Justin Holsomback, Democratic Party of GA Secretary and Vice Chair of the Judicial Council for the Young Democrats of America

The North GA Blue: Getting into Good Trouble podcast covers democratic politics in North GA, the 9th Congressional District, and across the state of Georgia. The podcast is in Q&A/Interview format with various democratic politicos including county chairs, democratic operatives, politicians, and more. It is our mission to deliver crucial information to our listeners in a timely manner as we fight for community values and principles in the 3rd most Conservative district in the state. Our website is: https://www.fcdpga.com/podcasts

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Transcript

Meral Clarke: 0:18

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, Justin Holsomback, the Democratic Party of Georgia secretary, welcome to the show, Justin. We're so happy to have you with us today.

Justin Holsomback: 0:39

Awesome. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate the show and the work you guys are doing up here.

Meral Clarke: 0:42

Well, thank you. Just to let our listeners know a little bit about you. You've resided in Georgia most of your life and graduated from Kennesaw State University where you studied biology not using your major like the rest of us, right?

Justin Holsomback: 0:56

That's right.

Meral Clarke: 0:57

It's so common, but go Owls. You currently work as a director of recruitment for an Atlanta based tech startup working to address carbon emissions in the AEC industry, which is architecture, engineering and construction and$11.16 trillion global business. In 2016, Justin ran for Georgia's House of Representatives for district 34 comprised of Kennesaw and Marietta running as one of only four endorsed "Bernie-crats" in the state of Georgia after having been inspired to run by Bernie Sanders' candidacy. In 2020, Justin ran for the Fulton County Commission for the second district which contains Roswell, Sandy Springs, Milton and Mountain Park and although unsuccessful he did garner approximately 48.5% of the vote with approximately 44,000 total votes. Congrats on that. Justin has spent the last few years heavily involved with community organizing. He currently serves as secretary for the Democratic Party of Georgia or DPG, and vice chair of the Judicial Council for the Young Democrats of America. In his free time Justin trains for competitive CrossFit and Iron Man races six days a week while helping organize youth focused activism. That is an impressive background. How do you find the time to do all of this?

Justin Holsomback: 2:23

I appreciate the highlight on the free time. I keep raising my hands for things and all of a sudden you lose your week. But there you go. I try to be intentional with things where I feel like I can add value. And then with the hobbies and things like that just something where you can kind of retreat from the world and center yourself and have that good balance. But it's been a pretty wild ride over the last few years.

Meral Clarke: 2:42

Oh, yes. I'm sure. You're a busy guy. So I want to hear more about your work with young democrats and young activists. Can you elaborate on that?

Justin Holsomback: 2:50

Sure, whenever I ran for office in 2016, ultimately was unsuccessful. But what I found because that district also contains Kennesaw State University's campus. What I found by interacting with some of the students on the campus, you know, to go out and canvass for the campaign, things like that was it's the most progressive voting bloc we've ever had in this nation's history by a longshot. And what ends up happening is we take that voting bloc for granted a lot of times. And we routinely see that reflected in the results where if you don't ask someone for their vote, it's hard to get it unless someone is going to automatically vote. And not only is it the most progressive voting bloc, it's also the most progressive activism block. And if we can get the youth activated and engaged in the party politics or just politics in general, a lot of the issues that we're running into, even here in Georgia can fix themselves. Something I think we saw in 2020, where you had a massive youth increase, I can't remember the percentage off the top my head, but it was double digits, right compared to 2016, the under 40 vote and whenever you win a state or you flip a state by, you know, 16,000 total votes for Joe Biden, and then a similar margin and the runoffs in the senate race, I think a lot of that can be attributed to that increase in youth activism. And so that's why I try to prioritize it just because there's a lot of untapped potential not only just from pure vote numbers, but to get out and work these campaigns fuel other races up and down the ballot, get them on the doors, knocking and talking to their neighbors. And if you can get somebody into the habit of voting at 18 or 19 years old, you can build a voter for life.

Meral Clarke: 4:18

Exactly. And they're the ones who are going to be leading our party in the future. So very important. So what do you do as vice chair of the Judicial Council for YDA?

