist wave, or early embracing that wave that would become the MAGA movement, Nick Millwood walked into his polling place and requested a Democratic ballot. He voted in the primary that featured Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders. How bout them choices?
He had a choice between a candidate promising to ban assault weapons and a self-described democratic socialist. Both candidates wanted to ban guns, restrict speech, and open borders…just to start. Millwood chose to participate in that Marxist rodeo of a selection process. Actual conservatives pulled a republican ballot and helped prevent the catastrophe of electing one of the loons from the left.
Perhaps that was a momentary lapse? A fever dream? Hardly. Fast forward to May 2018. The Georgia Republican Party was in the fight of its life to maintain the Governor’s Mansion. The Democratic primary featured Stacey Abrams—a candidate who ran on unlimited abortion access, sanctuary state policies, California style gun control, and allowing biological males to compete in women's sports. It was a radical leftist platform.
In that cycle, with the stakes painfully clear, Nick Millwood did not request a Republican ballot to help decide the conservative future of the state. He requested a Democratic ballot. He voted in the primary that nominated Stacey Abrams.
Let that sink in. The man now asking for the Republican nomination for House District 3—a nomination that effectively guarantees election in Northwest Georgia—spent two of the most consequential political cycles of the last decade helping pick the opposition’s candidates.
Millwood’s defense, presumably, will be that he is a "moderate" or that "people change." But the Republican Party is not a rehab center for wayward Democrats. It is a political organization built on a platform. That platform is antithetical to the 2016 and 2018 Democratic Party platforms Millwood chose to align with. To pull a Democratic ballot in 2018, while Republicans were fighting tooth and nail against the Abrams agenda, when the direction for the republican party in the state was being debated and decided isn't just a difference of opinion; it’s a rejection of the core principles that define the Georgia GOP.
This is the ultimate irony of Millwood’s candidacy. He is running against the "gatekeepers," yet he is single-handedly proving their point. The GRA and the Catoosa County GOP argued that without screening, charlatans would hijack the brand. They were told they were being paranoid, that the voters could decide.
But in a district like HD-3, the Republican nomination is the crown jewel. It is the only prize that matters. If Millwood wins the primary, he doesn't just win the seat; he validates the very "accountability" rules his campaign opposes. If a man who pulled a ballot that included the Abrams agenda can secure the Republican nomination in one of the reddest districts in the state, then the GRA was right: the label means nothing, and the brand is dead.
A Millwood victory would be a catastrophic humiliation for the anti-accountability rule faction. It would stand as irrefutable evidence that without some mechanism of accountability, the GOP is willing to stand by while the party is raided and subverted by the opposition.
Opponents of the Catoosa screening rules argued that 16 people on a committee shouldn't decide who is a Republican. That is a fair argument. But the flip side is that the candidates themselves shouldn't dupe the voters just to get in power.
Most people (myself included) opposed the heavy-handed, legally dubious tactics of the Catoosa County Executive Committee. But there is a difference between opposing a bad process and ignoring a disqualifying record.
Nick Millwood is not a Republican. He is a politician who, when the chips were down and the choice was clear, chose to align himself with the modern Democratic Party. He chose the party of gun bans, open borders, and radical social policy. Now he wants the Republican seal of approval because he knows he can’t win as a Democrat.
Regardless of what one thinks of incumbent Rep. Mitchell Horner—whether he is too talkative, too young, or too policy-wonkish—he is a Republican. Nick Millwood is not. To hand the nomination to a man who voted in the Abrams primary is to admit that the Republican Party in Catoosa County stands for absolutely nothing.