Ted Terry, First Vice Chair of the Democratic Party of GA (DPG) & Dekalb County Commissioner

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

Our guests highlight democratic activities and actions to work toward a Blue Georgia. The 9th Congressional District spans 20 counties across the region and covers a good deal of northern GA including Blue Ridge, Morganton, Fannin, Union, Banks, Athens/Clarke, Dawson, Elbert, Forsyth, Franklin, Gilmer, Habersham, Hall, Hart, Jackson, Lumpkin, Madison, Pickens, Rabun, Stephens, Towns, and White counties. 

Our democratic party podcast also disseminates information and interviews powerful Democrats across the state of GA working to overthrow the suppression tactics of the GOP and ensure democracy and our values, grassroots efforts, and goals remain intact. 

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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, Georgia Democratic Party. I'm your host Meral Clarke. And we're getting into some good trouble today with our special guest, Ted Terry, first vice chair with the Democratic Party of Georgia, former mayor and current DeKalb County commissioner. Welcome to the show, Ted. We're happy to have you here.

Ted Terry: 0:43

Great to be here. Thanks so much for the invitation.

Meral Clarke: 0:46

Well, let's let our listeners know a little bit about you. At just 36 years of age, Ted Terry was the youngest mayor elected in the city of Clarkson's history, but he's no newcomer to politics. As a Georgia Democratic Party staffer, Ted trained canvassers and candidates for GOTV efforts, which is get out the vote efforts during the 2008 election cycle and for Barak Obama's first presidential campaign. Ted has participated in federal, state and local government and political issues since he was 17 years old. His main goal as first vice chair is to train, recruit and energize the next generation of Democratic candidates at all levels of government across the state. Ted is also currently serving as a DeKalb County commissioner on the board of commissioners. Wow, you're a busy guy. You are so we appreciate all that you do. Tell us a little bit more about your background and history in I assume Georgia politics since you were 17.

Ted Terry: 1:49

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm actually from Florida originally, but don't hold that against me.

Meral Clarke: 1:54

I'll try not to but go ahead.

Ted Terry: 1:56

But it feels like a lot of Georgians these days. They came from somewhere else. I didn't come from the North. I came from the south. I came from Tallahassee, Florida, went to school, University of Florida. I got involved in politics, freshman year of college, actually, his freshman year of college was September 11 2001, I was going to do a nutrition major. I was going to you know, get my physician assistants license and be in the medical field because that was the industry to be in at the time. And then terrorist attacks happen. We went to war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and George W. Bush sort of at the time was the worst president ever until Donald Trump. So I just was like, I can't, you know, I can't sit on the sidelines. So I started getting involved in the protest movement, the anti war movement, spent a lot of time organizing, protesting, doing rallies, I worked on a raise minimum wage campaign in Florida was a constitutional amendment with ACORN. Ironically, all those rumors, ACORN, great work, they got a bad rap. They were an amazing organization that helped get that minimum wage increase on the ballot. And you know, I spent like four years organizing and protesting and I didn't really do electoral work, I just did a lot of kind of just get out there and make some noise. And George W. Bush got reelected. And I was like, Well, wait a second. We did all this protesting. We did all this organizing, and then he got reelected. What happened inside kind of became aware of that, well, if you want to make a difference, you have to do it electorally. You have to elect people, you have to go out and knock on doors, you have to go out and persuade people which decidedly protesting in rallies isn't a persuasion tactic. It's a mobilizing tactic. So I was missing the piece of the puzzle of politics, which is not it's not all about mobilizing. It's about persuasion. It's about influencing. It's about leading by example. And so when I moved to Georgia in 2005, I got involved with the Sierra Club, Environment Georgia, the Human Rights Campaign, I literally was a door to door canvasser and knocked on doors for six months straight in Atlanta from the winter into the summer and raise money for progressive causes and just really sort of cut my teeth on being you know, kind of one of the the rank and file of a campaign worker, which is literally just knocking on doors. I went to work for Jane Kidd on our state's civic campaign in Athens. It was one of the top targeted state senate campaigns in '06. Lost that campaign but convinced Jane to run for chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, and she won and so I went to work for the state party during the oh eight election cycle. So I was part of the Obama campaign. The DNC I was the organizer. I was the office manager at first the DPG office on Spring Street, if anyone remembers back when it was on 1100 Spring Street, and then I did I've ran Vote Builder. And I know every Democrat knows Vote Builder at this point, I was the first Vote Builder administrator. Yeah, it's come a long way. But I remember when Vote Builder was brand spanking new, and everyone was like, oh my god, we can cut turf. This is amazing. I worked a lot of campaigns. I work for Congressman John Barrow for two election cycles. I worked for the AFL CIO or for the Sierra Club. And actually, you dated me a little bit. I actually was 30 years old when I ran for mayor and I'm not 36 now I'm 38 Meral, I'm getting older. You know how like when you turn 35 You're like, Hey, I'm 35 Like, that's awesome. And then when you turn 36 You're like, oh, well, you know, but I was just 35 and then when you turn 37 Well, I'm closer to 35 than I am to 40. But then when you turn 38, ...