Justin Holsomback: 4:28

Whenever I got done running for offices in 2016, I decided to get involved with the party. There was the movement back in 2017. After the elections of a dementor versus dem exit about reforming the Democratic Party. I chose to go the dementor route because I felt like you can really enact change the best from the inside whenever you give time to an organization and work to change it structurally. And so one of the ways that I got involved was first the young democrats of Cobb County and then I volunteered to be the budget and finance chair for the young democrats of Georgia leaning on some private sector experience that I had in organizational management budgets, fundraising, things like that did that for a year and a half, and then got elected to what the young democrats of Georgia call their national committee representative. And that's two people along with the president of the organization. So three total people from Georgia that then serve at the young democrats of America level on their national committee. And I did that for a couple of years. And then I was appointed as the vice chair of the Judicial Council for the young democrats of America. What this body does is if there is an internal issue relevant to the young democrats of America, a dispute between members, or some sort of charter and bylaws discrepancy or an electoral issue at a chapter around the country, the YDA, Judicial Council kind of serves as the mediatory body for those issues. And so it allows me to hear these issues. I've heard cases ranging from again, a disputes between members to most recently, a slate of candidates, and a state was challenging the electoral process and results inside of their state. And whenever these issues pop up, it can feel very machiney, or not super critical to something or to the writ large political scene in the country. But just like if you can get them voting at 18, you can build a voter for life, if someone gets disenfranchised from the party process or feels excluded or discriminated against or something like that, within the party politics early, they might walk away and be done with it for life. Right? Right. And so making sure that specifically for my role, but YDA, or young democrats of America was as inclusive as possible and as amenable and accessible as possible to members from around the country, and then the territory. So that's been my priority in that role.

Meral Clarke: 6:31

And what are some of the initiatives and goals that you're working on with the young democrats?

Justin Holsomback: 6:37

With the young democrats of America and young democrats of Georgia, it is the youth party wing of the DNC or the Democratic Party of Georgia, right, depending on if it's YDA, or young democrats of Georgia. So these are the organizations where the party spends its money to focus on youth based activism. And depending on who is in leadership of these organizations, those are the people that are making the decisions on where that money gets spent in a lot of cases, right, like one of our most recent projects, I'm still serving as the DPG secretary, while also doing this work on the young democrats level. And my goal was always to try to get money to community organizers, to campaign staffers, things like that, to where a lot of the things that you run into about trying to get people involved in campaign politics is that it's a very unstable environment. Yes, it is. It's very seasonal. And especially in Georgia, up until recently, there hasn't been a lot of money in the environment. And so it's hard for someone to make this a priority or make this a long term focus in their career. And so if we can build campaign staff in Georgia, usually what you're talking about are 15 to 22 year olds, depending on if you're talking about an intern or an entry level staffer. But if you can create an environment where they can truly grow inside of this career, you can create a campaign ecosystem that can really support first time candidates or second time candidates, because what we've seen historically in Georgia is that someone will get one or two campaign cycles under their belt and then get scooped up by California or Ohio or Florida or these other states where there is actually Democratic Party money being used on the campaign level. And that's been a big focus of my youth based activism is to try to correct that here in Georgia. And I think over the last two cycles between 18 and 20, we started to see a really good shift. There's a true staffer ecosystem made up of young people that are building their skill sets here in Georgia, which is great, that is applicable nationwide. But Georgia is unique. Even in the southeast. It's a unique state. It's a Blue island now completely surrounded by red states.

Meral Clarke: 8:28

Well, it's not completely blue until we grab the legislature and ...

Justin Holsomback: 8:33

Tell you what we've won the last two elections, I'm counting that as lue.

Meral Clarke: 8:36

That's true. That's true. I can't argue with that. So as the Secretary of the Democratic Party of Georgia, what do you do? I tried to find a job description and couldn't find one online, if you even have one. And what are you working on currently?

