Hello, and welcome back to the North Georgia Blue Podcast produced and distributed by the Fannin County Democratic Party. I'm your host Meral Clarke and we're getting into some good trouble today with our guest, Pete Fuller, chair of the Jackson County, Georgia Democratic Party and chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia's rural caucus. Welcome to the show, Pete, we're happy to have you here.
Pete Fuller:Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Meral Clarke:Terrific. Well, Pete has been Chair of the Jackson County Democrats since 2017, and was a candidate for House District 31. In the most recent election in his role with the Jackson County Dems, they have seen an increase in visibility, funding, turnout and support over the past two election cycles and are working to continue that progress. Pete is also a husband and father to two teens, Ryan and Carter, and has been living in Jefferson, Georgia for the last 10 years. So happy to have you here. And let's talk a little bit of general background about you and how you got into politics. Have you always been a Democrat? so on so forth? Tell me about that.
Pete Fuller:I think like a lot of people, I was a fan of politics for a lot of years, I would follow it watch the news a lot. But there was never really any involvement other than just going to vote, if I remember to, if that makes sense. Sure. And basically, I think one of the good things that our former president did for us is get a lot of people off the couch, I realized that yelling at the television really wasn't doing a lot to better Mary,
Meral Clarke:except to make us feel better.
Pete Fuller:And then yeah, and even then it was I can remember driving around with WSB on and yeling at Neil Boortz, and y'all know whoever was on there. That was the wasted energy I had for years. And so after that 2016 election, I searched out the local party here in the county and started going to a couple meetings and I'm sure anybody that's working in local politics, you knows if you start showing up to meetings repeatedly, you end up getting jobs right. And that's where quickly I went up the ladder in the local party here before for the years out I'd become chair it's not hard. It's not hard No, no. Local party here is is we're a county that's been voting Republican for about 20 years now actually the Democratic party here in the county shut down in the 90s and then was restarted by a group of hardworking folks that are the elders of my party. Now I consider I'm not great friends as well at this point, but they restarted it in 2008 to help with the Obama campaign at that time. It's It's funny, because I've still got the records from the old 90s party. And it's a lot of names that you recognize in this area. Wow, that I'll just swap parties at that point and shutter the doors. Fantastic. But I got involved in and that's where we're at now.
Meral Clarke:Terrific. So that's a nice dovetail into my next question. Tell me more about Jackson County in general, your trends and growth. You also wanted to talk about the SK plant democratic changes and of course, your proximity to Gwinnett, Clarke and Hall counti s which places you in a uniq e growth spot. So tell me mo e about that. If you c n elaborat
Pete Fuller:Yeah, so Jackson County if you're a start out in Midtown Atlanta and head north up 85. You'll be in Jackson County in about an hour. We're right along that growth corridor around 85, and we've grown exponentially over the last 10-15 years, we've had something like 20 or 30,000 people move into the area, Just in that time. That's impressive. Yeah, yeah. So we bordered Gwinnett and we've seen how quickly Gwinnett has moved between, within last eight years, they've went from a 60/40, Republican county to a 60/40, Democrat. And that's been all related to their demographic changes and population changes. So I'm really hoping, and because we're going to have the growth here and part of it, I love the rural feel to the area. And I hope that we can find a way to this, something I'm passionate about is finding a way to zone and plan in this area to maintain that and learn from mistakes, and some of our our fellow counties that have gone through this change already, but we're seeing the growth already. Our main towns are Braselton, Jefferson and Commerce. Like right outside of commerce is the SK battery plant, which is since the Kia plant over in West Point, this is the largest single manufacturing facility that's been built in the state, I think ever. There's something like $2 billion, there's going into the infrastructure on this and they're hiring now to go online. That's great for the county. Yeah, something like 2600 jobs. Now with that is a lot of growth, there's going to be a lot of people that are coming in to move here to work there. But it's going to change the area. And it's going to bring in folks and when it comes to the environment, it's got it's got a plus side and a minus side. Because these are going to be making the batteries for the new F 150s that are exploding out that are battery powered. And for the environment that's great. I do worry a little bit about the the manufacturing costs and what that's going to look like when it comes to what it takes to actually manufacture those batteries, what impact that's going to have in the area. But I think overall it's going to be a good thing.
Meral Clarke:So tell me more about the demographic changes in your county because of all the people moving in, I assume.
