North GA Blue: Getting into Good Trouble
North GA Blue: Getting into Good Trouble
Debby Peppers, Chair of the Whitfield County, GA Democratic Party
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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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, Debby Peppers, former chair of the Whitfield County Democratic Party, current treasurer of the North Georgia Democrats, attorney and longtime political activist. Welcome to the show, Debby. We're so happy to have you with us today.
Debby Peppers:Well, thank you so much for inviting me.
Meral Clarke:So let's let our listeners know something about you. Born and raised in Dalton, Georgia, Debby is actually a double dog having graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in political science and emphasis on American political systems and UGA Law School. She has served in various community roles including the Girl Scouts, Family Crisis Center, Cherokee Estates, League of Women Voters Kiwanis, Rotary, PTA and the juvenile court citizen review panels. Debby was the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the State of Georgia over conditions in the juvenile detention center for which she was awarded the American Bar Association's Livingston Award. Congratulations on that. She was also elected as the first woman on the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners defeating four men without a runoff and served one term without seeking reelection. She also ran for state senate in 2016, after the newly elected senator resigned the day after the election. Amazing. Her interest in politics began in high school working with her uncle's campaign per state representative. He won that election and her cousin succeeded him and served several years in the State House afterwards. In 1977, she worked on her father's campaign for Congress to defeat the infamous John Bircher Larry McDonald. She continued to work in many Democratic campaigns over the years and has been involved with her local party for a number of years finally being elected chair in 2020. Debby also serves on the unified board of zoning appeals. She is a Cub Scout pack leader, a member of the League of Women Voters and treasurer of the North Georgia Democrats. Oh my. You have such an impressive background, Debby, Clearly you come from a politically inclined family. Have you always been a Democrat? And if so, why? And what sparked your interest in high school to become more involved?
Debby Peppers:Well, yes, I've always been a Democrat. But we'll preface that by saying back in the day, when I was younger, everybody was a Democrat. A lot of the politicians that you see now, if they've been around for a while just off the top of my head, I think of Nathan Deal, and Bubba McDonald and all of those guys. They ran originally as Democrats. My interest in politics probably did begin when I was in high school. I had a really great professor at Dalton State College, Terry Christie. He was a political science professor, and I loved him. And then I went on to Georgia, and I had Charles Bulloch. And if anyone keeps up with the Georgia politics, he writes a lot of articles for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He was wonderful. And I enjoyed him too. But I'll tell you a funny story. Shortly after my husband and I got married, we went to a family reunion. And when we left, my husband said, Does all your family talk about is politics? And I said, Well, yeah, I mean, what else is there to talk about? So it kind of comes from the family as well. We've always had an interest in it. So I inherited that I guess.
Meral Clarke:Well, we're lucky to have you on our side. That's all I can say about that. So let's talk about Whitfield County. How is your party involved in that race to unseat Marjorie Taylor Greene because she has to go and we've got some wonderful viable candidates running against her.
Debby Peppers:We do and I'm really excited about our candidates. We do have some really good ones for a change. And I will say it's not just about county party What an interesting thing happened back during the coordinated Senatorial Campaign this year, uh, back in the fall of 2019. Actually, when Allsop and Warnock were running, I started communicating with some of the surrounding county chairs, I was just kind of moving into the position of chair for Whitfield County and I really didn't know too much about what was going on. So I started reaching out and we all started talking to one another and sharing ideas. And after the election was over, we continue to maintain that communication. And in June of this year, we all got together and decided that we thought that working together in a coordinated effort would be beneficial for the district. So we formed this group called North Georgia Democrats and we are continuing to work together and we have several goals. One of our first goals is to try to support and strengthen local county committees. We're trying to do that by rotating through the counties to do fundraising for the committee. Were also trying to provide support, we set up some expectations that we are goals that we're asking the counties to work toward. Some of them are simple, like have regular meetings, some of them are technological. So we're asking, Do you have an Act Blue account? Do you need help setting one up? Do you have a website? Do you have a Facebook presence?, all of those things. So we're trying to work with county committees to make them stronger. We also want to try to coordinate a democratic friendly message that the counties throughout the district can use, because we feel like if we could educate people about what Democrats stand for, what our platform is, and what we stand for, instead of being reactive and be proactive by telling people what we're about that we could win over a lot of people now who are being pushed out of the Republican Party because they do not support the extremist views of some of these politicians that now are in office and Marjorie Taylor Greene being one of them, y'all've got that Clyde guy, think over where you are in the ninth district who is about as bad as she is.