Justin Holsomback: 8:51

Sure. Party roles inside of the DPG. The officers, most of them are pretty well defined chair, Vice Oh, I can only imagine. Chair, the chair and the first vice chair, and then they vice chairs of the various constituency groups or county committees. And then even the treasurer is a very well defined role. For the secretary under t e DPG charter and bylaws, the on y really delineated duties are t e dispersal and compendium f minutes for the organization a d making sure that the records a But it's been exciting trying to pivot our organization to being e up to date, as well as specif c process stuff abo t certification of documen s whenever election Seasons co e up. So what that allows for D G secretary to do is set the r role outside of those specif c requirements. And so whenever I was campaigning for th s position, I two and a half fee s like forever ago, two and a ha f years ago. What I told peop e was I wanted to try to build a more effective state party fr m the perspective of a secreta y and I served as a county par y secretary for Cobb County ba k in the day, what we found w s there's not a very unifi d system to manage the e organizations. And just based n my private sector experience, more remote friendly, and we are going to have a State Committee f you don't have the back offic, right, it's very hard to ha e the front office correct. And o member tracking, making sure t at dues are tracked and accoun ed for correctly email lists, l t's say you're a county commi tee and you're going to ha e a meeting, if you don't ha e a well maintained e ail distribution list and other ays to notify the people, the population in your county hat this meeting is going to oc meeting in a couple of weeks, that's going to be completely ur, It's very hard for people to get involved and county commit ees and even state p rty infrastructure is only as ood as its membership, right So getting people the abilit to get involved, clea ly, transparently, efficiently, here things aren't getting lo t in the cracks has been m top priority for the last two nd a half years, you know tha the apocalypse or the COVID pan emic has thrown a wrench into th ngs. So we've had to do things like whenever congressman John ewis passed, we had to d the Democratic nomin tion replacement, all virtual h ving a Zoom that I had to run be ause our chair was actually ru ning for that nomination. S I'd actually manage that me ting with 500 people on a oom, including press that was erve rac virtual. It's one of the first times that we've done that for what we're going to be doing, which is a charter and bylaws update for the state party. Getting these systems in place to where we can do things like this not only makes the actual thing happen efficiently and cleanly, but it allows more people to get involved because they don't have to drive from Houston or from Cairo.

Meral Clarke: 11:15

Right

Justin Holsomback: 11:16

or Atlanta or Dahlonega to wherever the actual physical meeting is, they can just zoom in. Fantastic.

Meral Clarke: 11:21

So let's drill down and talk about those bylaws and the updates that you're making to the charter and bylaws. How have the DPG's goals and objectives changed over the year? And if so, what are those changes specifically? And how do they impact the counties? Does this mean when you update your bylaws and charter, do the individual county committees need to update as well at the county level? So we're in sync? Or how does that work?

Justin Holsomback: 11:49

So I'll take the second part first. Okay, the Democratic Party rules, so to speak, speak to a top to bottom organizational structure. So the DNC sets its charter and bylaws, then the Democratic Party of Georgia affiliates or charters with the DNC as a chapter, and then the county committees affiliate or charter through the state party. And so the DPG charter and bylaws have to be in compliance with the DNC. And then the county committee's charter and bylaws have to be in compliance with the state parties. And then you cascade down that way, what we've been focused on over the last few months, there's a charter and bylaws committee that has been working pretty much nonstop, like on a weekly basis for several hours each week for the last six plus months on doing a full charter and bylaws revision, because our current charter and bylaws were, I think, last edited in either 2008 or 2011.

Meral Clarke: 12:37

So it's time

Justin Holsomback: 12:37

Yeah, it's long past time.

Meral Clarke: 12:39

It's beyond time.

Justin Holsomback: 12:41

You can see things inside of our charter and bylaws that are just completely broken. It's not the way that the party has ran itself for several years, because it just doesn't make sense to do so or the charter and bylaws speak to processes or ways to run a state party that just doesn't make sense with today's technology. And then we can also start getting into gendered language inside of the state party, or the Democratic Party of Georgia's charter and bylaws that speak to just a male or female, gender, different things like that, that just doesn't really line up with our current cultural understanding. And so what we've been working on are updates to processes, how we can host meetings, how we can notify people about meetings to be more transparent, inclusive, and then relevant to the county party structure is to build in systems to where we can really solve problems that have arisen over the last 10-15 years at th county party level dispute between members, especially a Georgia drifts more and mor solidly blue, we are starting we've already seen it multipl times where we are 100% positiv that someone is a Republican, o is a conservative value holde does not believe in the platfor of the Democratic Party. Bu they register to run as Democrat because it's a sea that will be won by a Democrat And up until now, there has no been a way for us to addres that because our charter an bylaws speak to the part apparatus cannot get involved o endorse in a conteste Democratic primary. And there i no way around that. Right. S what we're building in is process to where when a count committee which knows it locality better than a stat party ever could, you guy identify a problem like tha there is a way now to get a endorsement out account o endorsement or a pr endorsement. So the count parties can address situation like that. That's just on example of the things that we'v been working on to build thos sort of structures to empowe our county committees because think a lot of the officer whenever we were running for ou positions back in 2019, a commo refrain was I personally live i Fulton County and North Atlanta I know my area pretty well her in North Fulton County, I wil never know your locality bette than yo