Pete Fuller:Yeah, we are sandwiched between Hall, Gwinnett, Clarke, and then Banks over on the other side on the east. Clarke County, obviously with the university is is that's this little blue oasis there. Right. And Hall County has been quickly changing as well. And going out we just talked about with changes there. So we're seeing people moving right along that 85 corridor, or Westside precinct between the Jason Carter election for governor. And when Stacey Abrams ran, we saw a 15% bump in what Abrams got in percentage on in that West precinct. Wow, that is impressive, great. Yeah, I wish I could take any credit for that at all but I can't. This all people coming in, moving over the line from what ebbed just overflowed from that area, as I was leaving before my time doing anything with the party here, but we're reaching out to those folks. And we're building a good contact list in contact with folks that are moving in. Because we're finding folks that are moving in that are not the good ol boys that have been in Jackson County for a long time. And this area has some good ol boys. If you look at the history of this area, this was the home of the Dixie mafia back in the 60s with all the with all the murders and the bootleg in and car bombings and everything else during that time. So it's got a wild history to it. But that's here nor there.
Meral Clarke:It's different now, thankfully. Thankfully. So you had an HD 31 run, correct? Yes. And you know, there were issues surrounding Tommy Benton. Was that your opponent? Yes, he was. Apparently he had some rather major Ku Klux Klan comments and denigrated the great John Lewis, tell me about lessons learned from that race. And what came out of that.
Pete Fuller:Sure, I got into that race, basically, as a part of it was a failed candidate recruitment drive on the party. But we'd really treated it as a chance to really reach out and do some stuff as a campaign that we UK ups are a bit harder to do as a party in general. We'll talk to candidate Pete that may not talk to Chairman Pete about issues and concern catcha and Tommy in particular, we've got a lot of problematic legislators in the state. Tommy in particular, though, is different in the fact that he is been nationally known at this point as a clan apologist. This happened actually years before, where he made statements that the Klan wasn't really racist, they were just trying to make everybody act straight, and basically apologizing for him saying that they were more of a fraternal organization like the Lions Club or the American Legion or something and not a racist organization. And this is where he got in trouble the first time this is when he lost the chairmanship at least the first time he was the chairman at that time of one of the committee's I forget which one of that point he was relieved of that after an outcry from many of his own colleagues on the Republican side. I'm happy to hear that well. Then a couple cycles later, he was reelected after there was no Democratic opposition and he had one challenger here that was just put it this way. He tried but he was a little bit young for that situation and sure you know about it in the Democratic primaries, so I didn't got to skip that one. But he got reelected and then got reappointed as chairman again, Oh, my. So after that happened, I was just angry. We didn't run a candidate at that point, and I'm out myself when he was going to have opposition one way or the other next time in when was this that first time I think was in 2014 or 15. Okay. And then he was reappointed as chair, he decided to run again for re election here. The thing that is really worrisome to with these clan comments and these other comments he's made. Tommy was a teacher in the Jackson County school system for 30 years.
Meral Clarke:Oh, dear
Pete Fuller:Teaching history. So what I hear all the outcry about critical race theory, and oh God, what do we teach the children about our history? This is what I'm more way more concerned about. Exactly. And I actually got comments from folks that had been through his class that felt like they were Gaslighted, I can only imagine about their own history. These were black folks that told me that they liked him as a teacher and then realize, Oh, he was the nuts and loaded ball. Yep. So that he was not going to go on a post qualifying day came up and just there was okay, so we drove to the Capitol, he got on the ballot, and we ran a race. And we were able to talk to folks, we have to build our contact list, we were able to talk about the issues in the area, what the local party I feel like is really supposed to be doing is running races. That's our whole reason to be here. Sure. What better way to learn about how races are won, and what works and what doesn't work then to actually run the race. Exactly. It's a party building activity as much as something to win because facts are in this area right now is even if we could if we could have raised some $7 million or something and ran mailer mailer, I don't know if a ham sandwich running on the Republican Party take a poll would have won that race. Which is sad, right? But it's, it is what it is right now, we didn't get in this way overnight, we're not going to is a project. So we treat it like a project. But halfway through this race this year, Mr. Benson, he was told about somebody that sounds like to be very quiet. He basically didn't do anything. He did not go out and talk to folks. He stayed quiet. But he did pop up on local radio show. And while being asked about the change of there's a proposal about replacing Alexander Stevens bus to the US Capitol with John Lewis, this was about two weeks after John Lewis had died. And Tommy at that point, went on a long rant about how Alexander Stevens who was the vice president of the Confederacy, was a much, much more prolific and better legislator than John Lewis ever was, Oh, my goodness. And you remember that Alexander Stevens. He was the author of what's called the cornerstone speech. And this speech as vice president confederacy laid out there was no ifs, ands, or buts at the cornerstone of the Confederacy was white supremacy. This is what I was Alexander Stevens stood for. So he goes on to say that Stevens was a much better legislator, and that John Lewis really hadn't done anything but get hit on the head on Pettis Bridge, and he had been milking it ever since.
