Mitch Skandalakis

Demetrios John "Mitch" Skandalakis is a lawyer and former American Republican politician from Georgia who rose quickly to national prominence in the early 1990s. He upset Martin Luther King III to become chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, and in 1998, was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. Afterward, he became subjected to a wide-ranging federal corruption investigation of Fulton County government and admitted lying to an FBI agent. He was disbarred, but was later reinstated, as an attorney.

Skandalakis is the son of a Greek immigrant, Dr. John Skandalakis, who resisted the German occupation of Greece during World War II and fought the Communists during the Greek Civil War. He emigrated to the United States and became a prominent surgeon who taught at Emory University and was named by a Governor George Busbee to the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia and his two siblings followed in their father's footsteps. Mitch Skandalakis graduated from Emory University, where he founded a chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. He graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1982 and joined the law firm of conservative Georgia congressman Pat Swindall.

Skandalakis ran for a state Senate seat in 1988 but lost, and in 1991 began to be active in Fulton County, Georgia's most populous county, as an anti-tax activist, complaining about property taxes; in 1992 he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. He attracted national attention when he upset Martin Luther King III in a 1993 special election for Chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.

Skandalakis was re-elected to a full term in 1994, running as a moderate Republican and performing well among gay and African American voters. He made headlines again in 1995, when he proposed that all amateur athletes be required to disclose whether they had AIDS. As a commissioner, he was most notable for cutting property taxes, even while Atlanta was expanding its budget for the 1996 Summer Olympics.

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