Wendy Davis, Democratic Candidate for US Congress in the 14th District

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Transcript

Meral Clarke: 0:18

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, Wendy Davis, running against Marjorie Taylor Greene to represent the 14th district in the US House of Representatives. Welcome to the show, Wendy. We're happy to have you with us today.

Wendy Davis: 0:41

Well, it's my honor to be with you and I am so grateful to be around folks who are looking to get into some good trouble and turn North Georgia blue. That's what I've been all about for a long time. So I'm glad to join you today. Thanks for having me.

Meral Clarke: 0:56

Well, thank you, Wendy. And let's let our listeners know a little bit about you. Wendy Davis's roots in northwest Georgia go back five generations and her family's commitment to service runs deep. As role models, Wendy's parents taught her the importance of faith, family and community. She watched her mom navigate the VA medical system to ensure her dad and uncles got the care they'd earned by serving their country and learned firsthand how important it is to have an advocate by your side. In 2013, after more than a decade working for her community, Wendy ran and won a seat on the Rome Georgia Board of Commissioners to make Rome a better place to live, work and play. Now she's running for congress in the 14th district to benefit her community, the State of Georgia and our nation. Wendy wants to help small businesses get back on track to prosperity, lift up our children by overcoming glaring gaps in their education, support families who are struggling and reconnect neighbors pushed apart by those who seek to divide them. She is also a former president of the Young Democrats in Georgia, a Democratic National Committee member since 2012, and a longtime party activist and operative. You're a busy lady, Wendy.

Wendy Davis: 2:13

Well, I try to be. It's not necessarily a thing that's the best for your health, to overextend yourself the way I have most of my adult life. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I sometimes joke that I think I might be one of only a handful of Democratic National Committee members who actually attends their county party meetings with regularity. But I am someone who believes that the party should be thinking bigger than one election cycle and be bigger than any set of candidates that we need to be thinking down the road 15, 20, 50 years to make sure that the values that we all share are able to hold sway over our political process. Because we're thinking long term and we're not being short sighted. I think we have gotten ourselves into trouble as a party relying on a set of elected leaders who were popular and then when they retired or moved on, we had gaps that we hadn't filled in. And so I'm a true believer in the party being the party of the people, and that the regular folks in their daily lives as volunteers making time for this work is why our party will remain successful.

Meral Clarke: 3:21

Well, we're fortunate to have you here in North Georgia and appreciative of your candidacy and your efforts. So I wanted to ask you some questions. Let's start with your passion for our veterans and the care or lack thereof they receive from the VA medical system, which we all know is subpar. How would you ensure that Georgia veterans and actually veterans nationwide receive the care they deserve once you're elected?