Meral Clarke:That's just vile. It's untrue, and it's vile.
Pete Fuller:Yeah. And I'll give the speaker Ralston, some credit here that within a week, he was no longer the chairman of that retirement committee any more. good. But Tommy is still in the legislature. And this is one of the people that he's seen as an embarrassment by his own party, that he's probably sitting in a broom closet up there, instead of having an office these days.
Meral Clarke:We can only hope. Yeah, yeah. But we do need to get him out of the legislature, along with Marjorie Taylor Greene and all the other horrible Republicans we have in this state who are just extremists and this spread disinformation. And how do we fight? How do we fight that disinformation?
Pete Fuller:It's difficult, really difficult. Yes, I wish I had a magic solution for how to do it. The way I approach it, though, is that basically, people can watch Fox News people can get their bad information from here on out that I've always wanted to believe at least that personal one on one interactions with people you love and trust would count more than what somebody sees on the news, right? Post COVID. And with the Q A'non stuff, there's part of me that is doubting that these days. But I like to think that that's our solution is getting back to being able to talk to folks.
Meral Clarke:Right. It's important to get the word out.
Pete Fuller:It is it is it comes down to to speaking to folks in their language. Folks here locally about issues that concern them. And that's one area that I feel like I've had some success at least because everybody likes to say that everybody on the local level is a liberal. Everybody wants the roads paved everybody wants to clean air and clean water. Everybody wants good jobs that pay good and they want to all fund the local school system lot. They all this all gets into when you're funding other stuff that people get all real tight with the money and the rage of the government spending too much. But locally, everybody wants their stuff funded and done well, of course, and that's where I feel locally here is where we have to start, especially for a party like ours like Jackson County that's not been real visible over the years. And I guess that just raising visibility in the area. I lived here for years and didn't know there was a Jackson County Democratic Party until I was able to look them up on some state website somewhere and went through three or four different phone numbers finally found someone. So one of our firs steps is really getting visibl on the internet. Getting website up there at least jus has a phone number and somebod to reach sure and talking to ou officials because what I've lso found a lot of our l cal officials tend to be ome pragmatic Republicans if hey want to get elected, they now that they need to be n a Republican primary ballot. A lot of them are not hardc re. They're not all Marjorie aylor Greene, and thankfully, lot of them just want st ff. And basically talking throug issues there and working lo ally is super im
Meral Clarke:It really is all politics being local. And you had also mentioned Hoschton in 2018. Can you talk about that the mayoral race right?
Pete Fuller:Yeah, this was in Hoschton which is the sister city to Braselton, Georgia. And this is right over on the Gwinnett County line as well. We're in 2018 we had an issue where I woke up one morning they AJC had Hoschton on the front page of the paper. And Hoschton is like 1500 people mind you.
Meral Clarke:And my apologies for mispronouncing.
Pete Fuller:Hoschton was founded by the Hosch brothers who were angry with the Braselton brothers, I believe. So you got these two towns are like right there next to each other. They literally share the same waterline. So
Meral Clarke:the Hatfields and the McCoys.
