HORGAN Washington attorney Michael Horgan has announced that he will run for the State House of Representatives seat now held by Mickey Channell with a campaign that will focus on economic development, ethics, rural hospitals and the delivery rural health care.

He qualified for the House District 116 seat last Thursday. Qualification for some state offices was extended one week as a result of a lawsuit in a state Senate race that overlaps the 116th Congressional District.

Channell recently left the Democrat Party to become a Republican. Horgan is the only Democrat running against him in the November election.

Georgia's Democratic leadership urged him to run, he said, and the timing seemed right this year. "Mickey was elected as a Democrat," Horgan said, "and the voters of District 116 have been electing him as a Democrat since 1992." Channell's switch to the Republican party, he said, "made me sit up and take notice."

Horgan said he is also running because he believes Georgia should make improving children's education and access to health care the state's top priorities.

"I think the voters of the district deserve a choice and I want to be the candidate who will work to provide opportunity for the children in House District 116," he said. "We must make improving education our top priority. Over the last four years, Governor Perdue and the General Assembly have cut over $1.25 billion from Georgia's schools, resulting in program cuts at our schools and higher property taxes for homeowners."

Horgan, an attorney at law with his own practice since 1987, practices civil and criminal litigation in state and federal trial and appellate courts. He graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1985 and the University of Notre Dame in 1977. He served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Active in the Wilkes County community, he was an assistant District Governor of the Rotary, a director of the Washington-Wilkes Chamber of Commerce, past president of the Wilkes Chapter of the American Cancer Society. He is a member of St. Joseph's Catholic Church.