Wendy Davis: 3:48

That's a question that I am very passionate about and that is very near and dear to my heart for a lot of very personal reasons and then also for broader reasons. So let me start by saying my dad was a World War II vet. He served in the infantry of the Philippines. And even though in his life after World War II, he was an involved in the insurance industry, including being an independent insurance agent, you know, regular small businessman. He never had health insurance outside of what he had from the VA. So all of my dad's medical care, my entire life has been at the VA and from when I was a very small child when the VA was very, very bad. Like it's not up to the standards that needs to be now but when I was a little girl, it was just horrid the way that people were treated. And even as a little girl, I looked around the room and I looked up at my mom and I was like, Mom, aren't all these people, veterans like Daddy? And she looked at me funny because she's like, yes, Wendy, we're at the Veterans Administration. Hospital. I was like, but why are they treating them like bums? And it wasn't because I was a particularly precocious child. It was because it was so obvious and it's been something that I saw we were there, my mother, she was a registered nurse most of her career. And I think they invented the word charge nurse to describe my mother. And she was a fierce advocate. And you had to be. And that's the thing that is heartbreaking to me the number of times that my dad was hospitalized at the VA, my dad was a lot older than me, my dad was 45 when they adopted me. So in some ways, he's like generationally, like my grandfather. So there was, these four old men would share a room. And my mother and I would be there making sure that my dad got the care he needed. And I always wondered if the other three people who were in that room if they didn't have an advocate there, were they going to survive even. And so those experiences as I was growing up really cemented to me that the system wasn't working right. And let me just say, really clearly, the medical personnel who work at the veterans, hospitals and the veterans clinics, I'm not trying to cast any aspersions on them. They're good people, they're well qualified medical personnel, they're just under resourced. So it's not a knock on the people. It's a knock on the system. And beyond the medical treatment issues, which again, we haven't even talked about the mental health issues that the VA does not adequately address, but then you have the question of claims and benefits that veterans have earned. And it seems like the VA's first instance is always deny the claim. And so then you go to an appeal and appeal after appeal. And my mother, who was the strong advocate knew that we deserved these benefits because of what my dad had been through, not because we were looking to get something we didn't deserve. And so she was very dogmatic that they had to just hear us. Because if they heard us, they would give us a yes to our claim. And the biggest argument my mother and I ever got in was we had appeal after appeal after appeal. And finally my father passed away. And they denied a claim again, and my mom wanted me to file another appeal, I was kind of the secretary of the family responsible for writing all these letters and responses and trying to find all the records and I said, Look, Mom, they never if you'll pardon me, they never gave a damn about my dad when he was alive. So why do you think they're going to care about us when he's dead. And it's not just about my family's experience, I have heard family after family and caregiver after caregiver and veteran after veteran say they have had similar experiences of having to have an advocate and being denied claims that were obvious, and Congress can fix it. I want you to hear me clearly, this system does not have to be broken, it can be fixed, and members of Congress still up there. And they wrap themselves in the flag. And they say that their care about our veterans, and they are patriots, and La la la, la la. And then they let it be broken, and they let it be broken, and they let it be broken. Well, I'm not somebody who's going to sit back and just say, Oh, I guess you tried, but it's broken, good for you. I'm somebody who's going to get in there and say, it can be fixed, we can fix these problems. If there are veterans who are being denied their claims, because we just don't want to pay the money. I want you to think about that every single one of these en and women they offered up heir actual lives for our reedoms. We do not nickel and ime when we send these boys and irls off to war. We don't say ell, how much did that bomb ost, right? Yes, definitely. hen maybe we should right. So why are we nickeling and diming hem when we get back? If you ould like to have yourself nflamed with unhappiness about ow our government operates, you an watch this new Jon Stewart how where he talks about this urn pits. So in the 20 years, e have conducted war, the last ar overseas, the way we have ecided to get rid of all of our arbage, all of our trash, all f our waste is to burn it in urn pits that are situated ight next to where our ersonnel are located.

Meral Clarke: 9:07

So they breathe in all those toxic fumes and get sick.

Wendy Davis: 9:11

So it's not just garbage. You think about garbage from the mess tent, like it's medical waste. It's literally human waste. It's equipment that we've decided that it's broken, and we can't afford to send it home, so we're going to burn it. So somebody else doesn't get that equipment, all those toxins. We have poisoned our own people. Again, the gentleman said this is this generation's Agent Orange. Yes, it is. And so the Veterans Administration right now has a presumption that your medical issue is tied to these burn pits in a very limited number of respiratory illnesses right now. But the list of cancers and other sort of organ problems and health disease problems. There should be a longer list of presumptive problems related to these burn pits that's not there.

Meral Clarke: 10:01

And on the show, which, by the way is being aired on Apple + TV, and it's excellent. I had on the show, Jon Stewart interviewed the head of the VA, and he stated that more research needed to be done. But while they're diddling around with this issue, providing billions of dollars for bombs, as you stated, but merely a pittance for our veterans and veterans are committing suicide every single day over this issue, while they're dickering around with that, you know, people are dying. Yeah, yeah, and these are men and women who have served our country valiantly and carried our flag, and we've always treated them like chattel. It's abhorrent.