Pete Fuller:Yeah, yeah. Basically, okay. Yeah. But anyway, the whistleblower maintained that they were hiring a city manager in this position, they had four finalists, that their resumes were given to the rest of the council. The council reviewed them, but then one of the resumes disappeared when it came back up for a review. That's strange. Yeah. And when questions why that was, the mayor told the other council folks that he was Black, and she didn't think that Hoschton was ready for a Black city administrator now, and I will credit the folks that were there, because it would have been very easy to just kind of go, Oh, that was horrible. But then I don't want to deal with it and just let it go. They didn't do that. They actually got this information out. And this began a cycle of folks showing up to the city council meetings for a full year factory. Excellent, meaning something to happen. One of the other councilmen who was a ally of the mayor, when asked he I don't know why nobody to this day knows why he told the reporter this, but he's just decided to give all of his views about interracial marriage. And how seeing that seeing an interracial couple just made his blood boil. So this was two of the people on that 5 person council. And there was two other people that two women there that were literally on the local Republican board, but they were very much appalled by this. And it became a situation where we were able to meet personally, really, but as as a member of the party were we started showing up at these meetings. And this gets into where all politics is local in a nicer some strange bedfellows sometimes, yes, it was when it became obvious that the mayor was not going to resign, she just wanted to go ahead and stay there and was going to wait it out. We started looking for ways to deal with this. And I will credit the state party lawyers on this. They gave us the idea that, you know, is there an ethics area of this other city charter, and we started looking at that, and this will serve us all who actually meant for our house last year, but she was protection director at the state. And she put us on to this. I actually partnered with the then Republican chair at the time, who was a new Republican. And we ran a clearing house, basically, here are the ethics complaints come file one. And we've had 60 people come out there and file an ethics complaint against both the mayor and the council person for embarrassing the city, basically, which was against their charter. And also for not appointing people to the ethics board was supposed to review these complaints.
Meral Clarke:Of course not. Not surprised at all.
Pete Fuller:Yeah. So that we had these on books, and we ended up partnering with some other folks. And it is incredibly hard to recall a elected official in the state. Yes, we had to get petitions of half the registered voters at that time who were registered when the people were elected, then you have to get take these before judge to see if your grounds for recall, have merit. The judge can just say No, they don't and forget it. And then you have to go back and get another round of signatures. That's the process to get somebody recalled, which is why is rarely done in the state is just not Yeah, but there are a group of us and these involved Democrats, Republicans, people that just saw the hateful comments that were made by the mayor and councilman and did not want that to reflect their town. And we partnered there and I went out and many of us Democrats went out with people that identify as Republicans and we got signatures for these things. We got the signatures done, we went before the judge, we got the recall approved. And the statements originally came in the paper in March of that year, I believe, and we were finally able to force the resignation in December that year.
Meral Clarke:Congratulations. That's fantastic.
Pete Fuller:When it became obvious that they were going to get recalled out and we got two folks put on that council that are tremendous young men, and they are doing a good job there.
Meral Clarke:I am so happy to hear it. And I wish that would happen more often. But I do understand it's an onerous process. So it would take a bit of time and dedication as well. So I wanted to talk to you being in the ninth district which is largely rural as we know. We spoke with Holly McCormack who's running against MTG in her District 14th District, I believe And Holly spoke about her rural revival plan, which is all about getting the towns and cities revitalized, bringing in rural broadband, which is so important right now, and just really promoting the more rural candidates and counties. Tell us about the Rural Council in your role as chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia's rural caucus. Tell us about the role of Democrats in rural areas, how we need to learn to message and communicate and why it's so difficult, but necessary.
Pete Fuller:Of course, and I listen that interview earlier today, it was very good. I like that a lot. Thank you, Jen. Terrific. Absolutely. Right.
Meral Clarke:Yes,
Pete Fuller:That's been an issue here in my county. And we saw last year that braodband is not a luxury anymore. This is a utility just like electricity and phone service. Shouldn't be treated any different in my mind and the fact
Meral Clarke:We're just a step over dial up at this point. Yeah. Instead of any areas.
Pete Fuller:That was something that came out a lot in my areas is gotten a little bit better. But I live in downtown Jefferson. Okay. fairly new area, there are places that right around my county that are they're not even meeting the minimum standard that the FCC puts out there for what broadband is. There technically is not broadband is how slow it is a lot of areas of the state and the ninth district jump right. And we've got to do something to alleviate that. So we saw last year is not a luxury, you got kids that needed to do school. And it's a public health issue at that point when you try to transfer all these things to to the internet. And instead they have to go somewhere. Or that was a big rationale for a lot of schools opening when it may not have been the wisest choice at that point, because they just were going to have too many kids and they're going to lose because their parents didn't have internet. Exactly. And she mentioned Chattanooga as well. Chattanooga is a very interesting case, because it's a municipal broadband system. Chattanooga actually runs that system. And that's I wish that we would look at more of that service. Because just like where the water department is usually a city owned utility. That seems like a perfectly valid thing to do with a lot of our internet service as well.