Meral Clarke:Andrew Clyde, he is almost as bad as she is.
Debby Peppers:The only difference between him and her is he's not as flashy. He's not out there as much as she is. But as far as beliefs, the two of them are of the same idea. So we were thinking that the state party has a lot on its plate, I think they had said they were trying to strengthen some of the weaker counties in South Georgia who don't have committees all and because our approach is a being a more rural area is different from the cosmopolitan metropolitan areas of Atlanta, we felt like we probably knew better how to reach our folks than to depend just solely on the state. Now, we're certainly still looking for the state for a lot of help. But we're trying to get a little closer to home in hopes that we can strengthen the Democrats up in the North Georgia area.
Meral Clarke:So that segues nicely into my next two questions. First of all, is the North Georgia Democrats Group A PAC? Is that a political action committee?
Debby Peppers:Or no, we're a 501 C 4, which is an educational committee, we discussed the PAC issue and all that sort of thing that kind of came down to disclosures and reporting and that sort of thing, which is why we decided to go with the 501 C 4 the educational part, which also, by the way, is the same designation that something like the League of Women Voters has where our purpose is to try to educate people about what we stand for, without taking an all out Democrats approach course, obviously, with Democrats in our name, we're going to be more in line with Democratic politicians views and values. But we intentionally did not go the PAC route.
Meral Clarke:I was curious about that, because there are certainly advantages and disadvantages to both. So my second question regarding your organization is talking about Democrats messaging, or lack thereof, or ability to get their messaging across to the voters. President Biden, and Congress and Democrats at the state capitol are doing great work. They truly are. And they're doing the best they can with the very slim majority they have, which if you throw in Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, it's really not enough of a majority, actually, to get more progressive ideals across but they're still doing great work. And the messaging seems to lack the ability to get across to a lot of voters, especially in rural areas. So how are you trying to change that messaging? Try to make it better? And how are you trying to get across to a lot of folks who don't understand that the process is slow and tedious, but it is moving forward.
Debby Peppers:Yeah, thinking about communication, it's really two prong, first of all, is what is your actual message? And how
Meral Clarke:Well, you have to meet them where they are, right, do you get it across? And I think the Democrats have done a terrible job of doing that. For example, like another day, I had seen another one, I was trying to remember what it was, I couldn't remember, but the whole defund the police. I mean, who thought of that as a slogan, the Democrats end up spending a lot of time trying to explain what that term means. We tend to complicate things, whereas I think Republicans do a great job of just putting a slogan on everything that everybody says, you know, it's pretty much like let's support apple pie. And everybody claps her hands and says, Yeah, that's a good idea. I think we need to try to simplify our message. And I think we can I've been trying on a small scale to do it locally, by putting things out like we support raising taxes on the wealthy. I for the life of me can't understand how the Republicans or how anybody could be opposed to saying that those that make over $400,000 ought to be paying at least the same ratio of taxes that somebody who's making 100,000 is paying. But apparently there are people who don't understand that. I think that as a party, we have got to simplify our message in order for people to understand and then if I want to get into an asking questions and debate it, that's one thing. But honestly, I have not seen with a lot of these folks who jumped on these Republican messages that they're really thinking about, what does that really mean? You know, let's see, there's going to be a push this next year, apparently, in Atlanta to get rid of the state income tax. Now I'll pay state income tax, that'd be great for me, but then the question becomes, well, then how are you going to make up the deficit? Where is it going to come from? What are you going to do cut services are you going to raise something else, because you can't just have a big hole like that and not fill it. So I think we've got to get our own messaging consistent and be bragging a little bit more than we are doing. And the second thing is, I get very anxious when people say, and I see it all the time hear it all the time, Democrats are not getting their message across. And I totally agree with that. But by the same token, I am frustrated by the fact that I'm spinning my wheels, trying to figure out how to get your message across. Our local party has a website, we have Instagram, we have Twitter, we have Facebook, but I don't for one minute think that that is reaching the majority of the local population. I used to tell people, I used to do little workshops for people who were thinking of running for office. And one of the things I would tell them, because I found this myself, when you're politic and you tend to be out and you're