Wendy Davis: 10:44

It is, and these are our neighbors. And it's the family that makes the sacrifice, as well as the soldier, and the sailor, and the airmen, marine and the Coast Guard. It's the family who pays the price from either hoping and praying that their family member returns home after their deployment and all the worries and fears in that. And also, then you cannot go to war and it not have an impact on your mental health. I don't care what religion you're in every religion has, Thou shalt not kill, we're raised to value life. And then we tell you to go to war and kill or be killed. And it is a contradiction to everything you've been taught in your life. It is going to be something that your brain has to figure out and the violence you see, and the deprivation you face, there's going to be an impact. And I guess the good news is we're at least finally understanding that and getting rid of some of the stigma of it, but as you say, there's suicide after suicide, these service members aren't given the right treatment to be able to get their lives back on track when they come back to the civilian world. And the impact is dreadful. And again, it doesn't have to be that way.

Meral Clarke: 11:59

And so why haven't they changed that?

Wendy Davis: 12:01

It's money.

Meral Clarke: 12:02

Well,it's always money. There's always enough money for war, but not enough money to take care of our people. Right?

Wendy Davis: 12:08

Right. And because people lose their focus, like they get turned up, for a minute, there'll be a story that will catch somebody's eye. Like I'm hoping this burn pit story moves some people to action. But when the spotlight goes away, and maybe the regulation hasn't changed yet, but they said you better change that regulation, then everybody moves on to their next topic. Well, I am telling you, I am going to be a bulldog. on these issues of taking care of our veterans, there'll be a very high priority for me.

Meral Clarke: 12:38

Someone needs to be because let's face it, members of Congress wrap themseves in the flag, as you stated, and it's all jingoism, and it's false patriotism. And I do believe that we have to lay the blame at both the Republicans and the Democrats doors.

Wendy Davis: 12:54

Oh, the blame is on the people who don't follow through, right? Again, I don't think anybody's up there going, haha, fooled those veterans. It's not an active, it's a passive. We think we've said the right thing. So we're gonna move on. And I will tell you, my focus will not veer away from making sure that changes are made, and people are protected.

Meral Clarke: 13:15

Well, thank you for that, because it has to happen. Veterans need a strong advocate in Congress. So we appreciate your stance on that. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to expound on this one issue. So let's move on. You've stated that you support small business owners who are burdened by rising costs, a robust health care system, including Medicaid expansion and housing affordability, how will you work in Congress to ease these burdens for all Georgians? And how do you expect to make an impact on these issues once you're in Congress?

Wendy Davis: 13:50

So I know that's a lot of issues all at one time

Meral Clarke: 13:53

It is let's unpack that one at a time. Let's talk about small business owners. With COVID-19 small business owners have been especially hurt with the loss of business and of course, they don't have the resources that big business has. So how would you help them?

Wendy Davis: 14:07

Really the core of it is pretty simple. There are federal resources in all these different agencies. So let's talk about the Small Business Administration. Or we can go back and talk about the PPE that was supposed to help people in the pandemic. They set up rules and procedures that are written in ways that only people who have a big staff can take advantage of them. You've got to have the right kind of accountant, you've got to have the right kind of lawyer. You've got to have a banker, like your banker. Most small business people don't have their banker, they bank.

Meral Clarke: 14:43

Sure they have a business account, but yes,

Wendy Davis: 14:46

And so they have a business account, but the system is set up for the big boys. And so one of the areas I'm going to focus on if I'm lucky enough to earn this position, is making sure that my staff is helping connect people to these federal resources. So in talking about small business loans, a member of Congress can have seminars and roundtables and make sure that information can be received by the people who need it most. In their job training resources, there are plenty of monies for job training programs, and there are plenty of people who are certified to be these trainers. And they're going, Hey, come here, we want to train you. And the people need that training aren't hearing them. And the people who need those trained workers, these employers were all screaming, we need employees who are trained to help our business, nobody is connecting those three pieces. And those kind of efforts is where my focus is going to be. Rather than up under the dome fussing and fighting about these issues where we disagree so strongly, there are so many more issues, where as Americans, we can find broad agreement, and those kinds of things, making an impact on people's daily lives. That's where my focus is going to be as a member of Congress is going to help Northwest Georgia, which will help our entire state, which I think those kinds of issues will help our nation.

Meral Clarke: 16:14

That's terrific. But I guess you could introduce bills or I mean, drilling down.