Meral Clarke: 14:36

right

Justin Holsomback: 14:36

Ever. Even if I moved there today. There's just no way because you guys have lived there for way longer you know your neighbors you know your communities. Now we want to give you guys the empowerment not only from a procedural standpoint with these charter and bylaws, but from a system standpoint with technology and to be blunt financial empowerment, get you money to get your initiatives done.

Meral Clarke: 14:53

So once the bylaws are approved by the State Committee members next week, how long do the county committees have to amend their bylaws, so we're all in agreement and will it need to be completed prior to the certification process that takes place at the beginning of next year?

Justin Holsomback: 15:09

That is usually the timeline. Now whenever we're doing something like a decades over a decade overdue charter and bylaws revision really depends on what ends up getting passed on the 28th. I don't want to take that for granted. That is going to be a very long Saturday, I'm sure whenever you're doing a full charter and bylaws update, but assuming all or a lot of what has been proposed by the charter and bylaws committee gets approved, roughly the timeline or the rough expectation would be that the edits or the updates from the county level would need to be completed before they recertify with the state party, because part of certification is an assurance that your charter and bylaws are in compliance with the DPG. Now we also fully recognize that this pandemic is far from over. And it can be challenging for our county committees to get that sort of workflow done, even though for the most part, the statewide elections aren't going to start in earnest until next year, I guess the best way to answer that question is if it can't happen 100% of the way by the time you're going to certify we're not going to put a county committee in a position where they can't do their work during the 22 midterms. But we're going to work to make sure it does get done because we do want to make sure that that compliance is accomplished.

Meral Clarke: 16:13

So you don't work directly with the county committees. Correct? You just work with the DPG. And then the DPG communicates what the county committees need. Correct?

Justin Holsomback: 16:24

We already have a vice chair of county committees and congressional districts her name Sarah Todd.

Meral Clarke: 16:29

We know Sarah, she's a good friend of the show, yes.

Justin Holsomback: 16:31

She has been one of the unsung heroes of the state party for the last several years. This year, I think our second term in her Vice Chair role, but she serves as the primary point of contact for issues like this. Now the other officers obviously, whenever we're talking about a systemic change, like this would also get involved. And then one of the updates that we are proposing in the charter and bylaws update on the 28th are structures like a county affairs committee with a much more empowerment than it currently has. So it can work boots on the ground granularly, with county committees to get these sort of workflows done, because up until now that has primarily served as a mediation committee or a reactive committee, but we are trying to build one of the aspects of this charter bylaw update is a true system to support and empower the county committees.

Meral Clarke: 17:13

That's wonderful. We definitely need that, especially in the more rural counties in both North and South Georgia. So coming back out to a more global perspective, I have a question for you. Wikipedia lists the Democratic Party of Georgia's ideology as being centric, conservative, liberal and progressive and the DPG his political stance as center to center left, what does that mean, exactly? And how can the DPG be all things to all people?

Justin Holsomback: 17:43

To be blunt, this is I think, both one of the beauties of the Democratic Party but also one of the issues that we run into all the time, is that because of how the party is formed, and the platform of the party, we are a very big tent. And what that means is a lot of times some very, very, very different people have to work together to achieve our goals. And that could be electoral success. That could be activism success. That could be no, whenever we start getting into the weeds about county affairs and county committees, one thing I always like to point out is that center left in 2021 means a very different thing than center left in 2008. Yes, I graduated from high school in 2007. So I haven't been around as long as some folks. But I do remember whenever it was not super acceptable for a democratic national candidate to be pro LGBTQ rights. I remember when talking openly about supporting women's rights to choose their health care options was not super Okay, for national level politicians, and especially democratic politicians in Georgia. I remember those times center left means much more left and progressive than it meant just 10 or 15 years ago. Now, at the top of the show, you introduced me as someone who ran in 2016, as endorsed by Bernie Sanders and my state house race, I am not very quiet about my progressivism

Meral Clarke: 18:57

Good. I'm happy to hear that.