Meral Clarke: 5:01

You're pretty much on your way.

Ted Terry: 5:03

You're pretty much at 40 You're there. But it's not. It is not David my resolve to help elect Democrats. And so around that same time, I ran for vice chair of candidate recruitments, or one term there. Then after the at the last election cycle, I ran for the first vice chair. And I've served in that role ever since. And so one of the things that I've worked on just at the state Democratic Party is working with some of our county committees. I kind of joke like, I'm the free consultant. People call me all the time. They're like, how do I do robo calls? Like what do you do for get out the vote? A big thing that we did last year, which I'm not sure if y'all were connected to Georgia communications group, you know, we worked a lot with Daniel Blackman's campaign, the Public Service Commission campaigns, I led sort of that coordinated effort to make sure that we supported Daniel being the third on the ballot behind Warnock and Ossoff. And then we implemented a targeted vote tripling strategy last year in targeted counties that were sort of ready for that vote tripling GOTV tactic if you vote tripling asking about it, but it is going to be the standard GOTV tactic in every election cycle moving forward.

Meral Clarke: 6:09

What is vote tripling? Can you explain that?

Ted Terry: 6:12

Vote tripling is like every other campaign tactic. It's old school just repackaged for the new era. Vote tripling is based on behavioral science and evidence based research that shows that when someone votes literally they've gone into the voting booth, and they have voted. When they walk out there is a sense of euphoria. People feel that they have accomplished something that they have done something really meaningful, because they have. Voting is the greatest expression of our democracy and our of our freedoms. And I get emotional about it because voting is like the number one thing you do. And when when people vote, they feel like man, I did something. And that is the best time to ask them to do something. And so what we did in, in Democratic precincts, right, because we don't know how people voted, but generally assumed this is a Democratic precinct, we would wave people down. And we would say, Hey, thanks for being a voter like, awesome, like high fives. Or during COVID. It was like, err, high fives. You were you know, can you remind three friends or family to vote? And then, you know, inevitably, someone would say, oh, yeah, could do that. And we would say, in the tactic that has been sort of changed because of behavioral science tells us you ask them right now you say, Oh, well, can you just text them right now? Yeah, just go pull your phone out? No, no, do that. Come on, I challenge you to do that. You literally just ask them to text three friends right there in front of you. And by golly, Meral does it work.

Meral Clarke: 7:37

Wow, that that's good to know.

Ted Terry: 7:39

Because they're they're excited. They're like I voted. And then they get to text other people. Hey, I just voted. You should too. And so and this is in part of the other aspect of the science is that there's a lot of voters that are unreachable. You know, whether you get too many text messages, I opted out. Too many digital ads, I opted out. Oh, I don't have a landline can't get a robo call, can't get a live call. Oh, I work nights can't knock on their door, not in the right demographic or target audience not gonna get a digital digital ad. There's a lot of voters that are quite frankly unreachable through all the other campaign tactics. But if the mom or the the college friend or the next door neighbor texts you and says, Hey, I just voted for Joe Biden. And Ossoff and Warnock you should too. Studies have shown that that is more persuasive than TV ads, digital ads canvassing is that it's the messengers, the trusted messenger. So you have three at least three, although sometimes people will text 10 people, they're so excited. They're like, I just voted, I'm going to get 10 people to vote like they'll do it, right. But we just asked them for three, and then so it's a good trusted messenger number one. And then lastly, it's a good use of volunteers time, because if you were to give a volunteer a task on election day, and you gave them three things to do, I want you to stand outside on the corner and sign wave, I want you to go knock on doors, or I want you to vote triple. Here's the order of ethicacy sign waving. Well, you don't talk to anybody, you just you just wave at them. So not very persuasive. Not honestly, not the best use of volunteers time. But let's be honest, some people all they'll do is sign wave. So just let him go out there and do it. Right.

