Pod Save America - Introducing 'Gaining Ground: The New Georgia' (episode 1)

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Our new podcast, “Gaining Ground: The New Georgia” is a co-production of Tenderfoot TV and Crooked Media. Episode 1: Wins and LossesAs Georgia gears up for another Election Day, we take a look back at the significance of the 2018 Governor’s race that vaulted Stacey Abrams and Georgia politics onto the national stage.If you liked episode 1 of Gaining Ground: The New Georgia, you can listen to episode 2 right now wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and find episode transcripts at gaininggroundpodcast.com

When she laid out her vision, this idea that we were going to add a million people to the voter rolls, I tell people I had 33 reasons why this would never work. She had like 34 reasons why it absolutely would work. And she was right, as usual. This is Nse Ufa, CEO of the New Georgia Project, talking about a chance encounter in 2014. A mutual friend said, you know, are you coming home for the holidays? And I was like, yes, of course. She said, I would love for you to meet this state rep.

Her name is Stacey Abrams. She's doing some incredible things. And I think you guys need to connect. And I was such an asshole. Like, I don't, I'm really coming home to hang with my family. I don't really need any new friends. Like, there's just a lot, you know. And then she was like, no, you guys should really have brunch.

And I was like, well, you should have led with that. Of course I'll have brunch with this random state representative because that is the national pastime in Atlanta. We had brunch on New Year's Day in 2014. I had packed my truck by August, drove the 24 hours from Ottawa in Canada, where I was living at the time, back home to Atlanta. And now we are here where we are today.

Today, Georgia looks very different than it did on New Year's Day in 2014. Surrounded by five states that went red, Georgia's a blue state for the first time since 1992. To understand this shift, journalists, pundits, and everyday Americans have rightfully reflected on Georgia's 2018 gubernatorial election. Hello. On September 18th, thousands of Georgians began casting absentee ballots, determined to lift their voices in the democratic process of electing our leaders for the next two years, the next four years. A few weeks later, more than two million Georgians in precincts around our beloved state, anxious and excited to express their patriotism through the fundamental act of voting. On November 16th, 2018, former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, Stacey Abrams, was set to end her bid for governor. She had just narrowly lost the bid to become the first Black woman to be elected governor in the U.S.

Republican Brian Kemp, who was also the Secretary of State at the time, overseeing the very election in which he was also a candidate, had won. For these millions of Georgians, the act may have proven tedious and hard, but they had no doubts their votes would be counted. However, this year, more than 200 years into Georgia's democratic experiment, the state failed its voters. You see, despite a record high population in Georgia, more than a million citizens found their names stripped from the rolls by the Secretary of State. Abrams admitted defeat, but she refused to concede. Instead, she used her speech to

criticize the man she previously referred to as the architect of voter suppression. This speech, this race, and this candidacy would shift Georgia and impact American politics for years to come. Parents stood in the fitful rain in four-hour lines, watching as less fortunate voters had to abandon democracy in favor of keeping their jobs and collecting a paycheck. Under the watch of the now former Secretary of State, democracy failed Georgia. Georgians of every political party, every race, every region, again. From Tenderfoot TV and Crooked Media, this is Gaining Ground, the new Georgia. In this limited series podcast, we'll tell the story of this historic moment, from how Georgia went blue and what took so long,

to the upcoming Senate runoff and what's next once we know the results. I'm your host, Rembert Brown. Where was I the last time Georgia went blue? It was 28 years ago. 416 Matthewson Place. Okay, where do you live? In Georgia. What part of Georgia?

Matthewson Place. I'm not a Georgia. Do you know how to count to 100? That's right. 416 Matthew a kid, you're like... Do you know how to count to 100? That's right. 416 Matthewson Place, Southwest Atlanta. It's a brick house less than two miles away from where my mother went to high school and where I first swung a tennis racket. Only a few turns away from streets that make you feel something if you're from Black Atlanta. Ben Hill, Cascade, Beecher, MLK, Abernathy, Benjamin E. Mays.