Justin Holsomback: 18:59

There's a lot of things inside of the democratic party platform that I don't feel like really go far enough. I want to see things like student debt forgiven, I want to see things like a true systemic overhaul of the way we handle criminal justice, I want to see corporate money out of our political system, wholesale big issues, I want the filibuster gone big issues like this that aren't going to be contained within a democratic party platform. And so whenever I read things like the Democratic Party's center left one, we are a big tent. And so whenever you average everybody together, I think that we are probably a center Left Party whenever you pull together like an older, more conservative democratic generation with the far left progressive youth, I think that does average out to about right there. And I always take a lot of solace in the fact that just look at the last 10 years at how far activists have dragged not only the Democratic Party, but also our country writ large left, and that won't stop whenever you see things like Atlanta's Pride Parade, where fortune 500 companies are like lining up at the door to get into the parade whenever you see candidates like Stacey Abrams, not widely campaigning on pro pro LGBTQ issues or pro women's rights to choose or I think she said something about sandblasting. Stone Mountain, you know, those types of issues?

Meral Clarke: 20:12

That works for me.

Justin Holsomback: 20:14

Right, I take a lot of solace in the fact that that's what center left means. And it's only going to get more progressive from here.

Meral Clarke: 20:19

So what do you think about the upcoming races? the midterm races in 2022? How do we get the same excitement for the midterms? How do we get the vote out for the midterms as we did for the National campaigns? Because you know, as well as I do that, as many people don't show up for the midterms as they do for the big campaigns. So how do we get people to understand that the midterms are so important and voting down ballot is just as important as voting at the top of the ballot? What's the DPG doing to help voters understand that segment?

Justin Holsomback: 20:53

It's going to still depend on the top of the ticket, but in this case, the top of the ticket are Georgia candidates. I can't really say that we have an exciting Gubernatorial Candidate quite yet. I think we all know like an open secret of who is almost certainly like 99.99% chance of being our democratic nominee inGeorgia.

Meral Clarke: 21:10

Do you think she's going to run?

Justin Holsomback: 21:11

Secretary Justin Holsonback is looking forward to a competitive and exciting Democratic primary. Private citizen Justin Holsomback can't wait to vote for her in May and November.

Meral Clarke: 21:20

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

Justin Holsomback: 21:22

Assuming that what we all expect to happen is going to happen. We're going to have one of the most progressive US senators in the entire nation on the top of the ticket senator Raphael Warnock. We are going to have one of the champions of the Democratic Party and one of the most talented state legislators as well as candidates as well as just general human beings as our Gubernatorial Candidate as well as a really exciting field of statewide as well as the rest of the down ballot races. What you saw in 2020, were people coming out to vote against Donald Trump and a lot of cases everyone gets really excited about the big sexy presidential races. But what I think what we can get really excited about are those January run offs, right, because in January, Donald Trump wasn't on the ballot. Joe Biden wasn't on the ballot. There wasn't a presidential race. It was two US senators, two statewide candidates in Georgia. And we saw record levels of democratic turnout not only record runoff turnout, but just record turnout. It was almost as high as the actual November races for Democrats turning out for Raphael Warnock and for Jon Ossoff. And so we can leverage that and feel good about that. We can also look back to 2018. I'll be very blunt. No one thought that we had a chance in 2018. to flip the state, we talked a big game, we went out and knock doors, we worked our butts off to try to make it happen. But I think a lot of us in the back of our minds were like, this is probably not going to happen. And then allegedly, Stacey lost by a couple of 10,000 votes while she was running against the guy that was the referee of the elections.

Meral Clarke: 22:44

I know just completely absurd.

