How Georgia Flipped Blue 🍑
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Description
✊🏾 The Ten News goes deep into the Georgia Senate runoffs to kickoff our celebration of Black History Month. 🗳 Why was this runoff election such a huge deal? What was it like to be in Georgia while the Senate runoff elections were happening? Podcast producer and Atlanta resident Jaime Albright joins us to help really get a sense of the history made in Georgia. 🍑 When did the peach become the official state fruit of Georgia? 🥧 Plus! what happens at the Georgia Peach Festival every year?
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✊🏾 Check out 5 ways you can celebrate Black History Month virtually in 2021
🍑 Go on an audio adventure through Georgia's historic flip, and listen to Gaining Ground: The New Georgia
🗳 Get to know Stacey Abrams the woman many people say is responsible for getting Georgia to blue
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Transcript
Various Voices: [00:00:00] Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Bethany Van Delft: [00:00:05] Are you ready for a deep dive into an exciting and historic moment that just happened a few months ago? I'm Bethany Van Delft and this is a special, Deep Dive edition of The Ten News.
This Deep Dive is part of our celebration of Black History Month and is inspired by January's Senate run-offs in Georgia, which saw historic voter turnout and sent the first Black Senator from the state to Congress.
To take us deeper into Georgia's history-making election. I went to our Ten News political correspondent, Pamela Kirkland. Okay, Ten'ers, time to dive in!
Hey Pamela! So all eyes were on the state of Georgia in January. Why was this run-off election such a huge deal? And what was it like to be there while it was happening?
Pamela Kirkland: [00:01:12] Yes. So there was quite a focus on the Senate elections and these two run-off races in Georgia. If you remember from my report on the day of the elections, they were important because whether Democrats or Republicans would have control of the Senate, all came down to these two seats.
They were the final races in the 2020 election cycle, the battle for the two Senate seats in Georgia. With 4.4 million votes cast, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are the first Democrats to win a U.S. Senate election in the state since the year 2000. So we wanted to talk to someone who had a front row seat to all of the action happening on the ground, to get the scoop on what made these elections so important.
News clip: [00:02:02] "Can you all hear me all the way out of here? Give it up for the Reverend Raphael Warnock."
Jaime Albright: [00:02:09] My name is Jaime Albright. I'm a producer at Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta and Tenderfoot is a podcast and TV company.
Pamela Kirkland: [00:02:20] Jaime followed the Senate runoffs as a producer for a podcast called Gaining Ground. We asked her what it was like to cover such a closely watched election.
Jaime Albright: [00:02:29] So that was actually really exciting just to actually be on the ground and meet the candidates and experience the excitement and the energy in Georgia was really, really, it was, I would feel very lucky to kind of witness history firsthand. Um, and this race was really important because, um, in order for President Biden, to be able to pass laws and policies. He needs to have that support of the Senate. And then having two Democratic senators is how he's going to be able to pass those things. And so it was really an important race and a lot of people didn't realize the importance. I found that out kind of being on the ground. Um, and so it was great to be able to see the candidates, share that information with young people, all different kinds of people, but especially educating young people about the importance of that race.
Pamela Kirkland: [00:03:21] And now we have the results. Uh, so two Democratic senators from Georgia for the first time in a very long time. And a lot of it seems to be due to the youth vote.
Jaime Albright: [00:03:32] What I loved hearing from the young voters, one young lady said to me, "I'm voting because I'm mad. I'm tired of people saying our generation doesn't care about this country."
She said it with so much passion. I just loved it. I think that it was just messaging to young people from both sides that their voice matters in every single election. Um, what I love about some of the organizations too, is they're telling young people, once you graduate from high school, sign up, be on your local school board, run for office.
You don't have to be 45 or 50 years old for you to make a difference. So just encouraging young people to not only vote, but be part of the process in this country. Be part of democracy and, you know, do your part. And it isn't about what side you're on. It's just about making that choice for yourself and then casting your vote and maybe running for office
Bethany Van Delft: [00:04:37] Wow. It sounds like such amazing performers and celebrities showed up for those events. Did all those rallies help get out the vote?