Meral Clarke:What else what else do you focus on?
Pete Fuller:With the Rural Council, we're really in a in a rebuilding phase right now, we're actually going to be up I don't know if this is going to come out before the 20th. But we're going to be having a meeting then online, look up our Facebook page for more information about that, to get reorganized in preparation for 2022, we've got to look hard, and how we talk to rural counties for good reason. And I understand why the state party is tends to be very Metro-focused right now. But we've also been in a situation where, where we've tended to see rural counties through a singular lens of the white country farmer a lot of times, and growing up and down South Georgia living here, we've got the entire rainbow of folks in rural counties, they tend to get drownded out a lot of times by the loud mouth. And that tends to be the one single image that comes up through the media about what's happening in rural counties. But we've got everybody when dealing with rural counties. This is something where Stacey Abrams, I give her all the credit in the world for seeing what the problem was, and how we can actually make changes here, saw that there were a lot of folks that had been cut out of the system that were not participating because of decades of being told that they shouldn't, right. And that's something we've got to continue
Meral Clarke:And that certainly benefits the Republicans, because there's still people in our rural counties that aren't registered, don't see any reason to be registered, don't see any reason why they should care one whit about what state or local governments doing because they don't see any benefit to that. Because we've had conservatives and governments here for Democrats, Republicans, it's been conservatives over the last 40 years that have not been doing public service as well, in my mind. So yeah, they're not seeing any benefit to government. So they don't see any reason to participate in government. there's no doubt. So how do we get the vote out? In rural Georgia? How do we get more people involved and active in the process?
Pete Fuller:I wish I had the magic bullet for this, but we're gonna try it. The key is, first of all, visibile we've got to quit being afraid to be Democrats in our areas. I know myself, I was very quiet for years sitting here in Jefferson, because I was literally the only liberal I knew in the area.
Meral Clarke:And it's scary, because the far right Republicans can be quite frightening.
Pete Fuller:But also what I found out, when I finally said, To hell with it, I'm going to be who I am and talk loud, which was also feels freeing as well, because at the time, I had a job change that took me out of the County school system and working for a company remotely that isn't local here. So no longer was my employment in any way tied to someone that had power local, right? That was very freeing for me, I was able to be able to basically say what I want to do on social media and everywhere else, and guess what other people come up to you and they shake your hand like, I'm a Democrat.
Meral Clarke:They whisper it Yeah.
Pete Fuller:And with social media, it can be a horrible thing. But we've also got some little secret. Invite only Facebook groups go in now were people that I've known for years, I had no idea they felt this way. A lot of times just like politics or religion are two things you're never supposed to talk about And that's where first of all being this will make sure that people understand. We're not the only ones here. You're not on an island, there are people that see what's going on state and locally and are appalled by it. And that builds confidence to be who you are to get out. And then once you're able to say, I don't like what's going on, they can volunteer. Once you give somebody that permission to come out and talk can be open, they can volunteer, they can knock doors, they can make these phone calls. They can make these personal appeals to Yes, we got people that aren't participating. First of all, we got to reach them. We got also a lot of people that are voting Republican, because that's what granddaddy voted. That's what the dad but right? They've never sat down and really looked at this. We had a situation couple years ago where the local city school system was looking at putting guns in teachers hands. I remember that. Yeah, there was a group of us that were like, I've worked in schools. I'm pro Second Amendment, I'm for ownership for a lot of reasons. But a chaotic classroom is not the place to have a gun, I'm sorry, there's just too much going on. It would have been a disaster. And the local plan here was basically, there was no local plan. It was a one sheet proposal, they had no contact. It was bad for many reasons, basically, because it was poorly thought out and planned, of course, so we had a group of parents. So we're all like something needs to happen here. So we were meeting up regularly, we got before the school board, and they did shelve the plan. Thank goodness, I didn't happen everywhere. That happens in some local counties. On that same day, we had Sarah Riggs Amico coming in for a fundraiser that afternoon. And I just mentioned it to this group that I'm working with. And we got we got a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor coming out if anybody's interested in going to that. And half of this room is like, Oh, no, I'm a Republican, I can't get to that. And because we were all allied at that point, I did not shake that particular car. But I wanted to shake some phones. And like the reason we're fighting this locally here is because of decisions at state national level by Republicans. And that's what I think a lot of folks really have been voted on autopilot that really did look at the issues. And that's where another thing where I think, with Trump and some of the craziness that's going on right now, when you look at the January 6 stuff, and how groups of them are starting to embrace that instead of looking at it in horror, like they should be getting some folks that have been shaken awake and look at what's going on and reevaluate and stuff, we need to be ready to bring those folks in and have those conversations with folks.