I took to local politics early. I wrote a letter to then-Mayor Bill Campbell when I was 10 and tacked it on a bulletin board, hoping he'd walk by and see it. Six years later, when then-Mayor Shirley Franklin came to my high school, the Paideia School, she asked the student body who was interested in public service. I raised my hand, and she actually called on me, asking what job I'd like to pursue. Yours, I said. That dream didn't exactly pan out, but I stayed close, becoming a journalist that went to Ferguson in 2014, Selma in 2015, and by 2016 was covering the presidential election. Growing up, I'd always heard the phrase, there's Atlanta, and then there's Georgia. I'd listen to adults talk about the prospect of Georgia flipping

every state and national election my entire life. But when it came down to it, I was used to Georgia being called for Republicans by dinnertime. But this year, not only has Georgia flipped blue, but the two Georgia Senate races are headed to runoffs and will decide the balance of power in Washington. NPR estimated that about 158 million Americans voted in this year's general election, 20 million more than in 2016. With 66.5% of eligible voters mailing in ballots or turning out at the polls, voter turnout was the highest it's been since 1900. Even outside of Georgia, this election was historic in many ways.

Turning back now to our election coverage over the past three weeks, we have seen record early voting here in Georgia, and it is not expected to slow down today. Good morning to you, Michael. I just want to underline something here. I have lived in this state for more than 20 years. And if Joe Biden is able to win this state, he will have accomplished something that we rarely see here. It's official. Georgia has certified Joe Biden as the state's 2020 winner after hand counting nearly five million ballots. The Trump campaign has until Tuesday. When we started asking people why they thought Georgia flipped blue, more often than not, the answer was Stacey Abrams, who has become a patron saint of voting rights since her 2018 loss. But there are two things that Stacey Abrams has continuously reminded us of since this year's general election.

The first is that flipping Georgia blue is not something that happens overnight, over months, or even over a year. It takes years of collective effort, fighting on many fronts. The second is that this wasn't her fight alone. I think that the work of organizing is organizing people and organizing resources to address an issue. And I say issue, not necessarily in the negative way, but what is of importance? What are your hopes for yourself, for your family, for your community? What are your fears and concerns for yourself, for your family and your community? Again, this is Nse Ufa from that story about thinking Stacey was crazy and never turning down brunch. I am the CEO of the New Georgia

Project and the New Georgia Project Action Fund and the founder of the New South Super PAC. New Georgia Project is a non nonpartisan civic engagement organization. We're probably best known for having registered half a million young people and people of color to vote in all 159 of Georgia's counties. The work of the New Georgia Project is year-round, right? 365. We are party to dozens of lawsuits, thousands of memes, all a part of our organizing to build a better Georgia, to build a better country. But elections are only opportunities for us to test the power that we're building,

that we're constantly building power. And so Leader Abrams' election was a big opportunity to test our power, but it was also an opportunity to stress test Georgia's election system. And the truth of the matter is that voter suppression was very much alive and well, and we'd been talking about it for quite some time. And people, particularly like the national press, ignored it. Like, no one cared. I spent the better part of 2017 and 2018 talking about all of the weaknesses in Georgia's elections infrastructure and talking about all of the ways that white Republicans steal votes and mute or neutralize this sort of voter enthusiasm, and no one wanted to cover it. They started covering it around Halloween of 2018,

a couple of days before the general election. And even then, it was only covered in the context of, is Brian going to count every vote? And by Brian, she means then Secretary of State Brian Kemp. The person that's the chief elections officer who's supposed to ensure the integrity of the election was also a candidate at the top of the ticket. People were questioning whether or not that was going to have an impact. Of course it was. It allowed people to see in real time what modern day voter suppression looked like. I think, too, it radicalized a whole new generation of young voters who are like democracy defenders

and democracy crusaders. We got to register 18,000 18-year-olds in 2018. It was a boom. It was an explosion. Most of them wanted to vote for Stacey Abrams. And then they saw their votes basically being invalidated. And they have become some of our most vocal, aggressive, loyal volunteers. So now, the folks that were born in 2001, 2002, and they were voting for the first time in these presidential elections, they've seen themselves flip a state.