Pamela Kirkland: [00:04:45] They did, but not just the rallies. There were tons of get out the vote organizations on the ground working to educate and motivate all voters across Georgia. Here's Jaime talking about those efforts.
You followed the candidates on both sides. What kind of campaign events were they holding? Because as you know, we're still in the middle of a pandemic.
Jaime Albright: [00:05:07] Yeah. So we're still in the middle of a pandemic. Um, and each candidate had individual events as well as shared events. We attended concerts directed at the youth.
They were so much fun. Um, if you're from Georgia, they, we have a lot of history here when it comes to music. And so there were rappers present, Young Jeezy, and the mayor of Atlanta, Ne-Yo performed, um, President Biden came to town for the Democratic candidates. Um, some other things they did was go to rural areas in Georgia to kind of get the vote out to people in those communities.
Um, they really were on this bus tour all over Georgia. So we attended lots of those events. Um, for the Republican candidates, it was actually very difficult to get information and we were really concerned about telling both sides of the story. And so we finally ended up being able to attend an event in rural Georgia.
News clip: [00:06:07] “I have one question for you. Are you ready to show America that George is a red state.”
Jaime Albright: [00:06:14] And those events were very different than the Democratic events? Um, a lot more serious. Um, the messaging was much more hold the line. You have to stand up against this.
Pamela Kirkland: [00:06:26] Part of this was, you know, the parties, but it was also reaching groups that may be don't vote as much, or maybe never voted in an election.
And I know you spoke with someone from, um, a group focused on turning out the Latino vote that really spent a lot of time knocking on doors and talking to people.
Jaime Albright: [00:06:46] So a big part of the push, um, for especially the democratic candidates was to reach voters. You had not reached in the past. And those verdict voters were Latino voters, Asian-American voters, um, and people within the Black and Brown communities.
And so we did speak to people in all of those different camps, kind of to talk about their strategy. One thing we heard was how important it was to reach people in their, in their language, literature that was in their native language. So people understood what was happening and not only that, but for people to understand the importance of the Senate race, because some of these people either never voted before or voted for the president. And they were like, why are we voting again? Um, so they knocked doors, they text messaged. Um, so all of these organizations did a really great job on that in Georgia. Um, The New Georgia project is one that focused on, um, the young Black vote. They knocked millions of doors. I mean, it's just amazing the amount of work on the ground here in Georgia.
Pamela Kirkland: [00:07:47] Jamie, thank you so much for joining us.
Jaime Albright: [00:07:50] Thank you. I appreciate it.
Bethany Van Delft: [00:07:52] The youth vote made a big difference this year. And even though you Ten'ers need to wait a few more years before you can vote in an election, there are other ways to participate and be engaged with what's happening in our government.
And guess what? Listening to The Ten News totally counts.
While we're talking about Georgia, did you know that the peach became the official state fruit in 1995? Georgians love their peaches and every year at the Georgia Peach Festival, accrue of bakers mix the world's largest peach cobbler. The colossal dessert measures 11 by five feet and is around eight inches deep.
It takes 75 gallons of peaches and five hours to make. Wow. Holy guacamole. Festival goers are encouraged to bring their own containers, to take home as much of the cobbler as they can carry with them. "Give me everything you got." Unfortunately, the festival was canceled in 2020 because of, you guessed it, the pandemic, but there is always 2021.
Wear your masks, social distance, and get the vaccine when its time. Millions of peaches, peaches for me, millions of peaches, peaches for free.
Time is up. That's the end of The Ten for today, but you can catch new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Ten News is a co-production of Small But Mighty Media in collaboration with Next Chapter Podcasts and distributed by iHeart Radio. The Ten News writing team is led by Editorial Director Tracy Crooks with contributions from Pamela Kirkland.
The Creative Producer is Jenner Pascua. Marketing is led by Jacob Bronstein with social media and web support by Stephen Tompkins. Editing and sound design by Pete Musto under the production direction of Jeremiah Tittle. Executive producer Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan round out the team.
If you have questions about the show, a story idea or a fun fact you want to share, email us at hello at the ten news.com. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review The Ten News on Apple podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Bethany Van Delft and thanks for listening to The Ten News.
Now go find your something yummy peaches, millions of peaches...
