Dawson County native and Georgia State House Representative Will Wade (R-Dawsonville) has been appointed by Governor Brian Kemp as one of the Georgia House of Representatives Floor Leaders for the 2023-24 General Assembly, and he said that this session he wants to focus his efforts on improving school safety and enhancing the state’s human and child trafficking laws. 

Wade, who represents District 9, is one of just four house members tapped by the governor to step into house floor leader roles for the 2023-24 General Assembly. He said that being one of these four selected by the governor out of a total 180 members is an honor and that he is excited about the appointment. 

“As a sophomore I’m excited to work with the governor’s folks, especially his policy team — I get to carry some meaningful, good legislation and get to share my thoughts and provide insight on policy issues which is something I’m pretty passionate about,” Wade said. “I’m excited to help and honored to serve.”

Currently, Wade said that one of the specific projects he is working on is school safety and providing support to local districts to help improve that safety in local schools. 

“I’m working on school safety; making sure that we support our local districts and help protect our kids,” Wade said, “so doing some things to help provide additional funding for school safety as well as just in general doing things like fully funding education again, helping out with training, those kind of things.” 

Another thing he’s working on, he said, is to continue improving Georgia’s human and child trafficking laws. 

“The other thing I’ll be working on is to continue to enhance our human and child trafficking laws in the state of Georgia to ensure that we protect citizens and lock away those folks that are doing things they should never do,” Wade said. 

Wade added that getting to serve on the governor’s floor leadership team is not only a great honor for himself, but that he hopes it will also be an honor for District 9 and his hometown of Dawson County. 

“It’s just an honor to serve and I think it’s going to put me in a position to obviously help with key areas of state government, but also I think it’s going to be a good thing for Dawson County and District 9,” Wade said. “It’s going to be a fun session; I think we’re going to get a lot of really good things done.” 

In addition to Wade, the other three representatives tapped by the governor to serve as 2023-24 Georgia House of Representatives Floor Leaders are Representative Lauren McDonald (District 26), Representative Soo Hong (District 103) and Representative Matthew Gambill (District 15).