They are on their way to flipping control of the United States Senate. Sort of connecting the dots between the vote and the change that they want to see. Like there's no amount of focus grouped messaging that we could have done that connects the dots in the minds of a new voter the way flipping a state has and the voter the way Flipping Estate has and the way the entire country is talking about Georgia. They know their vote is powerful, and that's going to have implications for elections to come. Even though she didn't become Georgia's governor in 2018, Stacey Abrams still wanted to make an impact.

Frustrated by the results of an election she believed was largely impacted by voter suppression tactics, she launched the voting rights organization Fair Fight. To understand how we got here, we have to go back, beyond the most recent past, and look at the larger history of voter suppression in the South. Well, I grew up in the South. I was born in 1949. Obviously, if you do the math, you realize, hmm, in 1954, when Brown versus Board came down, which was all about school desegregation, he was just about to enter the first grade. desegregation, he was just about to enter the first grade. I was in Alabama and Alabama resisted. It wasn't until I was a junior in high school that we

desegregated. By the time I've landed my first job in journalism, voting rights was just sort of the most pervasive topic. Couldn't be a reporter in Mississippi without covering voting rights any more than you could be a reporter in Iowa and not cover agriculture. My name is Hank Klibanoff, and I teach at Emory University. I'm in the creative writing program, and I am here, I'm sure, because I teach this course called the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project. Hank is here for that reason and about 20 more. He's won a Pulitzer, a Peabody, and is the former managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

a Peabody, and is the former managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It's an examination of unpunished, racially motivated killings in Georgia history. The efforts were legion, first of all. They were constant. They were ongoing. White people who were satisfied with the status quo did not want African Americans to have the vote. did not want African Americans to have the vote. And community after community in the South, county after county after county was heavily, predominantly Black. I mean, you had counties, Holmes County, Mississippi is 76% Black. And there are 12 registered voters who are Black. That's why white people didn't want to give it up, because they would lose.

And Uncle Charlie wouldn't have been sheriff for 32 years, wouldn't be sheriff anymore. And Uncle Billy, he wasn't going to be a county commissioner anymore. And if Uncle Billy is not the county commissioner, then, you know, where's Aunt Reba going to work? And of course, I don't know if it's an underlay, an overlay, I think it's an all-around lay, a fear. That was demagogic fear. That was fear that was whipped up by the politicians who wanted to win election and to hold on to their office. And that's what they learned to do. You needed to have somebody you could bully. In the early years, I mean, there were some really offensive things done in the 50s.

Not redistricting for racial purposes isn't offensive. But, you know, you've heard the stories of the county registrars who would sit at a table on the other side of Black people trying to register to vote, and there'd be a jar of jelly beans there and say, okay, can you guess how many jelly beans are in this? That was the technique. Or to recite sections of the Constitution backwards from memory, and they would just laugh and laugh and laugh. And I think about how when the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was created by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and they go into the South, they're holding a bunch of hearings.

And there was one, and I think this was in Jackson, in which they had some county registrar from a rural county. He's just talking about, here's how we do it. You know, if they can't read, then we can't have them register. And, you know, somebody on the Civil Rights Commission, I think, handed over a piece of paper to him. Said, okay, would you mind reading the following? He couldn't. He couldn't. So we shouldn't be shocked now when people say things that we think are so obviously going to be viewed by everyone as either dissembling or just an outlight fabrication or a real twisting of things. You know, because I'm sure that registrar was able to go back to that county and get easily reelected after that.

There was no shame in those techniques. in those techniques. And that's, I mean, the poll tax is almost mild compared to those sorts of things that were designed to humiliate people. So when I'm coming of age as a young reporter, it would be things like moving certain offices from being elective to being appointed. Shutting polling places without notice,

you know, on election day. Making people stand outside in the rain when there was, you know, a gym that they could go seek shelter in. I mean, anything to discourage black people from voting. I cannot emphasize enough how purposeful it was. Okay, these weren't just, oh, what a coincidence, we happen to think of a strategy, come up with a strategy, because we don't have enough poll workers, or this, that, and the other.

