Long hours on the campaign trail and months of strategic planning for voter turnout are behind the stories of the eight WIN List WINers in Tuesday’s primary.
In some districts, voter turnout was abysmal, with one house district reporting fewer than one thousand votes cast.
Tens of thousands of doors were knocked on by the candidates, their friends, family members, and even paid staff. In some districts, certain voters got as many as three visits – some of them beginning last fall. Thousands of yard signs were staked in the ground – and replaced after they disappeared.
Candidates attended meet and greets and community candidate forums. Countless cups of coffee and glasses of lemonade were consumed as the WINning candidates got to know their future constituents. Robo-calls were recorded and mailers sent to targeted voting households. Some of our endorsed candidates were negatively portrayed in vicious mailers filled with misleading lies.
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The night’s most historic victory came in the district with the fewest votes cast: Gwinnett’s HD 99, an open seat where the retiring male legislator had a habit of referring to constituents born in other countries as “those people.” The district is one of the state’s most rapidly growing and demographically diverse.
Brenda Lopez, an immigration attorney and graduate of the 2014 class of WIN Leadership Academy, began knocking on more than 3,000 targeted district doors for the first of three times last fall with a team that included a few cousins. When WIN List celebrated its 15 th anniversary in November, she was presented with a Rising Star award.
The Lopez campaign team wore t-shirts with the word vote in 10 of the languages most frequently spoken in the district. For areas where languages other than Spanish or English were spoken, Brenda was often accompanied by a volunteer who spoke the neighborhood’s most predominate language – evidence of attention to detail which will serve her constituents well.
Her victory makes her one of the first Latinas to serve in a Southern legislature. Yes, there are Latinas in the Florida legislature, but Florida has never been considered part of the deep South! Brenda will give a voice at the Capitol to constituencies who have not had an advocate in the past.
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When incumbent Rahn Mayo decided to “take a walk” on an important bill about crisis pregnancy centers during the recent legislative session, choice advocates saw his decision as a line in the sand – clear demonstration they could no longer count on his vote – votes which had been hard to earn in the
Fortunately, Renitta Shannon had already begun to campaign vigorously in the district and her strong support of choice and opposition to those bills which cloak discrimination under the guise of “religious freedom” earned her early endorsements from Planned Parenthood, Georgia Equality, and a number of education groups who were unimpressed with Mayo’s votes on key education issues.
Having served as an officer of Georgia NOW and an active member of the 9 to 5 Working Women Atlanta Chapter, Renitta has already proven herself a strong advocate of equal pay for equal work. Service as a legislator will give her a stronger platform to continue her advocacy efforts on a host of issues consistent with the WIN List mission.
Renitta was an enthusiastic and energetic campaigner and during the final stretch was joined by her mother and a favorite aunt who traveled from out of state to hit the campaign trail with her. During the waning days of the campaign, she unrolled a series of important endorsements which made her one of the few candidates statewide to defeat a sitting incumbent.
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It’s a good thing HD 82 Rep Mary Margaret Oliver always runs a sophisticated grassroots campaign which begins with neighborhood meet and greets in the district where she has always lived and where older residents have fond memories of her late father’s drugstore at Emory Village.
This year’s campaign required those grassroots efforts and a great deal of patience to stay on the high road and discuss issues important to the district even as she faced an onslaught of dark money financed mailers filled with lies which distorted her admirable record.
As the only person in the General Assembly who has served as Chair of both the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Mary Margaret is respected on both sides of the aisle as an advocate for children and for her knowledge of the criminal justice system and how it should be reformed. We are happy to see her wide margin of victory!
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Janine Brown won the largest number of votes in the three person race for House District 59, and now faces a runoff race in July against David Dreyer.
However, Janine is no stranger to tough jobs – she began her career as one of the early women in a technical position with AT&T which EEOC lawsuits cleared the way for.
She advanced to become the first female Vice President and Executive Vice President for her Communications Workers of America (CWA) local. She was appointed to a staff position in Washington, DC which made her the only woman on a team which negotiated a key contract for 65,000 workers and later, the leader for a team which negotiated a contract for 10,000 workers.
Janine became the union point person for relief efforts following September 11 and Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. While living in DC, she also served on the United Way and Juvenile Diabetes Foundation boards. Since returning to Atlanta 10 years ago, she has worked to register voters, educate voters and assist union members in crisis.
She and her team have mounted an energetic grassroots campaign and those efforts will now continue for the next eight weeks. We at WIN List look forward to a victory for her and the first time Janine faces Republican men across the table for a conference committee report on a crucial piece of legislation. They will find themselves eyeball-to- eyeball with one tough negotiator!