Wendy Davis: 16:20

The interesting thing is that I expect that I will be assigned to committees, and I will do the committee work. As many of you know, our current incumbent member of Congress here has been removed from all her committees because of her really outrageous behaviors. The work of the Congress is done at the committee level. And so she doesn't have any of those committee assignments. I will have committee assignments, and I will do the work at the committee level and make sure that as legislation goes through that I'm making sure the voice of small town America, rural Northwest Georgia that those voices are heard, and that the legislation is crafted in a way that those people aren't left behind. And that it's not all for the richest people in America or the people in the biggest cities, but that we're thinking through how this legislation impacts people in small towns.

Meral Clarke: 17:10

Excellent. And you also mentioned a robust health care system, including Medicaid expansion. Let's talk about that, because Governor Kemp has repeatedly and the Republicans in power here in Georgia have repeatedly defeated efforts and negated efforts to expand Medicaid. Over 1 million Georgians don't have insurance. And even with the availability of the ACA, it can be extremely expensive and cost prohibitive. What would you do to expand Medicaid expansion, I mean, it's so important it is, especially in rural Georgia, where we are.

Wendy Davis: 17:47

It is and you put it right at the governor's seat, and that's where it should go. If the governor wanted to have accepted these federal programs, which are getting the federal money that our taxpayers have sent to Washington and getting our piece of it back here in Georgia, it's really fiscally irresponsible that Governor Kemp has not taken advantage of these federal programs. So I will continue to be somebody who says that, but I will also be pushing and helping. I think that energy of the campaign that's going to be grassroots that we're going to put together here in Northwest Georgia will help other Democratic candidates up and down the statewide ticket, be successful. Will help Senator Warnock get reelected. And all of us will share this understanding that if more people have health insurance, more people will be healthier, they will avail themselves of preventative medicine, because they will be able to. Here in Northwest Georgia, I live in Rome, and in Rome, I'll tell you, you can barely throw a rock and not hit someone in the medical field. We are blessed to have a very strong and vibrant medical community here in Rome. But most of this congressional district there are people who have to drive a half an hour or an hour to get to a medical facility. So I am going to work to make sure that effective telemedicine opportunities are available that we are being creative and thoughtful at ways to give people access to the care they need and deserve. And what people sometimes don't seem to understand is the more we can do to give people access to health care, the cheaper it will end up being. If somebody has preventative health care, they're not going to get as many illnesses.

Meral Clarke: 19:32

and overburden the system.

Wendy Davis: 19:33

Yes, if we could get women who are in childbearing years to get their routine pap smears, there are so many cancers we could actually eliminate and who wouldn't be for eliminating cancers and if you just want to think about it in that green eyeshade accountant kind of way, surely to goodness, it's cheaper to give people pap smears than to treat cancer. And the cost is not just the medical costs. cost, the cost is a human costs. And we're just not even calculating that back to COVID. We know over 700,000 Americans in this year and a half have died of COVID. We haven't really thought through the impact of that all those families impacted. I read a study this week, something like 160,000 children have lost a caregiver. We are having a generation of children that may be orphaned, because of this virus. We're not even thinking of the human impact of it, much less the fiscal impact of it, and it's going to be with us for years. And we've got to have more people in Washington, who are thinking about the human impact of these things. And understanding that there's ways to benefit all of our health, all of our well being that actually, even though it looks like it's spending more money, it's ultimately going to save more money.

Meral Clarke: 20:52

Excellent point,

Wendy Davis: 20:53

I'm trying not to be too long winded, you're hitting me on all these issues I'm very passionate about I apologize if I'm going on.

Meral Clarke: 21:00

You can blame your campaign manager for that, because he provided me with the talking points of what you are passionate about. And I certainly appreciate it. Because living in a rural area, we're passionate about that here as well, not to mention shoring up rural hospitals, which are failing, because we're not providing adequate resources. I wanted to get that in and get your thoughts on that.

