Mike Thurmond
Michael L. Thurmond is an American author, attorney, and politician. A Democrat, he was previously the Chief Executive Officer of DeKalb County and a representative in the Georgia General Assembly. He served as Georgia Labor Commissioner from 1999 to 2011.
Thurmond served as the interim superintendent of the DeKalb County School District, the third largest district in the state of Georgia from 2013 to 2015. The district serves nearly 99,000 students with over 13,400 employees. Thurmond was the Democratic Party's nominee for 2010 [United States Senate election in Georgia|United States Senate in 2010]. He was also one of the last Democrats to win statewide in Georgia until 2020, when Joe Biden won the state in the 2020 [United States presidential election in Georgia|2020 presidential election]. In 2025, he announced that he will be running in the 2026 Georgia gubernatorial election.
Prior to becoming DeKalb's Schools Superintendent, Thurmond was an attorney at Butler Wooten Cheeley & Peak LLP.
Early life
Thurmond was raised as a sharecropper's son in Clarke County, Georgia. He graduated cum laude with a B.A. in philosophy and religion from Paine College and later earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of [South Carolina School of Law]. He also completed the Political Executives program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.Political career
In 1986, he became the first African-American elected to the Georgia General Assembly from Clarke County since Reconstruction era of [the United States|Reconstruction].By 1994, he was appointed by Governor Zell Miller as director of the state's Division of Family and Children Services.
In 1997, Thurmond became a distinguished lecturer at the University of Georgia Carl Vinson Institute of Government. The following year in November, he was elected Georgia Labor Commissioner.
In 2016, Thurmond decided to run for the open DeKalb County C.E.O.'s office being vacated by term-limited incumbent Democrat Burrell Ellis. He won overwhelmingly in the Democratic Primary, and went on to win by a significant margin over his Republican opponent in the November 2016 General Election. Thurmond began his four-year term on January 1, 2017.
He is the recipient of two honorary doctorate degrees from Clark Atlanta University and LaGrange College.
He serves on the Board of Curators of the Georgia Historical Society.