This was craftiness. And there was a toolbox. There was a toolbox of techniques to use. there was a toolbox of techniques to use. Very effective. The people who would do that are a little sharper than they used to be. They're more media savvy. When our governor, Brian Kemp, was then running for governor, and he's the Secretary of State, there's a county down near these counties that I do my podcast and my civil rights cold cases on, Randolph County.

The last minute, they close all these polling places. And every one of them, to my memory, most of them or all of them were in African-American neighborhoods. You know, it was so blatant. And they said, no, no, no, that's not what we had. You know, we're trying to consolidate. And they reversed themselves, you know, because they got caught.

But guess what? How many times are people not being caught? I've really been politically active since I was a teenager. I mean, I loved, I've always loved politics. Back then, though, I was batting for the other team. The first campaign I actually remember volunteering for was Newt Gingrich. It's kind of cliche, but I saw Obama on Oprah. And I went and purchased both of his books and read them.

And I was like, huh, I kind of feel the same way that this guy does. I kind of agree with a lot of stuff that he's saying, but it was something that I had never really considered. This is Tamara Stevens of Roswell, Georgia. She's been a volunteer and organizer for decades. In recent years, she's helped mobilize thousands of women in the metro Atlanta area. of Roswell, Georgia. She's been a volunteer and organizer for decades. In recent years, she's helped mobilize thousands of women in the metro Atlanta area. So I did a lot in 2008. I actually ended up being asked to be a surrogate

for the Obama campaign. They would send me to go and speak country club of the South men's groups and that kind of stuff. Because I spoke fluent Republican. So in 2012, I did a little bit more. In 2016 for Hillary, I did nothing. Nothing.

I'm embarrassed to say that, but I think like myself, like a lot of other women and men, women and men, we just took it for granted that there's no way that this buffoon is going to beat the most qualified person to ever run for president. It was shocking. And so when I was up in New York on election night in 2016 at Javits Center and we saw the returns going in, it was devastating. When I got back to Atlanta the day after the election that night, we kind of crawled up into the fetal position and cried and worried. And then all of a sudden, we had a special election here in Georgia, thanks to Trump, you know, nominating Tom Price. It gave us a place to focus our energy. Congressman Tom Price had been nominated to lead the Department of Health

and Human Services. Running to replace him in a special election was a candidate named John Ossoff, someone all eyes would turn to yet again in 2020. It was a jungle election, so there was, It was a jungle election, so there was, I think there was eight or nine candidates. He came very, very close to getting over that 50% threshold in the initial election. And that was actually the first time that we noticed there might be some irregularities with Georgia's voting. But he ended up going into a runoff with Karen Handel. Karen Handel was, you know, a Republican stalwart. Like she had been around forever. She had been Secretary of State. Very well known. We were just all thrown into the fire. It was an amazing experience, but it was exhausting. And John came so close, so, so close.

Unfortunately, Karen Handel won. And John grew so much during that campaign. And it's been amazing to watch the transformation in him from 2017 now to this Senate race in 2020. Just to watch how he has matured and is just a great, great candidate. And I think he'll be a fantastic senator. But during that time, it allowed us to build an infrastructure that prepared us in 2018. Next person to run for that seat and challenge that seat, which was our now Congressman Lucy McGrath. So Lucy is now in that seat, which is amazing, considering it is the seat that was once held by Newt Gingrich.

the seat that was once held by Newt Gingrich. As Tamara mentions, Lucy McBath, a former flight attendant, managed to flip Georgia's 6th District following Ossoff's defeat. Her victory signaled that Democrats were gaining ground in Georgia's historically Republican suburbs. Crooked Media interviewed McBath in 2018 as she was beginning her campaign. I say that my neighborhood is one of those old-fashioned neighborhoods where, you know, all the people that I live among, we know their names. Jordan really liked living in Marietta. He really was a leader among his friends. We would have discussions about who he was going to be,

and I'd always say, Jordan, I see you as an activist. I see you as somebody in the community. I see you as someone standing up for a cause. McBath's son, Jordan, was killed on the day after Thanksgiving in 2012 when a 45-year-old white man fired 10 shots into his car at a gas station after complaining that Jordan and his friends were playing loud thug music. Jordan Davis was 17 years old. I just remember screaming, crumbling on the floor. Everything went black, and I just started screaming. I remember hearing this wail come out of me, something so ugly that I didn't really

