Stormy Bost: “I don’t want anyone in office who is benefiting from the poisoning of the people in their town.”
“He has described financial conflicts of interest as a defining symptom of a broken political system… Yet his financial disclosure forms show he and his wife hold up to $80,000 in stock in a company that is simultaneously fighting lawsuits from constituents in his own state, spending heavily on lobbyists to limit those constituents’ legal rights, and publicly denying responsibility for a health crisis that has raised cancer rates throughout Northwest Georgia.”
New damning reporting from Courier Georgia reveals that failed, fired and loser former Tennessee football coach and GOP U.S. Senate candidate Derek Dooley owns tens of thousands of dollars in Mohawk Industries stock, a flooring company that discharged “poisoned” wastewater laced with PFAS, “or forever chemicals,” into the region’s rivers and streams.
The reporting reveals that Dooley is actively profiting off of a company that was the subject of two major AJC and PBS investigations detailing the ways that the residents of Northwest Georgia have had their health degraded and their communities damaged by “forever chemicals.”
“Derek Dooley is campaigning on a platform to end financial conflicts of interest while he is lining his own pockets through a company that’s poisoning Northwest Georgians,” said Democratic Party of Georgia Senior Communications Advisor Devon Cruz. “Dooley’s hypocrisy only further proves that he cannot be trusted to fight for Georgians and he doesn’t belong anywhere near the United States Senate.”
Courier Georgia: GOP Senate Hopeful Derek Dooley Owns Stock In A Company That Poisoned Northwest Georgia
By Colleen Hamilton | May 11, 2026
KEY EXCERPTS:
- Stormy Bost moved to Calhoun, Georgia, when she was 5 years old.
- Twenty-five years later, the symptoms arrived without warning. She suddenly gained sixty pounds. Every time she took a shower, a painful rash spread across her skin in a pattern her doctor called a “Christmas tree rash.” She developed a goiter on her thyroid. […]
- At the center of the nightmare is Mohawk Industries, one of the world’s largest flooring companies, which is headquartered in Northwest Georgia.
- For decades, Mohawk discharged wastewater laced with PFAS into the region’s rivers and streams. The chemicals, which were used to make carpets stain-resistant, are so durable they can take centuries to break down.
- Scientists have linked them to thyroid disease, reduced fertility, and elevated risks of several cancers.
- Now, as communities across the region fight for accountability, Courier Georgia has found that Derek Dooley, a Republican candidate for US Senate, holds tens of thousands of dollars in Mohawk Industries stock, according to his federal financial disclosure forms.
- The disclosure, which candidates are required to file, reveals that Dooley owns between $16,002 and $65,000 in Mohawk stock, while his wife owns between $1,001 and $15,000.
- The revelation has raised pointed questions from residents who say the carpet industry has spent years using its economic and political influence in Georgia to avoid responsibility, and who worry about what it means to send a Mohawk stockholder to Washington.
- “I’m a person who gets disgusted when money talks more than human rights and wellbeing,” said Bost.
- Dooley […] entered the Republican primary in August 2025 […]. He has never held elected office and has campaigned explicitly as a political outsider who will put Georgia first and push back against Washington’s entrenched interests.
- Among the planks of his platform is a pledge to ban stock trading by members of Congress. He has described financial conflicts of interest as a defining symptom of a broken political system.
- Yet his financial disclosure forms show he and his wife hold up to $80,000 in stock in a company that is simultaneously fighting lawsuits from constituents in his own state, spending heavily on lobbyists to limit those constituents’ legal rights, and publicly denying responsibility for a health crisis that has raised cancer rates throughout Northwest Georgia.
- Courier Georgia reached out to the Dooley campaign with detailed questions about his Mohawk stock holdings, whether he plans to divest or place his investments in a blind trust if elected, and whether he believes he can advocate for PFAS-affected communities while holding a financial stake in one of the companies those communities are fighting in court.
- The campaign did not respond. […]
- Mohawk has consistently maintained that it did not know their products were dangerous, saying it relied on assurances from its chemical suppliers, 3M and DuPont. The carpet company says it followed all state and federal regulations.
- But reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and PBS has found that the picture is more complicated. Documents suggest that by 2008, at the latest, Mohawk had access to data showing PFAS were moving through local waterways at significant concentrations. They were also made aware of studies that showed PFAS caused higher rates of cancer in animals.
- But Mohawk did not stop using the chemicals until 2019, more than a decade later. In court filings, 3M and DuPont have argued that it was the carpet industry, not the chemical suppliers, that ultimately put PFAS into the waters of Northwest Georgia.
- “They knew,” said Dolly Baker, a Calhoun resident whose blood was found to contain PFAS at roughly 260% the national average. “Maybe not in the beginning, but at some point they knew it was toxic and they continued to let it run off into the water.” […]
- For Bost, whose own children cannot swim in the rivers she was raised in, that means one thing: “I don’t want anyone in office who is benefiting from the poisoning of the people in their town.”