talking, you end up talking to the same people or the same circle of people. So you can fool yourself into thinking everybody is going to be voting for me. And what I've told them is walk into a Western Sizzlin on Friday night and see how many people you know in there. That's the same thing with our messaging, you know, we are messaging amongst one another, but I can't get outside that circle. And I've been real frustrated about that. We were struggling with that, that during the coordinated campaigns in our area, in Dalton with the county we have a very large Hispanic population, but trying to reach them is just a head scratcher for me. Some would say we'll put some ads on that Hispanic radio station when then some people say, well, they don't listen to the local station, they listen to the Chattanooga station, and then others will say we'll put it in the Hispanic newspaper. And I had one guy who I think is correct, was probably the most correct. He said, put posters in the Hispanic stores. I was creating posters with our logo on it. But I was trying to just address general community issues so that people would know that we're concerned. And one of the things was transportation here locally. And I was talking to the county commission chair, and I said, you know, we really need better public transportation. And he said, Well, you know, we've got a bus, but it's not being utilized that much. And we're talking about doing away with the service. I said, Oh, well, I didn't really know about that. How are y'all advertising that? And he said, we put an ad in the newspaper. And I was thinking, how can he possibly think that would reach the people that would be utilizing that service? The people who are utilizing the local public transportation system are not the people who are spending their money on a subscription to the local newspaper. I think we're all in a situation of trying to figure out first of all, what is our message? And secondly, how do we get it out there? And I don't have an answer. I'm continuing to struggle with that. personally, and this is just my opinion, not Fannin County Democratic Party, but me, I would go where they are. And I would meet them in person where they are.
Debby Peppers:Yes. And that's true. But I mean, I look at myself, and I keep telling this to my group. I said, I don't speak Spanish. And I don't look Hispanic. And they look at me and they see an old white woman and they don't trust me, and they're not going to listen to me. Now. we're there. We do go every time there's any sort of event, we pitch our tent, and we have our stuff and all of that, but I'm not confident that they really see us like we did a big last minute thing over Halloween. It was some local Hispanic merchants were having a like, um, trunk party, trunk or treat. And so we pitched our tent. And I know that I gave out because I bought a bunch of stuff, somewhere between three and 400. People went through when we were there, but I don't know that they knew, you know, the Democrats are because I do think and talking to some of the folks that there is a basic kind of lack of understanding kind of what Democrats are, what Republicans are. When are the elections, how does this runoff stuff work? We're just not doing a real good job of teaching people the system either. I had several people in the Hispanic community, when we were talking about this, that the Hispanic community does not understand runoffs they say, you know, that's not how it works, where they're from you you're either elected or you're not. And when we start talking about run offs, I think something fishy is going on. So I don't know if anybody's got an answer. I sure would like to know what it is.
Meral Clarke:Do you have any Hispanic folks up there that might want to get involved with your party?
Debby Peppers:We have a couple of older people. We have a couple of younger people But the problem that I keep running into because we're really, really trying to reach out to this community is that get their bucket full, especially the young kids, if we get some from Dalton State, they're going to school and they're working. And if you look at the general population, they all have jobs and joining in community things is not high on their list of priorities. It would be family work, and then something else. And we had the same problem when I was involved in Girl Scouts trying to get into that community was very hard, because I guess the culture was not the type to put that as a real high priority in their life.
Meral Clarke:Well, that's understandable. And you know, being in a rural area, as are we we can certainly understand your frustrations with getting more people and more folks of diverse backgrounds involved. It's hard and our communities are changing. I mean, rural areas across the ninth district here, the demographics are changing more rapidly than not. So it's very important. But I do understand what you're saying. It's tough to get the younger folks involved when they're so busy just trying to raise their children and keep their livelihood going, especially with COVID, which has presented so many challenges across the board. So now that it's 2022. And we're going into the midterms, and we're going into the general election this year, and all of which are so important. How do you think Stacey Abrams will impact the down ballot races now that she's announced her run for governor? And how do you think that will impact rural counties Democratic turnout in general?