think it was coming from me. But the fact that everything I tried to protect Jordan from, every fear that I had, you know, that one day he would, you know, be hit by a car or be in an accident or get in a fight or all those things, everything came down on me at that one very moment. Jordan's death and the subsequent response helped motivate McBath to run for office. It just began to dawn on me that everything that my father and my mother worked for, all those experiences had probably, without my knowing, prepared me for what I believe God was calling me to do now. And that's the reason why I started speaking out about the gun culture. Why were our legislators not talking about these tragedies? Why were they not working to protect the people that put them in office? Why was the clergy silent? In order to change the culture, people need to hear me because I'm not a number, I'm not a

statistic, but I'm a real human being that can tell you earnestly and honestly what this devastating culture looks and feels like. This is me carrying on the mantle of my father and my mother. All the work they did in the civil rights movement to make sure that people had equality and access to everything that, you know, democracy is supposed to afford us in this nation, that I now get to carry on their mantle. And I kept thinking how proud they would be of me, how proud Jordan would be.

I think that sometimes people have felt like they didn't have a voice or people have felt disengaged. For whatever their reasons, they believe that maybe the politics didn't speak to them. People are anxious. They're afraid. They're concerned about their futures. I think that the people that are standing up now are willing to fight on behalf of their futures. I think that the people that are standing up now are willing to fight on behalf of their communities. We're not career politicians. Most of us haven't been trying to figure out

for all of our lives how to be in office, but we've decided to stand up and to fight for our communities. Lucy McBath wasn't the only person to be inspired to run for public office for the first time in 2018. This is my Gaining Ground co-host, Jewel Wicker. She's an Atlanta native and has reported on news and politics for Teen Vogue. So one of the things that really stood out about Lucy McBath's story, and I think the 2018 midterms in general, was that she was a part of an election during which women played a historic role.

was that she was a part of an election during which women played a historic role. Time reported that a record number of 117 women were sworn into Congress in 2019. And this is in comparison to the 89 women who were elected in 2016. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became one of the youngest women ever to be elected to Congress. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar also became the first Muslim women elected to Congress that year. Now, of course, this group of women varies when it comes to political leanings, even amongst the progressive Congresswomen. But it's worth contextualizing the moment during which Macbeth and even Abrams campaigns were taking place. Women were at the forefront, organizing, running, and winning. It's a trend that would continue through this year when Kamala Harris was elected as the first woman

and the first South Asian and Black woman to the role of vice president. I grew up enjoying politics, but knowing that I wanted to go to school, I wanted to become a lawyer, and that's how I wanted to serve people. This is Matthew Wilson, the state representative for House District 80 in Georgia, covering the North Atlanta suburbs of Brookhaven, Sandy Springs, and Chamblee. Being an out and proud gay Georgian, when we would have these nasty bills that popped up at the legislature, I would go down and I would testify. I'd go talk to my legislators. They would send me to talk to other legislators, try to share my story with them. And I was watching and just sort of lobbying as a citizen. Fast forward to 2016, Trump gets elected. Everyone in my world is devastated, including me. I stayed on the couch

for three days trying to figure out, what does this mean? And one of the things that I couldn't get over was that the House district where I lived had flipped from blue back to red. We had just flipped it in a special election the year before and felt that demographics were destiny and we were going to keep it blue for the foreseeable future. And lo and behold, it had flipped back to red by only 286 votes out of 24,000 votes cast. 286 votes flipped it back red. And I had to be real honest with myself. You know, I worked on campaigns before. I know what's involved. And I hadn't done a single thing to help my House candidate, who I knew personally, other than I wrote him a check and I voted for him. And so me and my friends sort of had the similar story. Well, I voted, but that wasn't enough. And that was the big takeaway for me

in 2016 is voting is not enough. You've got to do more. So fast forward a year and we're looking at 2018, looking at this particular House race. I'm like, we got to find somebody to run. So I jumped in the race. We went from 286 vote deficit to me winning by five percentage points. And fast forward two more years, I just won re-election by 18 points. In addition to me flipping my House seat in 2018, the Northern Atlanta suburbs were really ground zero for the blue wave in Georgia. That's when Lucy McBath won her congressional seat.