Meral Clarke:And this is a problem throughout the ninth district actually. Back in 2018, the Fannin County Board of Education here in our county, they voted to arm their school personnel and it passed unanimously. So it's extremely worrisome across the entire district. And certainly education, I think is very important at this point to make sure that the folks up here who are traditionally Republican understand the difference between true conservatism in I'm thinking of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger, for true conservatives and the extremist wing of the Republican party that has taken over the entire GOP. So how do you deal with far right Republicans across the ninth district? How do you communicate with them? How do you make sure that they know that it's so important these issues?
Pete Fuller:When it comes to far right, Republicans, I think it's a waste of time, really. I think if somebody is drinking the kool aid to the point that they are injecting propaganda into their brains for hours at a time, those aren't the people to worry about. We're not going to turn somebody that's got up a multitude of Trump signs in their yard. That's something that maybe if they're your close friend, or family or something, you can have that conversation. But me as a stranger is not going to be able to do anything. It's hard in the night district. I know because of our the demographics that are here. But it didn't get this way in one cycle. And it's not going to change in one cycle. But we start now with folks that are younger, that aren't so dyed in the wool and unchangeable than they haven't like, ingrained it into part of their personality at this point. Because The Kids Are All Right. Yes, they really are. I've got two teens, their friends are great. And my kids get a lot more of this politics stuff and love their friends, do you but the kids see what's going on. They're the ones that are not racist. They're the ones that are I'm sure it's in the schools. I know it is. But they're but for the most part these kids have been going to school in Well, they've all been going to desegregated schools their entire lives, most of us have. And this is something we always have to remember to people that are above 67 or so I believe went to segregated schools. This is something that the older demographic really this was a big part of their growing up. Yes. So the kids are the kids are not near as racist or if at all, they are embracing LGBTQ people, the issues that we particularly ascribe to the hard right position. These kids look at that, and they're just horrified. So some of this is going to come to us if we're able to talk to the kids and focus on nurturing the younger folks and people that actually are persuadable. I think in Georgia in general. We spent a lot of years trying to bring back people that used to vote Democrat the switch to the Republicans in the 90s. Those people are gone. And we'd let them go and focus on actually bringing up new folks that are excitable that have energy that can maybe then they can talk to their parents and show them that, hey, this is not, not there, because we got to be visible for that. And we got to show people, hey, we are here. We're local, we don't have horns on our heads. I'm not running to the truck around to go confiscate your guns. I've got a gun and a pistol myself, like, for responsible ownership.
Meral Clarke:Liberals own guns, too.
Pete Fuller:Yes, and this is where fighting those stereotypes that we're just here to take your guns and make you gay. Like, that's what's coming out of their propaganda. And there's nothing wrong with being gay. And that's fine. But and that's what you'll see, too is like, with the Republicans, a lot of times these are the folks that are pro gay Republicans a lot of times are the ones that actually have someone close to them that is gay themselves. And this is part of the conservative mindset. And this is my little theory that basically, unless it happens to someone if you're hardcore conservative unless it happens to you, as I say that all the time, and that's where we've got to be visible, and show them that we are in your circle, we are close to you. And this is not who we are Yes, we're for responsible ownership. And this is where everybody I think more Republicans agree with this and not even though they they proclaim the Second Amendment is holy, but yeah, they don't want to crazy guy to have a gun.
Meral Clarke:I don't know, Andrew Clyde might not agree with you on that. But he is
Pete Fuller:everybody was making crazy people. He's got a motive to want this crazy people because they go by more and more and more.
Meral Clarke:Exactly. So getting younger folks involved. How is that going for you in Jefferson County, how's that working out?