Debby Peppers:Stacey does a wonderful job of organizing. And I think it's to everyone's benefit that she does, I think it'll help with the down ballot. But I will say to the locally, it's not just in Whitfield County, but throughout the state, the state has got to do a little better job of supporting down ballot candidates. A lot of people don't know or understand what is the Public Service Commission, who's the labor commissioner? Why do I care about the Secretary of State. The focus tends to be so much on the governor and the senate that we lose sight that we probably have a pretty good chance of picking up some of the down ballot, but we've got to be pushing them at the same time we're pushing the top of the ballot, the look at the numbers on people, if they don't recognize the name, they won't vote at all in that place.
Meral Clarke:Right. Right. And that's definitely a problem. But I do believe that she will make an impact, a great impact on the down ballot races as well. And it's so important to vote from the top down right all the way down the ballot and make sure that we know the issues. So going back to your educational committee, what are the North Georgia Democrats doing to help the down ballot candidates to get voters out and ensure that they're voting on the ballot from the top down?
Debby Peppers:Generally, what we've done is keep track of who the candidates are. So we have contact information. I don't know if anybody else had that problem. I did. But I know in a coordinated campaign, I got really frustrated, because I could not find a way to communicate with anybody in either of those Senatorial campaigns. When we got started, we were going to print out our own material, but I wanted approval from the campaign before we did it. And so I just needed somebody tell me, it's okay for us to do this. Finally got on the website, because I couldn't find anybody put in an application as a volunteer thinking somebody would call me but I never got a call back. And what I finally ended up doing is I have one of the attorneys in town that I used to work with, I contacted him and he said, My daughter works down there, he sent his daughter over and got me a person to contact. So that was a frustration that I had. And I felt like probably others did as well. So I think one of the things that our group is going to be doing is to be accumulating that information. And if Murray County's having something going on, and they say, Hey, who's running in this race and how or I need to get a hold of that person that's running for labor commissioner, do you have that information? We'll have that available. We're also talking about putting together I think, three district wide events that will have a speaker and there'll be different. Some of them will be maybe other forum type format. Another will maybe be a speaker with a meet and greet kind of format, but just trying to attract these candidates up here to meet people. Now, I'll say Whitfield County, because we're still meeting virtually through Zoom, we've already had a couple of the Secretary of State candidates labor commissioner, you know, we've already had some the I think the good thing or bad thing about the Zoom meetings is it makes it easier for these candidates to attend your meetings and people to hear what they have to say. So we're taking advantage of that and I've told them the last meeting we had when some of them were on they said we need contact information so that we can get your material. Whitfield County always has a booth at the fair and I'd reached out to all the candidates I could find on the down ballot that were running for office and tell them if you will send me a poster or something, we will put it in our booth and I got a response from one. So sometimes it can be hard.
Meral Clarke:It's definitely a challenge, because we are at least across the ninth district, we are 80%, red to 20% blue. But as I stated earlier, it is changing.
Debby Peppers:Well, I tell you what, it doesn't matter to me either. And what I've said a million times is, if nothing else, that senatorial race should have taught everybody that when you have a statewide race, a vote in Whitfield county counts just as much as a vote in DeKalb County. In October, the state before said, I know we're not going to be sending you a state legislator or a state senator anytime soon, may not be able to do a congressman but we can affect a statewide race. So we need to be putting resources up here. Because we're going to be purple, I think for a while and our vote is going to be close at 1000 people in Whitfield County for a candidate could be the difference in a win or loss on a statewide race.
Meral Clarke:Exactly. Because the margins are so slim, right? We're so divided. So let's talk about municipal races and local races. Democrats recently flipped 48 seats in the municipal races across the state drilling down to the local races. Let's talk about races for county commissioner and school board seats. Are you using your educational committee to recruit more Democrats to run in local races? Or are the county committees working separately on the county level?
Debby Peppers:We're talking about it. But in my opinion, I think you have to have a local person who really knows. If you look at Whitfield County, the City of Dalton is blue, but the rest of the county is not. So if you were looking at a city race, which we just had a city race where we had a blue candidate getting in, of course it's non partisan. So you know, it wasn't obvious that that candidate was Democrat, but the history of that candidate is Democrat. I think there is a state representative district that is in the City of Dalton, and I think that you would have a chance being able to elect a Democrat to that seat. But I just think when you get down to the city council and the county commission level that I don't think that an organization can be real effective in soliciting candidates because you know who the quacks are in town and you know, where the possibility is, you might win something and we have some candidates we don't need to be running for on the Democratic ticket. I think we need to be a little more choosy about that.