Justin Holsomback: 22:47

We're going to have those elements coming together. At the end of the day, though, with the Democratic Party of Georgia is going to do is we have kept our staff high coming off of the 2020 cycle. What historically has happened in Georgia is that the coordinated campaign in the state party ran out of money right after the November election date. And then we had to fire everybody or lay everybody off and go down to a skeleton staff until we had to stand everything back up in a rush before the next coordinated in this case, because we flipped and because Joe Biden won and because we won those two US Senate races and because that Raphael Warnock seat is going to be so pivotal and holding our Senate Majority, there is a lot, a lot, a lot of money coming into the state and a lot of the money coming into the state party. And what we've been able to use that is to keep our staff presence high, build systems, build staffing, build resources, there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes, both the state party level, but also in coordination with the county committees to put structures in place to where we mobilize people to vote for US Senate, we mobilize them to vote for governor and lieutenant governor and Secretary of Labor and all the other statewide races, but we also are trying to make sure that people understand the importance of voting for their state house member or their state senator, or their Congress person, or if they also share about with any other municipal races at that point, depending on the local electoral calendar. So the best I can say without getting into behind the curtain type of stuff is

Meral Clarke: 24:07

Oh, that would be okay with me. If you want to discuss that.

Justin Holsomback: 24:11

There's a lot of behind the scenes of systems, data activism, people's staff, the people that are actually gonna have to go out and do the stuff to get people to the polls, both in the primaries, but more crucially, in the November general for the midterms.

Meral Clarke: 24:25

That is fantastic to hear. So how does the DPG support individual candidates, let's drill down into the individual races? What does the Democratic Party of Georgia do to get the word out and create as much support as possible for those individual candidates?

Justin Holsomback: 24:41

I think we accomplish that in two ways. And I'll start on the more macro level. Again during the primary, we just generally helped drive democratic turnout and get people into the habit of voting that year because the state party and the county committees are not allowed to actively assist individual candidates if it's a contested Democratic primary macro level during the primary That's how we help is is driving general democratic turnout. And then once we have our nominated slate post primary things like mailers or media buys or staff placement through like a coordinated campaign structure where the entire slate so to speak of democratic nominees for statewide, their campaigns are coordinated. It's why we call it a coordinated campaign, to where individual campaigns might be better at getting voters mobilized in certain demographic groups or age groups or just geographic groups when we make sure that we're putting candidates in the right place at the right time and putting together events around the state voter turnout events, things like that. And then the state party will also do things like van pools, Voter Protection Program to make sure that people have access to the polls themselves. What we saw a lot in 2018 and 2020, where local republicans ran Board of Elections getting sometimes not very sneaky, about disenfranchisement efforts about closing down precincts and things like that. And that's a big part of what the Democratic Party of Georgia works on is Voter Protection and voter engagement.

Meral Clarke: 26:01

And that's going on right now in Fulton County, which is definitely on our radar because it's the first step for the GOP in taking over the Fulton County Board of Elections. What is the DPG specifically doing to fight that and ensure that the elections are open and fair?

Justin Holsomback: 26:19

So I have a good answer. And then I'm going to also follow it with a not great answer.

Meral Clarke: 26:23

Okay, thanks for the heads up.

Justin Holsomback: 26:24

The first one is there are some lawsuits that are being filed. Sure, that I can't get into a lot of detail on but that is one of the major functions of our voter protection team. They filed lawsuits with those local judicial courts or circuits to get freezes put in place or injunctions put in place to reverse actions. And that is happening right now at the Fulton County level. But I also want to flag for folks that in a lot of cases, because of what we saw at the state legislature last session with their voter disenfranchisement bills that were pushed through by Republicans, if it's a bad law, we might be able to do something about it. Like if it's an actual bad law that is broken and conflicts with another part of the code. But if it's a law, and we just don't like it, because of what it does, end of the day, it's law. And we can't really fight it right, we have to play by those rules. And that's why voting for your state house and state senator people and getting your neighbors to do so is so important. So what we're trying to do are in cases where we can't stop it through legal proceedings, is trying our best to get creative and how we can help solve it. Like whenever one of the pieces of the voter restriction bill was shutting down at some of the Sunday voting. So what we're doing is shifting a lot of resources that would be more spread out over multiple Sundays into single Sundays, and really driving strong robust programming on those Sundays to try to drive those voters to the polls, things like that. Excellent. And then you also asked earlier on what we're doing for down ballot candidates, one thing I want to highlight before we move on from that point is getting our county committees these resources they need because, again, you know, your state house candidates way, way better than the state party can know them, or even our Vice Chair of candidate recruitment, Adrian White can know them, or even our coordinator, campaign staff can know them. And so if our county committees have just a rockstar candidate that's running a heck of a campaign, we want to make sure post-primary that we get the county committees the resources they need to support those candidates.

