State Sen. Jason Carter prepares for fight against Deal during 2014 legislative session

• Joeff Davis
• "My biggest worry is that we'll go another year without a vision for education, and that we'll go another year without truly making it the budgeting priority that it needs to be."

Jason Carter faces an uphill battle in 2014. The Decatur state senator, who jumped into the governor's race last November, will spend much of the coming year trying to convince voters he deserves Gov. Nathan Deal's job. His candidacy has breathed life back into the state's Democratic party, who think he can overcome long odds to upset an incumbent Republican in Georgia.

It's widely expected that the gubernatorial race will head inside the Gold Dome once the upcoming legislative session begins on Monday. State lawmakers, who are banned from fundraising until after papers are tossed high into the air on Sine Die, will spend the next the few months pushing their agendas on the state House and Senate floors.

Deal may try to sway votes by giving teachers pay raises or introducing other election-year proposals to curry favor with the voting bloc. Although Carter's ability to push legislation will be limited - he's a Democrat in a Republican-dominated General Assembly - he'll likely use his position to convince Georgia voters to buy into his ability to lead the state.

Earlier this week, Carter shared thoughts about the upcoming legislative session including his take on education, Medicaid expansion, ethics, and DeKalb's cityhood debate.

One of the major themes of the 2014 legislative session will be how the election year impacts what actually gets accomplished under the Gold Dome. A major part of that is the gubernatorial race that's bound to play out. How are you approaching the upcoming session in that regard?

We're going to keep doing what we've always been doing - the things that are our most important priorities. That's education, access to education for everybody; an economy that works for the middle class; and an honest government that works for everybody. That's number one. Those will be themes of the campaign, but it's also been the themes of my legislative service.

Number two, a lot of my best friends in the legislature are Republicans and Republicans in leadership. It'll be interesting to see what my reception is like now laughs. I know I have good relationships with them and think we'll be able to do the right thing. We're going to continue to focus on those issues that we think are important.

There's talk that Deal will push for educator pay raises. That sounds like a good thing, but also something that can be seen as a push for votes. How do you approach that under the Gold Dome, especially if he's doing something notable that's a major theme of your campaign?

The way that I've always operated in the legislature is that I supported the ideas I felt were good no matter what side they came from. I'll continue to do that as state Senator. But you've got a governor who has no record to run on with respect to education. He's got the state school superintendent from his own party, the chief education official in our state elected by the people of Georgia to help run our education system, running against the governor in his own primary. That is an incredible indictment of the governor's mishandling of public education. John Barge knows. He's seen what we see: that the people of Georgia are horrified by what this administration has done for education and for educators. I assume, because it's an election year, there will be some attempt by the governor to salvage that record. I am positive that will come out. We'll have to wait and see whether it's a good idea or if it all makes sense.

It seems like nothing will happen with Medicaid expansion until Deal or yourself gets elected. That being said, a handful of Democratic lawmakers are planning to call attention to the issue during the legislative session. Do you plan to be joining them? If so, how?

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The problem we all have now is that the Affordable Care Act - or Obamacare, whatever you want to call it - is in such disarray today that it's hard to know what it means. The problem with the current governor is that he cares more about the Washington politics of Obamacare than about helping or protecting Georgia taxpayers. We have a situation where Georgia pays federal tax dollars and those tax dollars are being used to expand Medicaid in other places. What the governor has said is that he would rather play politics with that money than come back to Georgia.

I would try to find a creative way to bring that money back the way other places - Kentucky or Arkansas - they've all been looking for ways to do that. It probably won't be a straight acceptance of Obamacare and Medicaid expansion. It would be a problem-solving approach that doesn't care about the politics and cares about what's best for Georgia taxpayers and Georgia citizens.

Over the next few months, is that something you plan to be actively speaking about aside from interviews? It seems like an issue that state lawmakers and activists are planning to make noise about, especially during the upcoming session.