Meral Clarke:Right. And no one knows better than the local folks on the ground. Right? It's on the ground, obviously. So give us some positive aspects of what's going on this year with the Whitfield County party and also with the North Georgia Democrats educational committee, tell us what's going on there for 2022.
Debby Peppers:I'm really excited. I think Whitfield County committee has become energized. And I really hate this whole COVID thing. It's really put a damper on that we were having social back in the summer when you could meet outside and wait, we had a lot of people who were coming that would come to the socials. But were not a part of the regular meeting. And I think that's something that the noastre Democrats were talking to our committee members about, let's try to provide a place where Democrats can come to just be Democrats, I've had people come up to me before and whispered to Democrats, it's okay. You know, they feel like they can't speak out. So it's good to provide a time when you can just come together to socialize and talk about these things that you think nobody else but you feel that way. We were doing a monthly breakfast, and then a monthly dinner, or social sometimes one of the last ones we did was went to and here again is going to the outreach, we went to a local Hispanic restaurant, and did dinner and then we went to a Hispanic ice cream store and had dessert another meeting. So we're trying to do two things. And that is reach out into the community, especially those communities that we are having hard time reaching, and then reaching out to our membership to provide support. And hopefully let them see that there are other Democrats and it's okay to be a Democrat, and you should be proud of being a Democrat, and providing them with the ammunition that they need to sway other people in that direction. I'm very fortunate that I have a really great committee member who has worked at the state level on messaging. Her name is Kathleen Minor, and she has done texting, and she's writer and she has helped us do workshops on communication. She did a great one for us this past fall and is willing to do it for other people. And I think we're going to push that a little bit more. She's been pushing a concept called friend banking. I've did a state training on phone banking, and they were using and I can't remember the name of the app right now, but I was told that they kind of had to leave it because, a lot of people were having trouble manipulating the app. And it was not carrying information over from one campaign to the next the way they wanted it to. So they kind of abandon it. And Kathleen was talking to us about friend banking. And she was start doing workshops on that, which is a real simple concept is that you text 5 friends and your contacts, and just remind them to vote in a very personal way. And she did a really good job with that. And I think that's where our focus is going to be. It's going to be on a person to person sort of thing. I think this year, it's going to be a couple of things. It's going to be a more personal outreach. And secondly, I think I'm already seeing that at the state level, that they're going to back off from the absentee ballot, and instead be pushing early voting, because the state legislature has made the absentee ballot rules so complex your window of time to send things and and the documents that are required are just an obstacle to being able to vote, I think it was DeKalb or Fulton, over 50% of their absentee ballots were rejected. I think I read in the paper because of some problem or the other. I think those are two things that you're going to be seeing in the election cycle this year that I think are good, and I think Stacey will be pushing those things for us. And all we've got to do is follow through. She sets a great example of what needs to be done.
Meral Clarke:Yes, she does. Our next governor, I look forward to saying madam governor. Yeah, really? I am so ready for that. So Debby, do you have any plans to run again?
Debby Peppers:I'm old. No, I don't know. You
Meral Clarke:are not Oh, yes,
Debby Peppers:I am. I'm too old to run again.
Meral Clarke:No, never too old.