Meral Clarke: 9:19

That's exactly right.

Ted Terry: 9:20

Yeah, let him don't argue with them. If they want to do that, let him do it. But you tell them hey, if you want to be really effective, here's we can do now, if they would've, they would've knock on doors. Studies have shown that you can at most if you're just doing GOTV canvassing where you're just hitting as many doors as possible. Having quick conversations, you can potentially get 20 contacts an hour, that's high, it's more like seven to nine contacts an hour. If you did vote tripling you're getting up to 44 up to 50 contacts in one hour. So from a volunteers perspective, or even a paid campaign perspective, it is the best bang for your buck the best bang for their volunteer time because they're just literally talking to more people. And because politics is all a numbers game. Politics is literally about getting more votes than the other person having more contacts translates into more votes, which means it translates into more people winning. And lastly, I'll just say we're not talking about it's going to be the end all be all of the campaign, we're talking about a one to 3% increase in turnout. So it's not a huge number. But let's remember that run off in January 1% 1%. Between the Senate being in control of Democrats or Mitch McConnell, you know, stopping everything Biden wanting to do.

Meral Clarke: 10:29

Exactly and every vote matters. And so how and why did you decide to run for office yourself after working as a staffer? What was that benchmark that made you or or that moment when you decided that you needed to become more involved?

Ted Terry: 10:44

Well, I think it really was going back to George W. Bush getting reelected. This is not right, how can how could this happen? And so I kind of sort of knew that I wanted to run for office. I just didn't know when or where or even how and so honestly, I just committed myself to working on every aspect of a campaign possible. I literally knocked on doors. I did operations. I did communications at the Digital vote builder. I did fundraising. I did campaign management. I did you know, policy and issues, everything field. I did every aspect of the campaign until I found myself in Clarkston, Georgia, honestly, just living there temporarily. I was looking for a short term stay while I worked on Public Service Commission campaign in 2012. And I was able just to find out a friend of a friend who was like, Yeah, I got a friend who's looking to rent a room in Clarkston for like, $400 a month. And I was like, $400 done. Like not only new speakers, it's in my price range, right. I was I'm low maintenance. And so I was living in Clarkston for a year. And honest to God, truth. Our neighborhood is like a hilly neighborhood. In a lot of neighborhoods ever all over America, people speed through the neighborhood. And the neighbors were like Ted, you know, you we know that you're we were doing a little block party one day, and we were like playing basketball out of the culdesac, we were barbecuing, and some people are, you know, speeding tfrough the neighborhood. And the neighbors were like, Yeah, wish we could do something about that for like, hey, Ted, we've got a good idea. We know that you're involved in politics. So why don't you go meet with the mayor? And ask him for some speed bumps? Yeah, that's reasonable. Like of course, speed bump. Does he have lobby, members of Congress lobby public service commissioners, I can get some speed bumps from a small town, Mayor piece of cake. Guess what the mayor was like, we're not doing speed bumps. Oh, no, we're not having it. And I don't eat I want to get into why it was just sort of an awful conversation. And so I came back to my neighbors and sort of told him I was like, looking at hate gonna do it. And they said, we've got a better idea. We think that you should run for mayor.

Meral Clarke: 12:45

There you go.

Ted Terry: 12:48

That's a great idea. And so I was like, in my mindset was, I'm probably going to lose, oh, you know, I don't I mean, I'm 30 years old. I look at these old Facebook photos. And I'm like, I don't know how they elected me as mayor, this young kid. But I knocked on a lot of doors. And I talked to a lot of people and I earned those votes. But I was very surprised when I won, I got 52% of the vote and a three way race. If you did the incumbent, you're 40 years older than I was. So I knew I wanted to run for office. But I didn't know when or where until the opportunity presented itself. And I felt called to serve my community. I really think that's a really important aspect of when we try to recruit candidates is we need people to have a purpose. And it can't just be like an ideological purpose. Or just like we're going to fight the Republicans and DC blah, blah, blah, we need to tie it back to something that's relevant to people's lives, for me was safer streets and safer sidewalks. Very simple, but it did a lot to a lot of people.