Wendy Davis: 21:22

And that's true, because again, if people don't have some sort of health insurance coverage, they don't feel comfortable going to a doctor. You don't know how much it's going to cost. You can say, Well, I'm not sure I can afford that. Maybe I'll just take some over the counter stuff, and it'll be okay. And then you get yourself in a situation where you may even have to be hospitalized because you've let it go, your child has an earache, and you're like, well, maybe this little bit of Tylenol will help and they'll feel better in the morning. And they end up being in an emergency room at 3am. Because they hadn't been to routine pediatric appointments. And the cost isn't just a financial cost. The hospitals are closing, not because we don't have enough sick people, right. But we have so many people,

Meral Clarke: 22:08

We have too many sick people, that's, that's the issue, right?

Wendy Davis: 22:12

They get sick, but they don't have the right kind of coverage. So these hospitals end up having to chase after people to pay outrageous hospital bills that the people didn't say I really would like an outrageous hospital bill, guess what I didn't even want to have a heart attack folkss. But the system is out of whack. And the system has been favoring a certain limited number of big corporations and people with the financial wherewithall and we haven't been looking at it from the human side, we've only been looking at it from certain big interests side. And again, we just need more people in Washington who are thinking about their neighbors as neighbors and understanding that if one of my neighbors is in the hospital dying of cancer, because she didn't have a job where she could take an afternoon off to go get her pap smear. And she's dying for no reason she didn't have to die. It's just like a doctor here said we lost a 13 year old out in West Rome to COVID. And one of the doctors who was addressing our city and county commissioners, he said we lost a child from a vaccine preventable illness. Think about that a minute.

Meral Clarke: 23:22

We've lost 700,000 people that we didn't have to lose.

Wendy Davis: 23:26

Well and again, we didn't have a vaccine for a long time. But we're at a point now where we have vaccines that have an amazing efficacy and keep people from dying and keep people out of the hospital. And if more of us would get vaccinated that we could get our arms around this virus. But if we can't get those vaccination numbers up, this is not going to be a year and a half of this turmoil and dread it's going to go on and on.

Meral Clarke: 23:49

Right? Because viruses do what they do. They mutate and they change, hence the variants. And I could go on and on about that. But I'll stop it. I certainly appreciate your passion. And thank you for that because I completely agree. So let's talk about housing affordability. Up here in Fannin County, the Blue Ridge City Council just voted that down mostly the Republicans which outnumber everyone else on the council. So how do we make housing affordable all throughout the state and the nation? Because it's a serious issue. And as costs keep rising, more and more people are suffering? How would you go about changing that?

