Glynn Democrats reflect on past year, eye 2020

Aug. 26--The debate lasted five hours, but it was state Sen. Jen Jordan's speech to her fellow senators and the state in general before the vote on House Bill 481 that got other people talking. Her emotional recounting of her own pregnancy struggles and defense of reproductive rights led to the speech going viral. People began talking about her as a candidate for statewide office.

What lies in the future for Jordan may remain unknown at present, but she brought her health care message Saturday to Brunswick as a featured speaker for the Glynn Democrats' annual banquet.

She talked about when her mom, who at 30 years old had to have an emergency hysterectomy because of the discovery of stage four uterine cancer, something that wasn't discovered earlier because she couldn't afford regular visits to the doctor.

Jordan said it was a particularly scary time for her, and now also sees how the recovery period must have been especially frightening for her mother.

"She survived by the grace of God, but that experience has stayed with me throughout my life," Jordan said. "The lack of access to basic, essential health care -- pap smears, contraception, things all of us in this room may take for granted. This lack of access for poor, frightened women in this state, working mothers who are raising children, is simply untenable. It hasn't gotten any better."

She said they were part of the working poor that gets stuck in the insurance gap -- not able to qualify for assistance, but not able to afford decent insurance coverage. Jordan added that every Georgia woman should have access to basic health care, including reproductive services.

"In current-day Georgia, before H.B. 481, it was difficult to get an abortion, but I will tell you, it's even more difficult to give birth, and exceedingly more dangerous," Jordan said.

She noted that's more pronounced in poor, rural areas of the state, and worse for black women in particular.

"You are four times more likely to die in childbirth if you are a black woman in this state...," Jordan said. "It is something that kind of blows you away, when you think of where are our priorities in terms of health care."

She said that after the last legislative session, Republican lawmakers shouldn't be able to coast into reelection next year.

"What H.B. 481 showed us is that one vote, two votes, three votes, actually makes a difference," Jordan said. "And, we have made so many strides in the last few years that if you can pick off one seat, if you catch lightning in a bottle, it can stop a bill like this."

She pointed out that it happened in her district, a GOP-leaning area that was Hunter Hill's seat before he left to pursue the Republican nomination for governor.

Adrienne White, the state Democratic Party's vice-chairwoman of candidate recruitment, also spoke at Saturday's event and said she's especially looking for energized Democrats to run for municipal and county offices, what political wags call building a bench of future candidates for higher office.

"When you talk about community, I want a progressive Democrat to get on city councils, making major decisions, especially in rural and red areas across the state, to regain the trust of their fellow neighbor," White said. "And when their fellow neighbor trusts them, when they decide to run for that hard Senate seat -- whether that's commissioner, state senator, state representative, congressperson -- people say I don't know how to feel about their partisan politics, but I trust that person and I want that person representing me."

She also emphasized the necessity of capitalizing on Stacey Abrams' grassroots and get-out-the-vote apparatus, in that for Democrats to win, campaigns are going to have to knock on a lot of doors and engage with a lot of people who aren't consistent voters -- finding the votes to win by opening up the voting pool.

While Glynn County Democrats typically don't have much electoral success outside of the city of Brunswick, state Democrats declared they're targeting every state House district in which the Republican incumbent drew less than 58 percent of the vote.

That indicates there may be more action along the coast in the coming year, as state Rep. Don Hogan drew 57.7 percent in 2018, placing his District 179 as one of the 16 targeted. Glynn Dems chairwoman and 2018 Democratic nominee Julie Jordan is running again for the party nomination.

She drew 42.2 percent of the vote against Hogan, losing by 3,314 votes of the 21,360 votes cast.

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