Meral Clarke: 13:42

That's a great platform to run on. And by the way, did your neighborhood get the speed bumps that they wanted?

Ted Terry: 13:48

Oh my gosh, can I just tell you that my and this is how annoying government is sometimes just takes forever to get things done? Sure. Bureaucracy. I got those speed bumps. It took me seven years at my last year as mayor, we got those speed bumps installed.

Meral Clarke: 14:03

Fantastic. And congratulations.

Ted Terry: 14:08

I can leave as mayor, I'm good. I completed what I set out to do. By the way we did. We did over $20 million in sidewalk bike trail Park connectivity as well. We didn't just do speed. I did a whole bunch of safer streets, safer sidewalks things

Meral Clarke: 14:21

Wonderful, great job. Well, let's circle back and talk about your position as first vice chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia and all the great stuff you're doing there. How do you go about mining, finding recruiting candidates and encouraging people to run for office? Because it's so important, as you've made clear, how do you go about doing that?

Ted Terry: 14:42

We're really fortunate to have a great vice chair of candidate recruitment Adrian White, who has done a stellar job. She's done a better job than I did when I was candidate recruitment vice chair. She really took I think what we started and really built upon it. My role as first vice chair is to sort of help at wherever I'm needed. I don't there's not really a defined role for first vice chair. In fact, actually the first vice chair is technically on every single committee. So I try to go to all the committee meetings, but I can't go to every single one. When it comes to candidate recruitment, there's a lot of really important considerations. And it comes down to timing and opportunity, as well as sort of efficacy and, you know, viability, we always encourage counties to first think about, well, what are the local offices that really matter? Before you talk about Congress or state Senate or state house or Public Service Commission, let's talk about mayor and city council, school board and county commission, I don't think they have cancer, but they used to. So it's about like, like, let's find, let's focus in on where the most good can be done at the local level, because that's where a lot of the changes really can be made in a real tangible way. And we want Democrats to be in local offices, because we want to show our neighbors and our constituents no matter how red or blue a county is, we want to show them that Democrats know how to get things done, that they can see government not as an impediment, but as a benefit to society, and not one that would, you know, Republicans try to frame government as overreaching. And over burdensome our belief is that government can be a force for good in society. And so we have to prove that. We have to prove that we can do things ethically, with integrity, efficiently on budget, and and that in the local office is the best way to do that. So I was encouraged to start local, especially when you have a commission or city council or a school board that might actually be like a split vote it, can we recruit one person in this seat and flip a school board or flip a commission or city council, because that's where again, if you're the lone Democrat on a commission, you know, you're always sort of fighting. But if you get three more votes on a five person commission, you got a majority, and you can start legislating, actually acting and doing things. And so that's the second tier is what are the races where we can win, and then get power to enact policies that will reflect our worldview of strengthening society and supporting our community being a force for good in people's lives. And then there's always going to be this scenario where we have seats that are considered so far Republican, why even bother? And the answer to why we even bother in some of those districts is one you never know. Been in politics for 20 years, and I have seen strong Republican districts not all the time, but on occasion flip. Because some crazy thing happened. Someone who gets indicted, they can be, you know, stealing money from the petty cash drawer, you know, these things happen. I was at a county commission training the other day, and they were talking about elected officials stole 1000s of dollars from the petty cash drawer in a small county commission office. And it's like hell, but guarantee that that person was going to get defeated their next election. And if we didn't have a Democrat running against them great opportunity, so you never know what's going to happen. And then lastly, understanding that gerrymandering is a thing. And we've seen all these districts that have been put forward, Republicans are submitting their positions, but these are the districts were going to have for the next 10 years. So we know that some of these districts they've drawn are actually competitive. And some of them actually might be competitive in the year four six or even eight. And so we need to have sort of a long term perspective for some of those districts. And then the last piece is that they can't gerrymander Georgia and Alabama. So Georgia is becoming more democratic. If we can increase turnout, even just by five or 10%. Or in the case of like, vote, tripling one to 3% in some precincts, we're gonna win governor, we're gonna win Senate, we're gonna win Public Service Commission, we're gonna win insurance commission, we're gonna win labor secretary, we're gonna win Ag Commissioner, Secretary of State, we're gonna win all Attorney General, all these statewide offices that are so so important. And the margins are going to be the same as in the runoff, we're gonna have 51/49 50/50 races statewide for the foreseeable future. And if it means running someone in an 80% Republican district, and they can make it and a 78% Republican district on that election cycle, and that 2% goes to Stacey Abrams, that 2% goes to Warnock, all of that adds up. We win statewide. So it's not a sacrificial lamb situation. It is a go into it with a purpose go into it with a clear eyed and understanding that, yeah, you never know what's going to happen. This district may flip one day, or I'm going to represent the Democratic Party, and I'm going to help turn out Democrats in my district or my precincts because it's going to help us keep Georgia blue.