Wendy Davis: 24:27

The housing affordability question is we didn't get where we are here overnight. It's actually really a culmination of about 20 years of problems that have snowballed at this point. Do you remember the housing crisis in like 2008 2009, right, the Great Recession and the housing crisis that was a huge part of that. So we usually focus on the people who lost their houses. They had these huge loans that had ended up with these big balloon payments that they never were gonna be able to make but there was a bunch of shady lending things going on. So we have all these people who lost their homes, all these banks who then had homes that they couldn't get rid of. And so the finance part of the whole housing market got messed up. And we talk about that. And many of us remember that. But what we didn't see was when all that was happening, sort of the normal routine replacement of homes, new homes being built as older homes sort of went out of our housing stock, because they got so old. It was sort of a replication that was sort of a natural, you add a few use a few and you sort of stay ahead of it. Well, that crisis in '08 and '09, it stopped almost all home buildings. So you have communities that would have sort of a routine regular number of new houses being built, which sort of keeps your housing inventory fresh. And for the last 20 years, we haven't been building at the same rate, which means that we're in a place where we need new units, and they literally don't exist. So you're trying to play catch up there. And then all these prices have gone up, because now the market is so tight. We all know supply and demand, when you have not many houses on the market, the price of them is going to go up. And we haven't taken care also to keep our safety net housing, public housing, we've had a lot of changes in public housing that have been positive, but there haven't been enough units built. Because again, we end up getting people in leadership who aren't worried about the least of these who needed help for a while the spouse may have died. And that was their major source of income, or there was a job change, or any number of things put people sort of down on their luck needing a hand to get ahead. And so all these things are wrapped up and snowballed and created this crisis where we are now. And I'm not having even begin to touch on our homelessness issue. So there are all these different ways where nobody has been thinking about regular people. And it's like the people who make the money on all these things were the ones who were making decisions. And don't get me wrong, I want people to make money. But you know what, I think people can make money building houses that people can afford to live in. And we just have to change our mindset. We decided at some point that everybody needed at least a three bedroom, two bath house with a two car garage, on a half acre or more lots Why? Who said, and so we've got to have people who are thinking differently. And helping people understand that, you know, I'm in my mid 50s, there are two generations of adults behind me. And those generations think differently about housing than even I do. There are generations of people right now who don't understand why anybody would want to live in an apartment. But the kids behind me, they're not kids, but right with the people behind me, your kids, they don't want to buy a house, because they see if your furnace goes and they don't have the wherewithal for that huge expense. They'd rather just call the landlord to come fix it. And they're not sure they're going to be living in a town for 10 or 15 years. Goodness knows they're not going to have the same job for more than two or three years. Like it's just a different world. And we haven't adjusted our housing stock, like our inventory of housing hasn't adjusted to these new attitudes right to the to the new situation. And so we need people who are thinking differently, who are willing to stand up and say, why are we doing it that way? Do we have to do it that way? And who are willing to withstand the criticism, everybody will say, Oh, yeah, density is good. But over there, oh, I don't want a house with a tiny yard next door to mine. Well, why not? Like why do you care if I have a big yard or not? You still have a big yard. Hooray for you. I don't want to cut grass. So again, you've got to have people willing to ask questions. And as any of my colleagues will laugh and tell you like, Wendy's always got a question like I'm the irl with the questions. ask tough questions, not ecause I'm trying to be diffi ult, but I want to make sure we' e thinking thro And that's the kind of member of congress I'm going to be to I'm not going to just say, Oh, we've always done it that way. Well, terrific. I'll sign up and do it that way, too. I want to make sure we're doing things in a way that benefits ordinary people. Because if ordinary people are thriving, guess what the rich people are going to do good then too. And maybe there'll be fewer poor people. I happen to believe that rising tide lifts all boats.

Meral Clarke: 29:32

Exactly. Everybody wins. So you're also in favor of pushing for innovative communities. Let's talk about that for a moment. What does that mean? And how will you make an impact on having that happen?

Wendy Davis: 29:45

Well, so I think talking about innovation is kind of like rethinking what we're doing with things.

Meral Clarke: 29:51

Much like housing affordability.

Wendy Davis: 29:53

So in housing, thinking about like our local Chamber of Commerce will go and visit other cities to sort of steal the best ideas. And one of the ideas we saw in a city north of us over the line in Tennessee was they had apartments that were basically micro apartments that shared a common area, like one of the floors, they had this big, huge, gorgeous kitchen that was in the middle of that floor. And on the bottom floor, they had a beautiful, very relaxing, living rooms sort of area. And the recognition is that I mean, it's kind of like a dorm for grownups. Yeah, think about this. In your home, you may have a big spacious, beautiful home. But the reality is, you use your bedroom to sleep in your bed, you use your kitchen to cook your food, you sit in your living room and watch your TV. Are you really living in all that space? Do you really need all that space? Many people are home just to wind down in the evening, sleep, take a shower an go to work the next day. They'r not at home for big lon stretches necessarily. Mayb that's the problem with us bein so many workaholics are peopl having to work two and thre jobs to to afford where the live, right? That's that's par of it? Yes. But the reality i

Meral Clarke: 31:07

Yes, most definitely. And we're certainly just like you could say, but wh does Baskin Robbins have 3 flavors of ice cream? That wa their brand. Well, most plac s had five or six flavors of i e cream and they did just fin. Well guess what, if you have a wider variety of options, th n people will find the optio s that are best for them. If a l you have are single family hom s that are of a certain size a d have a certain price, and with a certain size yard, we've gott n to where many, many people can t afford that. So why do we ha e that limited sort of choic? That shouldn't be the bottom f our market. not servicing all of our populations and their needs. So that's something that we have to look at.

Wendy Davis: 31:53

We should have a variety of options to suit the variety of needs that people have.

