‘The power of our voices’: GA Democrats urge voters to go to polls as Election Day nears
Katie Garcia wants to help represent what the Democratic Party looks like in Columbus.
The 22-year-old was among those gathered in the Columbus Civic Center parking lot Thursday evening for a “Drive-In With The Democrats’ Get Out The Vote Rally.” The event featured speakers such as U.S. Senate candidates Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Congressman Sanford Bishop and others on the ballot this presidential election year.
“I just want to show my support for the candidates and sort of represent what the constituency in Columbus and Muscogee County looks like,” she said. “It’s young people like me, and women, and people of color, and queer people and all of that, is part of the constituency.”
The rally came as early voting ends Friday and droves of voters in Muscogee County already have cast their ballots. Thursday’s total hit 56,754 in early voting.
On Tuesday, Columbus’ 25 neighborhood voting precincts will be open for voting 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Those who attended the rally Thursday spoke of an urgency to vote if they want to see change take place.
Garcia believes Georgia no longer is the reliably Republican state it used to be, and Democrats have the strength now to flip it.
“We’ve seen Stacey Abrams almost win the governorship,” she said of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s Democratic challenger in 2018. “You know, we saw sort of a shift, and Muscogee County is blue, and a lot of other counties are blue, and we’ve seen sort of a rise in activism.”
This year, she’s voting in her second presidential election. In 2016, she was “cautiously optimistic” before Donald Trump won the presidency.
“I was sort of hoping for the best, and expecting the worst,” she said, adding that the past year was among the worst. “We’ve seen loss of life, and just not much hope really.”
Iris Tate, 48, and her daughter Kalin Tate, 24, came to the rally because they said they felt momentum building for change.
“We’ve always been a politically aware family,” Iris Tate said.
“I don’t think we really realized the power of our voices and our vote,” she said of women and people of color. “That’s what we’re fighting for right now.”
Kalin Tate said she has felt personally affected by Trump’s presidency because of his efforts to end the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which allows her mother’s insurance to cover her.
“Now that I’ve seen how it’s affected me and other people of color, other black women, it’s time for us finally to use our voice to make a change,” she said. “A lot of people didn’t use their voice four years ago, because we didn’t think we’d have him in office, and now we’re seeing that we have him, and we’re seeing what he’s done.”
Urgency in voting
The urgency of encouraging people to vote this year was a recurring theme in the speakers’ remarks.
“We have to get out to go to the polls in 2020 like our lives depended on it,” said Greg Countryman, the Muscogee County marshal now running for sheriff. He faces Republican Mark LaJoye.
Ossoff, who is challenging incumbent U.S. Sen. David Perdue, told supporters that Perdue treats the Senate seat like he’s entitled to it.
“This Senate seat belongs to the people, but to claim it, we’ve got to vote…. We need to vote like we’ve never voted before in the history of this state.”
Warnock, who is among 20 candidates in a special election for Georgia’s other Senate seat, referred to the brisk gusts that occasionally whipped through the parking lot. “You feel that breeze? That’s change on the way,” he said, adding it’s up to the voters to push it through.
“We must do this,” he said, “and we must do it together.”
This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 9:15 PM.