Debby Peppers:I'm always very disappointed when I ran in 2016. I probably naively thought that I could do better in that race than I did, because of my experience with the commission. But it had been 20 years or so since I had run. And I think the thing is, I had a lot of Republicans and Dalton vote for me. But I had one of the guys tell me, he said, you know, you're the only Democrat I'd vote for I think in order for me to be able to persuade someone to vote for me, I would have to spend some time with me get to know me. And that's just not gonna happen on a large scale basis. I mean, I did the best I could. It was a short race. And that race was terrible. I was so mad that one of the reasons I ran Charlie Bethel, I had won the election here locally for State Senate. The day after the election, he announced that he was resigning to be appointed to the Court of Appeals. Now, I did not for one minute think that that was an unplanned move. So I got mad just thinking about how he and the governor had probably worked together to manipulate that race and am opinion cheat the voters because he had no intention of taking that office over. And so you pretty much lost your vote. And not only that, but you're wasting a lot of taxpayer money, you got to have another election now. And elections cost money. So it was supposed to be a nonpartisan election. So I did not declare a party thinking that okay, here's a chance that I can get out here. Maybe people can get to know me, and maybe once they know who I am, they'll vote for me without worrying about whether I'm a Democrat or Republican. And it was that Trump year, and was that a foreign adult? And the first question I was asked, the first question was, who did you vote for? For President? Yeah, very inappropriate question. And this came from the editor at the local newspaper. And I said, Well, you know, I could take the Fifth but everybody know I was guilty. But that's it. I voted for Clinton. But I'll tell you why. I said, first of all, Trump says things that I would put my children in timeout for if they said, but I said, also, he has no experience. He does not know what he's doing. He doesn't understand the system. And I think everything I said about him proved to be true. He doesn't understand or respect the system and would like to tear it down to his benefit, if you could.
Meral Clarke:All of that came to fruition over those four years. So you are correct about that. So Debby, if someone wants to get involved with the North Georgia Democrats or the Whitfield County Democratic Party, where would you send them? If they want to volunteer donate, where should they go?
Debby Peppers:The North Georgia Democrats, we have an Act Blue account, and we have a website and had to be careful. There's two Facebook, North Georgia Democrats. One of them is an older group, and it's just a Facebook group. And then the other one is ours. And we do have ActBlue and there's a link there and we are trying to expand our board and our membership and participation because the more the merrier. And more ideas you get the better off so Whitfield County, same thing. We have a Facebook page, that's probably the easiest way to contact us to send a message and somebody will get back with you. But we have meetings. I like I said our zoom meetings zoom like it's posted on our Facebook page, and it's the first Tuesday of the month at 630. So anybody is welcome that join our Facebook page and you can join in the meetings at any time. We'd love to have you we have expanded our membership considerably. Looking at Whitfield County, we're running close to 38 to 40% are voting Democrat now. And I think considering Marjorie Tyler Greene in that particular race, and what I think is going to happen in the governor's race, I think Kemp and Purdue are probably just going to massacre one another, and nobody's going to come out looking good out of that race. So I'm thinking that we've got a pretty good chance of up in our numbers this year in this election, and I invite everyone to participate, because maybe this year, we might win.
Meral Clarke:Well, it takes a village. Right, right, right. I mean, you don't really have the right to complain if you haven't exercised your civil right to vote. So we also urge everyone to come out and get involved with the primaries in the general election and the party in particular. So finally, Debby, and I ask all my guests this question, tell us a fun fact about yourself something just about you. Not related to politics, not related, necessarily to your legal career, although can come from that. Tell us something fun about Debby?
Debby Peppers:Oh, gosh. I don't know that anybody would ever accuse me of being fun.
Meral Clarke:I'm sure you have a story.
Debby Peppers:I really, you should have prepped me on that one. Because I really do not know anything that even tell you. I'm sorry.
Meral Clarke:It's more fun when it's a surprise. But you know, there must be something interesting.
Debby Peppers:Well, I think that I'm a Cub Scout leader is pretty funny. Here. I am an old lady. I had all girls, I had three Girl Scout troops. And I didn't get any little boys in my life until I had grandchildren. And I've got a 10 year old grandson and I am his scout leader. And then next year, I will have to go back to Girl Scouts to I'll have to have two troops next year because my granddaughter will be old enough to join the brownie. So I guess what you say about me as I'm a chronic and perpetual volunteer. That's a good. It's a habit that I can't seem to break
Meral Clarke:And we're all the better for it are the ones who benefit from it. So thank you, Debby, for joining us today and sharing more about your critical work to support Democratic Party policy 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 we interview Quentin T. Howell former Democratic Party delegate and whip former Georgia House of Representatives candidate and current member of the Baldwin County Development Authority and Democratic Party activists in both middle and South Georgia. To learn more about us and the work that we're doing visit us online at Fannin County Georgia Democrats all spelled out.com Share the North Georgia Blue Podcast with your friends and family be sure to subscribe and follow and if you enjoy our podcasts consider becoming a founding patron and friend of the show at North Georgia Blue Podcast .com slash patron so we can continue getting into more good trouble.