Meral Clarke: 31:57

Yes, I could talk to you all day. And I was actually going to ask you why you believe you're prepared for a position in Congress. But I'm not even going to ask that because I believe you're more than prepared.

Wendy Davis: 32:08

Well, thank you. I really enjoyed this. Thank you. Can I give you just one little sliver that I really would like to share? Yes. So I have been blessed to have a really interesting career and work all over America, but also focus and help people in Northwest Georgia and be a part of this community, and really feel like I belong. I have an understanding both from my academic life, and from my career of how government is supposed to work. I see where government doesn't work well. I have been a local elected official. And to be frank with you, I have worked hard to make sure that our local government was being more responsive and being more reflective of the people in this community. And to me, it's those kinds of things that you can take to any level. A member of Congress to be frank, look at those 535 people in Congress. There are some of them that you're like, Wow, that's a brilliant genius person. But the reality is, what's needed is, is somebody with a heart for service. And so I have that, but I also have the understanding of how it needs to be done. And to win in a district, like where we live in these mountains. In this area where too many people think they're Republicans. It's going to take somebody who understands how to talk to my neighbor, in a way that isn't threatening in a way that isn't like, I'm right, and you're wrong. But let's figure out how to solve this together. And I have a reputation. And people have seen me do that for eight years here in Rome I think people have seen me throughout my life operate that way. But in this eight years, it's going to be easy to tell people that and for them to see that and for them to have people who I don't even know I know, say, yeah, that Wendy girl. She's always the one who responds to our emails. She's always the one asking those tough questions, holding people's feet to the fire. That's what our neighbors deserve. Our neighbors deserve an advocate who's someone who listens and somebody who works hard to get the job done. And that's what you get with me.

Meral Clarke: 34:16

Well, that's terrific. And you know, I was going to ask you about the Rome Braves. We interviewed Devin Pandy recently, and he's a huge Atlanta Braves fan. And Devin Pandy is running for mayor of Gainesville, Georgia. And he explained why he was a huge fan. Tell us about bringing the Rome Braves to Rome, which you did.

Wendy Davis: 34:39

Well, yeah. So first of all, before I was taught to be a politically minded person, I was I was raised to be a baseball fan and to be an Atlanta Braves fan. So one of my first career ambitions was to be a major league shortstop. I'm still not sure why that didn't happen.

Meral Clarke: 34:58

It's never too late, Wendy.

Wendy Davis: 35:00

Hey now, it's a little too late for me. So I've been a Braves fan. And all those years where they lost I was a Braves fan like, I'm no fair weather fan, I'm so excited that they've moved on to the National League Championship Series. Now it's good to win. Winning is great. But when I heard that people in our community here in Rome, were trying to recruit a minor league baseball team, I made a point to be at this meeting, and I hadn't been around is sort of this chamber of commerce crowd. And I've always been sort of blessed to look younger than I am. But sometimes, that doesn't help you when you look like a child. And it's a bunch of grown ups, right? Even though you're grown up, too. And nobody really knew me. But I was taking notes, and everybody was talking about why they wanted baseball. And there were people talking about how they tried a couple times before and weren't successful. And everybody's talking about how much they love baseball. And then finally, I'm like, okay, nobody's talking about how we have to do a campaign, they were talking about putting special purpose local option, sales tax referendum on the ballot. So we were going to ask people to tax themselves to build a stadium. And so we get around to me, and I'm like, I'm love baseball as much apparently all you folks here in the room do but this is a campaign, we've got to put a campaign together, if we're going to pass a tax, that's not an easy thing to do. So who's the treasurer who's filing with the state like, I'm like, going through the checklist of let's get this going. And they're all looking at me, like who's this lady? But I'm the only one in the room who really knew a lot about campaigns. And we were able to put an interesting coalition of people together, including a lot of young professionals, people with small kids. We pitched it because it's what it has been. It's an opportunity to bring the community together over a wholesome something, it's entertainment that the family can afford. And we were able to pass a tax by 142 votes, this was a very narrow thing, because this is a luxury and you're taxing yourself for a luxury for a common good for the community. But it's not a gotta have it's a wanna have. So we were able to pass it and we built the stadium on time and under budget. And so since 2003, we've had 70 games of minor league baseball right here in town, a beautiful facility, and it brings the community together, and it's affordable family fun, and it's delivered everything we said it was going to be and and it gives me a reason I can go somewhere and yell and it's okay that I'm mad at the umpire. You know, maybe I'm really not as mad as the umpire as I am mad at somebody in politics, but it's appropriate to yell at a stadium. So

Meral Clarke: 37:34

Absolutely Good for you. Good for you. And at least you put it on the ballot, which is more than some counties have done, but we'll leave that there.