Pete Fuller:There's a lot of advantages to being close to Athens for being in Jackson County. Reaching out to the youth folks is not one of them. Because most of our young folks that are in that demographic, if they're wanting to participate Democratic stuff, Tim Denson in Athens, get some water. Yeah, we're 15 minutes down 85. He had a lot more fun doing stuff with the college folks. And we don't have a college here either. So a lot of the folks that normally be active in politics tend to go off to college, and they're not right here. And that's where I have an UNG up in North Georgia's I think, Melissa Klink came out of UMG. She didn't know it started politics when they're in college. My good friend, Jamie Mitchum, who's our treasurer, he's been at UNG for a while, that's a great benefit to them. So we've been working out we've been trying to COVID actually put a hitch in our plans last year to work on getting a political clubs into the local high schools here. We were having preliminary talks with local school systems and those were going well, we would have to go in partnered with their home to the thing and basically having visability in the high schools is important. One of the former chairs, the local Republican party, here was the one say one that I partner with in Hoschton, who got ran out, I forgot to leave that part out, she got ran out of the party for partnering with me on that. But me and her had done talks in school systems, with the AP classes about what it means to be a Democrat or a local, local political party person.
Meral Clarke:That's a terrific idea that should be done everywhere across the state.
Pete Fuller:It gave me a lot of hope that the kids are all right there because they had much better questions that a lot of adults I deal with much, much better questions. And they were they were willing to have good, honest, hard discussions. They didn't always agree with me. But we had good discussions in those sessions.
Meral Clarke:That's good to know, that gives me hope.
Pete Fuller:And that's where as we come out of COVID, are actually able to, we're having our second in person meeting this week, since after a year of not. So I'm hoping we can refocus on that and get in get that going again,
Meral Clarke:Right. And I know a lot of Democrats, well I wouldn't say a lot. A few of the Democrats that I know up here are afraid of speaking out because they're worried about repercussions with their jobs and their lives and their kids and everything else. How do we address that?
Pete Fuller:And that's where I think I said before, I'm very privileged to be able to do that and work for a company that's based out of state that doesn't care.
Meral Clarke:Right. But a lot of folks aren't in that position.
Pete Fuller:And that's the difficult thing. I give folks leeway very much on that. Something else we started after I became chair was having little booths at the local festivals around. And I'm always very upfront, like you're going to be seen you're Democrat, make sure that your job is gonna be okay with that, and it's not going to hurt you in your regular life. I'm very willing to give somebody a pass if that's what's going to happen to them if they feel threatened like that, but then everybody's not. So we give those folks that are threatened like that other ways to participate. They can make phone calls anonymously, they can write postcards, they can do those things and have those discussions with people they trust that aren't going to come back on them personally. My truck is decked out with the Warnock sticker and I've had to call and Devin Pandy and everybody else's signs on my stuff for years. I've never gotten a repercussion of but I'm a white dude, right under my wife was harassed to the point we took Obama sticker off her car years ago. Now I know it happens in the area, and that's where I'd take that choice for myself. But that's I'm not going to make someone or charge somebody for not doing anything comfortable with but at the same time, we do have to be more vocal. When we can't be outspoken. We We do need. Yeah, definitely. It's uncomfortable to give those talks. It's uncomfortable to put your politics out there front and center when all you want to do is talk about how the dogs are doing. But it's important as well, especially when it comes to voting and getting people out. And especially when you're talking to folks that are like, oh, both parties are saying, well, politicians, it doesn't really matter who you vote for? Well, it does. And getting them to understand your landlord cares about politics. Your boss cares about politics. People who run things in county, definitely worried about politics. And guess what, they are very happy if you don't care about politics, because that gives them an opportunity to keep doing what they're doing.
Meral Clarke:Right. And you were recently quoted, congratulations, by the way. You and June Chris, our ninth district chair were quoted in the Georgia Recorder. I believe that's Jay Bachmann's website, and it was picked up by Georgia Public Broadcasting. And you talked about low hanging fruit. And you mentioned that statewide candidates get nibbled to death by ducks just a little bit here and there from the smaller counties. What does that mean?
Pete Fuller:So we're getting 90% of the vote of big Metro counties. Right. But this is one of those. This is an old phrase that I picked up somewhere but basically getting eaten to death little little bytes at a time, you know, we have this massive turnout the metro, but then we get counties 20 and 30, and 40,000 people that go massively the other way Exactly. And they get overwhelmed. We didn't get in this situation overnight. When it comes to the demographics and how that people vote in these different counties. And we're not going to win a lot of these places overnight either. But what we can do is just start moving the needle 2, 3, 4, 5,10 percentage points, over the next few cycles, if we can get five to 10% out of better turnout, move that from 20 to 30%. In a lot of these rural counties, we're winning massive landslides at the state level.
