Demetrios John "Mitch" Skandalakis is an American lawyer and former Republican Party 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. Early life and education Skandalakis is the son of a Greek immigrant, Dr. John Skandalakis, who resisted the German occupation of Greece during World War II and fought in 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 Georgia Board of Regents. Skandalakis graduated from Emory University, where he founded a chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. He then graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1982 and joined the law firm of conservative Georgia congressman Pat Swindall. Career Skandalakis ran for a seat in the Georgia State Senate in 1988 but lost. In 1991, he became more active in Fulton County, Georgia's most populous county, as an anti-tax activist. 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. 1998 campaign for lieutenant governor In 1998, he hired former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed as his campaign manager and ran for lieutenant governor of Georgia as a right wing conservative. While earlier he had "good relations with Atlanta's gay and lesbian community," he needed stronger Christian credentials to win the primary; hiring Reed was thought to provide those credentials. Skandalakis placed first among five candidates in the Republican primary, then defeated conservative State Senator Clint Day in