It's an issue I'll be thinking about because it's a decision the governor has to make. If you've got rural hospitals closing that instead could be saved, those are real issues that affect people's lives. The problem is that Washington is so broken. With that said, we don't know what is happening with respect to Obamacare today. Even the president wants some change. It's hard to say what we're going to be doing and talking about, but I can promise we'll make sure to put the politics aside and do what's best for Georgia, no matter what people in Washington say or think. If we're confronted with the law of the land and it's an Affordable Care Act we're paying for, then I'd make sure that Georgia is getting the benefit that they're already paying for, instead of paying for it and not getting anything.

How do you feel about ethics moving forward beyond the measures passed in 2013? There's talk about a further push with proposals for an independent ethics commission, lobbyist gift ban, and tying the commission's funding to a certain percentage of the state's budget.

With two of the issues you mentioned, I sponsored legislation last year. I was the lead sponsor for two bills. One for an independent ethics commission that's appointed not by the people it's supposed to regulate, but by others. Number two, having a fixed amount of the budget so that you can't attack the ethics commission through the appropriations process. Those two bills I sponsored are currently pending. I would hope we'd get a hearing on them and that we can move forward. I think they're a good idea and thought that long before all the stuff with the ethics commission lately was going on. I filed those long ago, have been a leader on those issues, and would love to see a discussion.

Education is one of the major themes of your gubernatorial campaign. How do you feel about the new HOPE scholarship proposal from state Reps. Stacey Evans, D-Smyrna, and Earl Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, that, if passed, would make it easier for technical college students to afford their academic costs?

Here's the problem the governor has. The HOPE "reforms" that he pushed through in 2013 have been an absolute catastrophe for technical schools - an unmitigated disaster. They've begun to admit that failure and have begun to make small changes. I hope they will continue to help undo the damage they did. This bill that would help technical colleges may be one way to do that. But I don't know what's going to happen. I hope we continue to work to undo the damage that the governor did to our technical schools because that's one of the most important aspects of our education system and one of the most important aspects of our economy, because that's what's educating our workforce for new jobs. That's what's moving people into the middle class and beginning to have both prosperous people and a vibrant economy.

What else are you expecting to come up in terms of education?

We haven't seen any real vision from the current administration on education. To me, the most important thing we should and could do is to focus like a laser on creating the best, most-talented, well-supported, and well-trained teaching workforce we can have. That's how you get better output. The current governor has listed issue to issue without any coherent vision for what an education system looks like. So I have no idea what to expect.

Shifting gears to a more local issue for you, one have you've chatted about at town hall meetings, but what's your take on DeKalb's cityhood movement? What's the best approach to that precarious issue?

My take is that as a state, it's important for us to have DeKalb County, which is one of our largest counties, to be an economically-viable and sound county government. I think we have to focus on getting that county government stabilized. To me, that means a revamping of the form of government. The CEO form of government is not working. That means putting together a transparent procurement process, putting in place a workable ethics commission to rebuild public trust that's been lost.

I think the cityhood discussion is just a distraction from all of those things. Let's solve the major problems that have statewide impact on our economy first. Once that gets set, then let's go back and talk about whether we need to start cutting the county into pieces. That's not going to make it stronger, that's not going to help us improve our economy at all.

What legislation or political inaction under the Gold Dome in 2014 worries you the most?

My biggest worry is that we'll go another year without a vision for education, and that we'll go another year without truly making it the budgeting priority that it needs to be. We are, right now, and have been for a long time, acting like education will just get along no matter what happens to it. That's not true. We've pushed our education system to the brink. We have to have something that will work or we're really going to compromise the future. My biggest worry is that we'll continue down the path we've been on - having no vision for education. My kids are ages 7 and 5, one of them is in public school now and the other is going be starting in the fall, and it's too important of an issue to let it go for another year.

It's going to be an education session. For some of us, it'll be an education session like the others. For some people, it'll be an education session because it's an election year.