Meral Clarke:Exactly. That's something that the DPG certainly understands.
Pete Fuller:Yeah. And that's where I like to think that I have to like mine here because he just in our little County, we had 12,000 more democratic votes come out of Jackson County than we did in 2016. That's fantastic. The one points I forget exactly what, whatever the amount was, I need to look about thing again. But whatever the amount was, at one time, Biden was only leading that by less than what we had been able to improve our democratic votes how the count is, and if you look at the ninth district overall, we got a lot more democratic votes out. Last time, this was part of June's plan with the state as well to run these races, get candidates out there. The RNC can make national candidates into Boogeyman that everybody universally knows. The RNC wasn't running any ads against me, they weren't running any against June Chris, or any of the other awesome candidates that we had. And that gives you opportunity built to actually start a conversation fresh without having somebody envisioning the AOC with the horns on our head, you know,
Meral Clarke:Right, or just repeating the GOP talking points for that matter
Pete Fuller:If we can continue to run races even though we didn't win a those races, we had success with getting more votes out. And we keep running races locally. You know, we won't fall around when somebody is at some point. We keep running races, we keep getting more votes, just a few percentage each time. And that's how you look 15-20years down the road. We're a firm blue state at that point. And that's where we're going.
Meral Clarke:Yeah, I'd like to see that happen. I'd like to see us follow the path of Virginia. It's extremely tenuous in the South. So it's a constant battle. We can't relent. We can't give up. We have to keep going. And certainly we're not blue. yet. We have to ensure that Ossoff and Warnock win their re elections and we have to turn the House and the Senate and the governor's office of course, before that can happen. This is great. Well, it sounds like you're really coming along. And before we go, we're running out of time. But before we go, and I ask all my guests this question, tell us a fun fact about yourself something not political that listeners may not know, but would find fascinating.
Pete Fuller:I'm not any good at it, but I'm a member of the local theatre company. Oh, hey, that's great. My eldest wanted to go try out Mary Poppins when they were like six years old. Now take them to the audition and ended up with role myself at that point dancing around as a chimney sweep. Last year was first year that we didn't participate in song production because it wasn't one this year so weird. But yeah, we'll play chimney sweeps and played a zombie killer. And we did neither living dead one year. Fun. Yeah, it's always fun. And just it's something that actually transfers a little bit to what I'm doing here because it actually helps you get on stage and you lose a lot of inhibition when you have to stand up there and sing around and dance.
Meral Clarke:Exactly. Public speaking and everything else. Yeah.
Pete Fuller:Yeah. Then you get a little bit less self conscious each time and so yeah, hopefully I can be in some tights and zombie makeup again.
Meral Clarke:I must ask is there any video of your performances because I would love to see that.
Pete Fuller:Absolutely none Oh, come on. Absolutely none. And there are there are prohibitions about taking the theater.
Meral Clarke:I'll just have to come up there for a show, then
Pete Fuller:We are having a small production that I'm not actually, it's an all female production. This time. There's only about three or four folks doing on stage this weekend. So if you happen to find yourself in Jefferson sure.
Meral Clarke:You bet. Well, thank you, Pete, for joining us today and sharing more about your crucial work to maintain our democracy. I'm Meral Clarke and on behalf of our team, I'd like to thank everyone for listening to the North Georgia Blue Podcast. We hope you'll listen next time when our special guest will be Michael Ford, chair of the Hall County Georgia Democratic Party. To learn more about the Fannin County Democrats and the work we're doing visit us online at FanninCountyGeorgiaDemocrats.com and you know Pete, I forgot to ask you for your email and website for folks interested in your county willing to donate or volunteer. Can you share that with us?
Pete Fuller:Absolutely. The website is JC DC ga Jackson County democratic committee ga.org.org you can get me at Pete at jc dcga.org and you can go to the Democratic Party website and click the know your party area and all our email addresses are there as well.
Meral Clarke:Terrific. Well consider sharing the North Georgia Blue Podcast with your friends and family and follow and subscribe. Join us again next time as we get into some more good trouble.