We flipped my House race, but we also flipped 10 other house races, mostly in the northern Atlanta arc, as you go from one end of the city to the other. To the extent that there are themes and takeaways, it's that we all went door to door and spoke to voters in person. That was a major part of what we did, was canvassing and having real conversations at people's doors with them about why they need to vote and what in particular is at stake. It's not just talking to Democrats, not just talking to Democrats who vote every election. If you do the math, there's not enough of them to win in Georgia, in particular statewide races.

We've got to talk to people who don't vote all the time, find out why they're not voting, and make sure that we're tailoring a message that speaks to them. We've got to talk to Republicans. As we've seen, Biden was able to successfully pull away enough traditionally Republican voters to kind of build this new coalition. So I think that's proof that we've got to continue talking to them and not being afraid to engage with them on the issues. Republican leaders in Georgia made national news this year for their handling or mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But this certainly isn't the first time all eyes have been on the Georgia GOP.

Last year, Republicans passed a law that would ban most abortions at six weeks. Last year, Republicans passed a law that would ban most abortions at six weeks. A federal judge blocked the law earlier this year. Issues like these likely played a major role in galvanizing voters ahead of the general election and helping to flip the state. For a lot of modern history, Georgia has sort of had an outsized impact on the dialogue and the conversation. And I think that does have something to do with how people voted in this particular election in 2020. For sure, I know people came out and voted blue because they were upset about some of the laws the legislature passed over the last two years.

I know that for a fact because I've talked to voters and they have told me that. A lot of people I talked to said, you know, well, I grew up Republican, but the more and more I see these social issues put in the middle, this anti-abortion bill or whatever the particular social issue is, to have one party who just hearkens on those time and time and time again, every election cycle, I really just want people to go back to governing. I heard that a lot. Of course, Democrats fighting against the anti-abortion so-called heartbeat bill are also governing on social issues, just in the opposite direction. This is State Representative Shelly Hutchinson, who was elected in 2018 to Georgia's 107th House

District, serving parts of Snellville, Lawrenceville, and Lilburn in the North Atlanta suburbs. Obama endorsed Hutchinson, identifying the area, a conservative stronghold, as flippable in the election. I met my husband. We got married in 96. And that's when we moved to the district that I represent now. 2006 and that's when we moved to the district that I represent now. We had our first child in 2000. When I graduated, I didn't want a nine to five. I didn't want to put her in daycare all day long. So I started a business only intended to be enough to keep me busy. So after that, I started teaching at UGA, got more active civically. I was like, why are so many seats uncontested? There was at least like 10 or 12 seats that were never, ever contested.

Every time I would vote, I was like, one day I'm just going to write my name in because I assume that's how you ran. You just write your name in because I never saw signs or people even working in this district because it was on lock. Nobody even ran against them.

I thought it would be very easy, and it, of course, was not. It was a huge, huge undertaking, very, very expensive. In Georgia, it's supposed to be a citizen legislature. But when you only pay $17,000 a year, the only citizens that can do this are people who are independently wealthy or have the most flexible schedules. And I was just lucky that I have a business. So I looked into the person who represented us for 16 years, and he was ultra conservative. That year, my district voted for Hillary by double digits, by 11%. So I was like, well, at the very least, I can give them competition. So I signed up. And as soon as I signed up, he retired.

But he convinced his neighbor to run against me. So I ran against his neighbor and I won by 18 percentage points. Pay attention to who is representing you, because in this case, the person who represented us for 16 years was not at all representative of what this district was looking for. Representative Hutchinson was elected in both 2018 and 2020. But she still can't shake the fact that this job simply isn't accessible for most Georgians. When we were in the last session, they voted to reduce our salaries.

