ATLANTA – Two former high school teachers running for governor in Georgia were suspended from their jobs in the past for sexual misconduct involving students, according to state documents.
In unrelated cases, the two men – one Democrat and one Republican – were accused of inappropriate relationships with female students. Both were suspended from teaching for a week, then resigned but denied wrongdoing.
The candidates were long shots to win the race, but the news could affect the crowded primary elections in July, political experts said. The governor’s office in Georgia is likely to be in play for either party, after a streak of scandals last fall weakened the normally dominant state Republicans.
The teachers’ cases were reported Wednesday night by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and detailed in publicly available state documents.
The Republican, Ray McBerry Jr., had his teaching certificate suspended in 2004, after findings by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission that he had conducted an inappropriate relationship with a student from a different school and deliberately misrepresented his actions to school investigators.