Meral Clarke: 19:29

How concerned are you as a DPG officer about SB 202. Speaking of voter turnout and the ensuing suppression of voter rights by Republicans in Georgia, what are your thoughts regarding turnout for the midterms, which are so critically important to our future?

Ted Terry: 19:48

Yeah, it's a great question and we're dealing with this actually on the county commission in DeKalb because Dekalb Board of Elections approved their budgets all the county commissioners approved county board of elections budgets, and let me just tell you, the Board of Elections budget units aren't have gone up because of the new restrictions, it is costing more to run elections. So just from a local taxpayer perspective, we have to spend more money unnecessarily on this all this extra stuff that isn't even securing election. It's actually disenfranchising people. So that's number one. It's wasteful and inefficient. Number two, I think the practical response, and I think we saw this in the municipal elections here in Atlanta, and here in some of the DeKalb. And all these schools around the state absentee ballot turnout was abysmal. And the reason why is they have made it really hard to vote by mail, like voter turnout was remarkable in a pandemic, because like 60% of the people voted by mail. Exactly. So by the time you got to the polling to early voting election day, there was no lines. And so what we saw in this last mismo election is basically what's going to happen. I mean, it's just it's the result, it's too hard to vote by mail, they've made it hard. They've they've reduced the time that wish you could return a ballot. So if you saw the Atlanta Journal Constitution a couple of days ago, they pointed out that half of all absentee ballots that were returned, that were filled out and sent in by the voter were rejected, because they sent it in too late. They would send it in the Friday before the election, which, you know, arguably that was cutting it kind of close. But the Republicans said you had to move back 11 days, which which really doesn't make sense, it should have just been like the Monday before the election, or the Monday before then, you know, next Monday or the election was seven days, so they curtail the time to vote by mail. Now, they didn't increase the opportunity for early voting. So what we're going to have to do strategically and tactically is we're going to have to one develop a better absentee ballot process, understanding that it's harder to do absentee ballot request, because they're making it harder to the digital, you know, the online portal, right? So we're gonna have to come up with a better strategy there. But really, what it's going to end up forcing us to do is to have the OP more on our game for early though, we're gonna have to really, really push souls to the polls, we're gonna have to really, really push Saturday voting, we're going to have to work with board of elections where we have friendly board of elections that care about voting access, to extend the times, right, they can extend their time is beyond what the state mandates to a certain extent, but what you hear from Board of Elections is, oh, it cost money to pay more people. Well, that's, that's fine. You know, that's fine. That means staying open another two hours. So someone can get home from work and vote early, that's worth a 4% increase in your budget, because that means that people can vote. So I think that's the practical reality. And then lastly, again, like you're not gonna get everyone to early vote. And so we're going to be in the mad dash as we always had been in previous elections to get people to vote on Election Day. And that's why vote tripling is so important, vote triple at every early vote site, you can vote triple on election day, it's the way to make up for some of that voter suppression, because again, having that trusted messenger, encourage someone to vote who might otherwise be like, I don't want to go through that. It's gonna help push them over the edge to vote. I'll add on that enthusiasm is the biggest concern we saw in Virginia. It wasn't a turnout issue, per se, because Democrats increase their turnout by 17% from the last governor's election, but Republicans increased their turnout by 35%. What does that mean? It means Republicans were more motivated. They were more enthusiastic about voting.