Meral Clarke: 28:09

Fantastic. And I'm happy to hear that being in a more rural county up here in the ninth congressional district where we're really concentrating on getting rid of Andrew Clyde. So hopefully, we'll have a viable candidate come forward soon where we can get that seat back, because it's just pure insanity between him and Marjorie Taylor Greene and a few others. So

Justin Holsomback: 28:31

One thing I want to highlight on that point, I'm sorry to cut you off is Oh, please go ahead. Even if you can't win some of these seats, even if it's a longshot seat, like the last time a democrat ran for something, they got 50% of the vote. One thing that before COVID happened, and I was traveling around to county committees, one thing I would always tell people is yes, increasing the vote share in Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett and Cobb where there's a lot of voters there. That's obviously a priority of the state party. But if we can also increase the democratic turnout and the margins like close the gaps to where Democrats perform better by, let's say 5%. statewide. We win. Yes, we win by a lot. Yes. And so there's a lot of low hanging fruit out in the rural areas of the state. It's just we've never supported programming in those areas of the state. So what I would also advise your listeners, if they're thinking about running for State House seat that the last time a democrat ran, they got 8% of the vote one, I would be shocked if it wasn't the case where they had very little support from the state party side to whenever they ran and got that 8% of the vote. This time around you run you're going to have a lot more support. I don't know exactly what that means. We'll have to figure that out as we get closer to the actual 22 cycle. But if you can get your seat from eight to 18%. That is huge. Whenever we start talking about statewide races and flipping the governor's mansion.

Meral Clarke: 29:45

Absolutely. And it's so important. And same with the legislature. We've got to get more democrats into those positions. So Justin, I could talk to you all day about this, but my producer has just informed me that we're running short on time, so If someone needs to get ahold of you or get in touch with you, how would they go about doing so?

Justin Holsomback: 30:05

Sure, I always give my email address and my last name is a complicated mess though. But it's justin.holsomback@georgiademocrat.org. There's no s at the end of that. But also, if you just Google Georgia democrat and go to the About Us page, it has an officers list, and it gives our direct email addresses on there, as well as the rest of the officer team.

Meral Clarke: 30:27

Fantastic. And we appreciate you being so accessible, absolutely, and easy to reach. Thank you for that. So finally, and I asked all my guests this question, tell us a fun fact about yourself, you know, something in real life that you do. And you can talk about the CrossFit and Ironman races, if you'd like, if you want any of those. That's really impressive. So tell me a little bit about that.

Justin Holsomback: 30:47

I appreciate that. So actually, in 2016, whenever I was running for state house, I actually used to weigh about 325 pounds, Oh, my. And so I remember canvassing in August in Georgia. And you would get to some of these houses and they would have like a hill up to their front door. And I just be like, Alright, well, I'm not going to canvass that door. Because I would just keep moving on. And so after that campaign ended, I started doing the CrossFit stuff, and just general like watching what I eat type of stuff and ended up losing about 125-130 pounds. This year, actually, 2021 will be the five year anniversary of whenever I started losing weight. And so that's why I'm doing the Ironman race later this year. And I actually just did a CrossFit competition last weekend, and my team actually won it. So that was pretty cool.

Meral Clarke: 31:25

Congratulations. That's great.

Justin Holsomback: 31:27

It's been pretty wild to have like that life transformation good for you definitely feel a lot better. And it's just been along with everything else. The last five years have been a bit of a whirlwind.

Meral Clarke: 31:37

Fantastic. Well, Justin, I can't thank you enough. Thank you for joining us today and sharing more about your critical 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 in next time when our special guest will be U.S. Congresswoman and DPG Chairwoman Nikema Williams, we're very excited about that one as well. To learn more about the Fannin county democrats and the work we're doing Please visit us online at FanninCountyGeorgiaDemocrats.com and consider sharing, subscribing and following the North Georgia Blue Podcast with your friends and family. If you'd like to become a patron of our show, and if you enjoy what you're hearing and would like to enjoy hearing more, you can sign up at NorthGeorgiaBluePodcast.com / podcastpatron. Thank you so much and we'll see you again soon.