And nobody's really in this for the money. No, no, nobody can be in this for the money. But the person who did it said this was his way of helping our budget crunch. But the flaw in that logic is when you take away 10% from nothing, you get nothing. Reduction in our pay did not even touch the budget. What it did, though, is further reduce the salary, which further restricted actual average citizens from running for any kind of office

because that reduction came in the House and in the Senate. It's just interesting being here in this seat to see kind of the thought that goes behind some of the shenanigans they pull. I heard the saying once that Democrats have to fall in love, like they have to be in love with the person that they're supporting. And Republicans just fall in line.

The only thing I can say that would help really is that everyone votes and knows who they're voting for and what they're getting when they vote for this particular person. Statistics and history tells us if everyone votes, everyone's voice is heard. Everyone has to vote and talk about it. You know, we don't talk about politics generally, but talk to your neighbors, your children. Talk to everyone about how important it is to vote. Some communities, it's not if I'm going to vote, but what time are you going to vote? And in other communities, it's like, yeah, I vote doesn't really matter. It doesn't really count.

If we're having, we're still having those conversations, that's the problem. We need all the help we can to change the culture around voting because if there's a loophole or if there is any place that people can exploit, they will. And if we don't vote, then we're going to be powerless. This story of shifting the culture around voting and flipping Republican strongholds sounds simple in hindsight, clean even. But organizers like Nse Ufot, Stacey Abrams, and the countless others who mobilize voters have been doing this work for years. They started long before our mailboxes were flooded with flyers and our phones were

inundated with texts asking us about our voting plan. Still, before November 3rd, it was unclear if any of these mobilization tactics would guarantee a victory for Democrats, especially when you consider the election that had occurred in Georgia just two years earlier. Again, Stacey Abrams after her 2018 loss. I acknowledge that former Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be certified as the victor in the 2018 gubernatorial election. But to watch an elected official who claims to represent the people in this state baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people's democratic right to vote has been truly appalling. So let's

be clear, this is not a speech of concession. We deserve a state that elects leaders who will not tolerate the erosion of our values. Fair fight, Georgia, because these votes are our voices and we are entitled to our choices, each of us. And we have always been, Georgia, at the forefront of speaking truth to whatever power may lay claim to leadership, if only for a moment. And we will win because we are Georgia. This season on Gaining Ground, the new Georgia. There are distinct times in history where the paradigm shifts. And we are living in that moment right now. As Georgia flips blue, we follow the count and the recount and the other recount.

The Secretary of State said, all right, we're going to move forward with the audit, which was essentially a hand recount. And then after that was done, Trump was allowed to request a full recount, a second recount because the margin was so close. We take you to the front lines of the political fight for two key Senate races. Hello, Warner Robins, Georgia. It's Sunday. And they placed the preacher behind a microphone. And we hear from voters like you who have mobilized to create change.

We want a fair due process through everyone. We want everyone to have an opportunity to have good health care, you know, to be able to have good-paying jobs. I am an absentee voter because of my age, and if I have to go in person, I'll do that too. We'll be right back. Tenderfoot TV. Jon Favreau and Tanya Sominator are executive producers on behalf of Cricket Media. Executive produced, written, and hosted by Rembert Brown. Written and co-hosted

by Jewel Wicker. Our lead producer is Christina Dana. Gaining Ground, the new Georgia, is produced by Jamie Albright, Mike Rooney, Matthew Pusty, Julia Beverly, Tracy Leeds-Caplan, Annie Rustin, Mike Rooney, Matthew Pusty, Julia Beverly, Tracy Leeds Kaplan, Annie Rustin, Christina Toni Schmidt, and Stephanie Booker, with additional production support from Shaniqua

McClendon and Justine Happ, edited by Christina Dana and Mike Rooney, mixed and mastered by Cooper Skinner, with additional mixing by Devin Johnson. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Chris Corcoran and the team at Cadence 13, Oren Rosenbaum and Grace Royer from UTA, Ryan Nord, Jesse Nord, and Matthew Papa from the Nord Group, and the teams at Tenderfoot TV and Crooked Media. And an extra thanks to all our guests and contributors who helped make this show possible. Check us out online

at gaininggroundpodcast.com. And for more information on how you can become politically active, check out votesaveamerica.com slash volunteer. Thanks for listening.