Meral Clarke: 23:15

I believe the issue there was CRT critical race theory being taught in schools.

Ted Terry: 23:20

Yeah, exactly. They'll find they'll find something to motivate. So we need to be very intentional about what motivates our voters. It's difficult because again, I always come back to local issues. I think that local issue, embedding local messaging, especially when we're trying to get people to go all the way down the ballot or even vote for the top of the ticket, there needs to be some connection to someone's life. What is the reason why you're voting and why if someone being the Secretary of State or Attorney General, or senator is actually going to make their lives better? It's harder though, because we have a bigger tent, right? Yes, not as cut and dry as low taxes and national security and stopping critical race theory. They just throw out the one thing that the propaganda machine has sort of, you know, downloaded into people's brains, and it just becomes like a switch. Everyone's vote Republican votes. So we're up against some structural issues as well.

Meral Clarke: 24:09

I believe our messaging is a bit more complex than the Republicans' messaging and sometimes it's hard to communicate that so would you agree that Democrats need to work on their messaging, maybe being able to get the message across in a more simplistic fashion? Do you think that would be helpful?

Ted Terry: 24:26

So yeah, we have to work it we always have to adapt an update our messaging for what the current election cycle is? Sure. Right, right. Like just talking about Medicaid expansion, again, is not going to do it. We're gonna have to get some wedge issues in there. We're gonna get some, you know, our fight issues in there. But I still come back to the tactics because it's the messenger and it's how we get the message to the people. This is just basic campaign 101 If you want to persuade someone the votes, we can't just rely on base turnout because it waxes and wanes, we have to have a persuasion strategy. Persuasion strategy means spending time with people. There's this concept that was introduced years ago. But it's kind of come back in vogue called deep canvassing. And the basic theory Meral says that when you knock on someone's door, you spend 15 minutes minimum with them. Knock on the door in Blue Ridge, just wanted to introduce myself and let you know that I'm with the Fannin County Democratic Party. And we're really concerned about this local issue here. And we also concerned about these other environmental, you have a conversation with them. And the only way that you elicit people to really tell you what they think is you got to spend time with them. And of course, the challenge of that is, you know, you spend 15 minutes per voter four hours, you've only talked to like, 10 people.

Meral Clarke: 25:38

Sure, but they'll remember you. And those people will definitely be more motivated to vote and take action.

Ted Terry: 25:45

Yeah, that's right. Deep canvassing works both ways. Because if you find a Democrat who's like, ah, you know, I don't want to go to no meeting or this or that you can win them back over because you're like, No, here's all the Democrats are doing. But if you find someone who's independent, and you know, especially depending on again, the cycle, Donald Trump was our friend last year, because he was the most awful polarizing president, so just easy to get people motivated, because they were because all we had to do was look at this crazy person will have that opportunity in 2022. And he can't go to someone and say, Brian Kemp is crazy, because he's not crazy. He's just a Republican. But now what's their motivation? What is Brian Kemp doing to them? That is the worst. And there's definitely a list of things that he's doing that are really bad. But you know, we're gonna have to spend a little bit more time to get into those issues, and then they get ourselves relevant. And one thing I will mention, though, that I thought was brilliant by Stacey Abrams, what she did was verify they bought a million dollars of medical debt. And that medical debt was actually 18 plus million dollars in medical debt, because you know, they sell it for pennies on the dollar, like 40,000, people got a letter that said, Stacey Abrams, and Fair Fight just paid off your medical debt. Now, can you imagine if the Democratic Party had a fundraising formula that said 5% of every dollar that is raised by the Georgia Democrats goes into our medical debt relief fund, because Medicaid is our top issue? Can you imagine over the span of a couple election cycles, we would literally raise millions of dollars to pay off 10s of millions of dollars of Georgians medical debt, that would be incredible. Talk about being relevant to people who were losing, I think that we just got to really be really intentional about coming back to how we're relevant to our own people. You always hear all politics is local. But we got to do it, we actually got to embody it.