Wendy Davis: 37:42

Yes. Again, I think we did it right.

Meral Clarke: 37:45

Yes, you did. You did.

Wendy Davis: 37:47

There are a lot of ways to build a stadium. And we did it the right way. And again, it was not an idea that everybody shared. We had to help them understand why it would be good for our community and why it was worth that investment. And again, I'm somebody who tries to take big ideas and put them into action. And that's just a nice example that ended up being a win win for everybody.

Meral Clarke: 38:06

Terrific. And finally, and I ask all my guests this question, tell us a fun fact about yourself. Something not related to Well, you've already told us about baseball. But tell us not related to your campaign or to your political life. Tell us something just about Wendy, maybe about your being adopted, which is really interesting, but tell us something that our listeners might want to know about you.

Wendy Davis: 38:30

Yeah, so usually my fun fact is the I wanted to be a major league shortstop thing, or, you know, talking about my adorable Chihuahua. But I will say that I'm really blessed. And I think one of the ways that we sometimes don't understand our neighbors, and maybe the way my family was put together just made me understand that in many ways your family is about who you choose to be in your family rather than about biology. So my parents were each married before they married each other. And in their first marriages, they each had two boys. So when they got married, I say it's kind of like the Brady Bunch but different because there weren't any girls and so four boys and and my mother had lost a baby girl, her first pregnancy and always wanted a little girl to dress up and ruffles and bows. And so they went and adopted me. And my parents, I guess I mentioned earlier, my dad was 45. My mom was in her late 30s. And my brothers were 8, 12, 15 and 19 years old, when they added me to the family. So we have a very blended family and my brothers were kind of in some ways stepbrothers to each other. But I was everybody's baby sister. And my story is about my completing this family. And everybody doesn't have that same story. There are children that are never given that kind of love and support and a family and in a lot of ways, I have a big heart for people, particularly young people who end up in the foster care system, because I could have been me. All my life like I've got four brothers. And like I said, My mom was enough for anybody more mom than anybody needs. But as I've gone along, my friends become like family to me in a lot of ways. And I think it's because my family was about growing the family and adding to the family rather than about, we're just this little unit, and just about biology. So it's sort of gives me a little different take on the world than some people have. But I like to say that I see that loving someone is what makes them family, rather than biology. And I think if we focused more on how we could be loving to each other, whether we're related, you know, I use the word neighbors a lot. And some people take that very narrowly. I take it very broadly. I see it as the most important commandment to me, love your neighbor.

Meral Clarke: 40:51

and you exemplify that in your actions. So we appreciate that. Thank you. So Wendy, if our listeners want to get in touch with you, or support your campaign volunteer donate, where would you send them?

Wendy Davis: 41:03

Well, I would love for folks to go to Wendyforus.com that's our website and you can see a video and my team put together a video that I think shows my connection to the district and my passions, and also where on most social media at either Wendy for us as a handle or Wendy Davis for us is where we are on Facebook. So hope folks will connect I need volunteers from all across the state. So thanks for again for this opportunity today.

Meral Clarke: 41:29

Well thank you, Wendy, for joining us today and sharing more about your critical work to support Democrats and 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 join us next time when our guests will be Lateefah Conner, Democratic candidate also running against Marjorie Taylor Greene in the 14th district. To learn more about us and the work we're doing, visit us online at FanninCountyGeorgiaDemocrats.com and share the North Georgia Blue Podcast with your friends and family be sure to subscribe and follow. If you enjoy our podcasts become a founding patron and friend of the show at NorthGeorgiaBluePodcast.com/patron so we can continue getting into more good trouble.