Ed Harbison of Columbus, ‘the dean’ of the Georgia Senate, won’t seek reelection
State Sen. Ed Harbison (D-Columbus), the longest-serving member in this year’s Georgia Senate, won’t seek reelection.
Harbison, who has been a state senator for the past 33 years, announced his decision Wednesday in the senate.
“This has been the greatest honor of my life,” Harbison, 84, told his fellow senators. “And just thank you. God bless you. And wherever my mom is now in heaven, she’s looking down, saying, ‘That’s my boy.’”
Ed Harbison’s legislative history
Since 1993, Harbison has represented Georgia Senate District 15, which comprises Macon, Marion, Talbot, Taylor and Schley counties as well as portions of Chattahoochee County and Muscogee County.
Harbison chairs the senate’s State Institutions and Property Committee, and he is the ranking member of the senate’s committees for Banking and Financial Institutions, Insurance and Labor, Interstate Cooperation, Reapportionment and Redistricting, and Ethics He also is vice chairman of the senate’s Veterans, Military and Homeland Security committee and is an ex-officio member of the senate’s Regulated Industries and Utilities committee.
Legislation he sponsored includes:
- Easing barriers and alleviating bureaucracy for children of military families who transfer from one state to another
- Establishing a separate court for military veterans in Georgia
- Establishing the Georgia Military Veterans Hall of Fame
- Consolidating Chattahoochee County and Cusseta
Before he was first elected as a state senator in 1992, Harbison served as second vice president of the Muscogee County School Board and as a member of the Columbus Charter Review Commission.
According to his website, Harbison was born in Prattville, Alabama, and raised in Montgomery. He graduated from the Career Academy School of Broadcasting and attended Troy State University at Fort Benning. He served four years in the U.S. Marines and earned a Purple Heart.
Ed Harbison’s honors
Harbison has worked as a public relations and advertising consultant and a broadcast journalist. His honors include:
- James Costen Government Services Award
- National Infantry Association’s Order of Saint Maurice for distinguished and gallant support of the Infantry
- Associated Press Annual Award for Best Regularly Scheduled TV Newscast
- Jack Brinkley Service Award
- Department of Defense Vietnam Veterans of Appreciation Award
- Legacy of Leadership Award for outstanding service to the African American community
- Inducted into the Georgia Military Veterans Hall of Fame for his support of veterans in the state
- Inducted into the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame
In 1972, Harbison arrived in Columbus as news and public affairs director for WOKS and WFXE. He won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and United Press International for excellence in broadcast journalism.
When he was hired as an anchor for WLTZ-TV in 1982, Harbison became the first Black newscaster to host an evening program in Columbus. Two years later, he returned to radio as assistant station manager and news director at WAGH, where he hosted talk shows with Gloria Strode and Edgar Champagne.
Harbison explained to the Ledger-Enquirer in a phone interview Thursday why he decided to leave his career in politics after he serves the remainder of his term through the end of this year and try another career in addition to the insurance sales he does.
“I didn’t set a clock,” he said. “Nobody did it externally. It’s just that, I guess the spirit moved me to say it’s time to change lanes and go in another direction and start a new career. By the grace of God, maybe I can do marketing or podcasting or something else that I think I would enjoy. . . . I may start lobbying. It just depends on what is available. . . . Nobody forced me to do this.”
Harbison said health wasn’t a factor in his decision either. He also answered whether his announcement was coordinated with his son, Edward D. Harbison, announcing Thursday his campaign to fill his father’s seat.
“In the context of that, it was nothing we planned out,” he said. “. . . He had already been wanting to do that.”
Georgia Senate’s tributes to Ed Harbison
During a tearful speech Wednesday in the Georgia Senate, state Sen. David Lucas (D-Macon) praised Harbison and noted he is the longest-serving state senator “of color” in Georgia history.
“I want to thank the folks from Columbus for sending him our way,” Lucas said. “He served with humility and conviction. I think we all need to stand and give him an applause.”
And they did.
Harbison responded to the accolade with one for his colleagues.
“It’s a great honor, a wonderful honor, to have people think good because people don’t have to be kind to you, and they don’t have to work with you, but I’m certainly in an august body that embraces that kind of fairness, that we can work together on as many issues as we need to,” he said. “And I know we play political partisanship sometime, as we probably should, but at the same time, we know that the standard for all of us should be, and is the Godly vision of how to run a state, how to run ourselves and how to run our lives.”
Harbison added, “What your mother told you, what my mother told me, is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and that’s how you should live your life. I tried to do that in all my endeavors and everything I’ve tried, and I will always do that.”
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R-Jackson) called Harbison “the dean of the senate.”
“He and I would sit in that ante room most times when people are out here having big debates on things, and we would laugh and cut up,” Jones said as he presided during Wednesday’s senate session.
Then he turned to Harbison and said, “I will always remember the good stories you told me about – literally war stories -- when you served in the Army and in your days through radio.”
Jones sparked another round of applause in the senate when he declared about Harbison, “There’s not a finer gentleman that has served in this body than Senator Ed Harbison, and I appreciate your friendship.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2026 at 5:15 AM.