Meral Clarke: 27:34

Absolutely at every turn. So speaking of rural areas, which we are in, it's difficult to find Democrats that will speak out and get to the polls. So what is the DPG doing to help rural congressional districts like ours find and recruit viable candidates? How can the DPG help us with that?

Ted Terry: 27:55

I would say the one thing that we could do a better job on is training our county committee leaders on how to interrupt toxic behavior, how to mediate conflict, because these are things that you have to learn how to do either through trial and error or go through a training. And that kind of goes back to running for office because 99% of people in our community have no interest in running for office because it is tough.

Meral Clarke: 28:18

It is and it can be expensive as well. You don't get paid very well. You don't get very good benefits. You have to work extra hours done. No, you don't get paid very well. That's super common yell at you every month, like can I just tell you like seven years, I had seven years of monthly council meeting. And can I tell you there was never a meeting where someone did not come and yell at me? Oh, my Yeah, it's certainly not for the faint of heart.

Ted Terry: 28:44

But you develop a thick skin and develop a way to kind of laugh it off. But man, like I've had some moments where I'm like this, this is awful. Like, this is the worst job ever. Right? This moment.

Meral Clarke: 28:55

Makes sense. But it's always worth it in the end. And we're so lucky to have you with us.Ted, if someone listening to this podcast, wants to get involved wants to speak with you directly about certain issues or what have you. Where would you send them?

Ted Terry: 29:10

Anyone can always email me at TED@GeorgiaDemocrat.org. Ted at Georgia democrat.org. Anyone who's listening, I was encouraged. Go to Georgia democrat.org. Find your county committee find out when the next meeting is find out who the chair is find out who the leadership is and email them and find out what's going on. There's always going to be folks who were just like, well, I just want to volunteer during the election, which is great. And we love you and we'll have you every hour you can give during the election. But if you were interested in building, the movement, building the Democratic Party building that that local bench of local leaders that will win elections and make policy changes that will impact your neighborhoods and your downtowns there are positions of power that exists at the local level that are designed to address them if the person in there isn't doing the job, then run against them or be a part of building the movement to find someone who's the right person in the right time, the right energy, the right qualifications to run for that position to win. And then the great thing about winning an election is you get to go and work with the people to enact policy changes. And that's sometimes the hardest part. You make all these promises to people, and then they elect you, they expect you to follow through on it. And so you know, we want to follow it through and so they always say voting is the is the first step, the next two to five steps are actually getting involved, you know, being on a local committee, volunteering, helping councilmember pass an ordinance that's going to allow speed bumps in neighborhoods, right, it matters, it all matters. It's so critical. So you never know everything all politics is local, and all Texas so, so get involved in and I'll just speak for my 20 years of being involved in democratic politics. It's it's a really rewarding and gratifying experience. It's all hard work. But like anything in life, when you put a lot of work and energy into it, and you're successful. People say they wish they would spend more time with their friends, family, their neighbors, with their community. And politics literally is that. Politics is us being with our people, with our community being a part of some of the solution. And I guarantee you at the end of your life, you will say man, I did a lot of really good time

Meral Clarke: 31:22

and made a difference. Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that with us. And I ask all my guests this question. And this is my final question for you. Tell us a fun fact about yourself something not involved with politics or with the Democratic Party something about you that our listeners might be interested in learning about?

Ted Terry: 31:41

I thought I was going to be a professional runner, like cross country runner, I won the gold medal of the Junior Olympics, my junior year of high school in the 4000 meter steeplechase.

Meral Clarke: 31:53

Congratulations. That's quite the accomplishment. It really is.

Ted Terry: 31:58

Oh, that was a tough race. I barely won it. Steeplechase is the is the giant hurdle on the track that If you've run into it, it does not move and there's a water pit. You know, they filled with water. They literally filled with water and you got to jump over the hurdle into the water, and then keep running. So it's a hard race. But yeah, that's a fun fact. I got I got a gold medal at somewhere in my attics in my parents house.

Meral Clarke: 32:19

That's great. Thank you 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. To learn more about us and the work that we're doing. Visit us online at Fannin County, Georgia Democratics.com. Share the North Georgia Blue Podcast with your friends and family and be sure to subscribe and follow. If you enjoy our podcast consider becoming a founding patron and friend of the show at NorthGeorgiaBluePodcast.com/patron so we can continue getting into more good trouble.