Young Democrats of Georgia mobilize voters to flip state blue again in Senate races: ‘This ain't done yet’
For the Young Democrats of Georgia, President-elect Joe Biden’s trip to the Peach State on Tuesday to stump for Democratic Senate hopefuls Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock is a testament to all it has accomplished in recent years. Biden was the first Democrat to win the state since 1992, and now there's a chance to send two party members to the Senate from a state that had been solidly Republican for decades.
Video Transcript
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JAYLAN SCOTT: I think the biggest lesson that we learned is our democracy can work. And it pretty much does work because when everybody's mad, when everybody is tired of something, we do have the power to fire whoever was in office. And I got to see that firsthand. And so for me, that led me to be inspired and more motivated heading to the runoffs.
My name is Jalylan Scott. And I am the executive vice president of the Young Democrats of Georgia. We know that this election is very, very important. Georgia hasn't liked blue since, like, 1992. So just being able to flip the state for Joe Biden is definitely a huge accomplishment. And so I think leading up to the January 5 election, one thing that we have to really sit and realize is that the balance of the Senate is actually controlled by whatever happens on January 5.
So John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock both have to win for us to have a 50-50 tie where VP Harris can break the tie. And that's super, super important. And so right now, it's like all eyes and all the [INAUDIBLE] here in Georgia, for the most part.
I mean, in the past, we really haven't had the infrastructure to do everything we want to do. But in this election cycle, it's completely different. We've been able to raise a bunch of money in that sense, establish like a full-blown [INAUDIBLE] plan that allows every young person-- like, if you want to get involved, if you want to do something, if you want to be mobilized during this election cycle, you have the ability to be able to do that.
So we're looking for phone bankers, text bankers. And we want to be able to do more in-person canvassing and stuff. But we really have to really think on that since COVID. But really, the big idea behind this is like, if you don't have a laptop, if you don't have a phone, if you don't have access to technology, the Young Democrats of Georgia, we want to be able to get that to you.
In 2016, we knew how Donald Trump was. We expected this to happen. He knows no loyalty. It just so happened that Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger just are martyrs of Trump gangs for the most part. So we're going to let them eat themselves up alive.
But one thing that we are really, really realizing is that just because those Trump supporters, those diehard Trump supporters who would be at the Capitol every other day now, protesting and screaming and stuff, they lost here in Georgia last time. But I think the good bit of majority of the people who actually flipped Georgia, we definitely have the majority of thought here.
So people can think and they can scream all they want and all that different type of stuff. But at the same time, the majority of people voted for Joe Biden here in Georgia.
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I'm 21. My voting for the first time was in 2018. So my first big disappointment will Stacey Abrams losing the governor's race. And so I remember in that time, the excitement was super, super high. It was wild. We knew that Stacey was going to flip Georgia. But it didn't happen. And it's very discouraging in that sense, especially being able to be a part of the people who worked to try to make it happen and being involved on the ground level.
But I think that that was more of a sign of maturity. Like, hey, we need to be a little bit more humble about this. This ain't done yet. It's just all the more work to do.
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