 Georgia, Georgia, Georgia, Georgia, Georgia. Hello, everybody. I'm Michael Labotti, and welcome to All Eyes on Georgia. This is episode three, and I am absolutely astounded that Daniel Blackman could make the time today. He is actually on the ballot, the January 5th ballot. You guys have heard so much about. He is running for District 4's Public Service Commission. I believe it's a six-year term. They're staggered. There's five members. And they have a lot of power in the regulation of, let me see, telecom, electric, nuclear. Basically, utilities. Gas marketers, man. What's that? Gas marketers as well. Oh, OK. That's probably a large power in the state. I want to congratulate you on creating a situation where there is a runoff. Holding your opponent below 50% is quite a feat in and of itself. Given that, I do believe the man's name, Lauren McDonald, has been a fixture in Georgia politics. It looks like since the 90s. Yeah, that's right. He is 82 years old. And while I admire anyone that can be on their marathon for that long, in my heart, he announced his retirement several times. He'd be 89 by the time his term is over. And we feel that for whatever reason, he jumped in. But we think it's for a much different reason. But we're here to talk about this race. And obviously, he's been in office for over 22 years. And we have pulled it to a runoff. And we feel good about our chances. And then I'm just looking at your extensive background. It looks like the central thread is you've really dedicated your life to envisioning and creating a clean and sustainable energy future. I mean, that just seems to be the core mission. I mean, it's not only the core mission. It's just the reality of the times we're in. It's like saying that we're going to start teaching kids how to code. And we're going to teach kids about AI and engineering. It's not because it's the end thing. It's the world is going in a much different direction. And if you don't have innovative leaders and ideas, then what you end up with is stagnation and a lack of progress that impacts our pocketbooks, our public health, and our children's ability to compete globally. So I see myself as somewhat of an innovator and someone that brings so much more to the table than my background and my resume. I bring a vision that can align many people that don't see where they fit in the clean energy future. I feel that what we're doing brings those people into the fold and helps us transition without having casualties. Right. And I was just, I was reading a bit up on your opponent and he's very much speaks very sort of like that kind of Reagan rhetoric, free market, conservative business, get out of the way of business. And it just, it strikes me that that mindset is not up to the challenges we're facing in the 21st century where it's clear with climate and COVID, we're all into this together. I mean, we're all connected. Well, that's one of the tone deaf responses that my opponent and others in this space give. Georgia Republicans specifically, and I've got a lot of friends that are conservative, they're moderate, they're fiscal, conservative and socially progressive. And they're gonna get what I'm about to say. It's one thing when you tout Georgia being strong from an economic standpoint. My problem with that argument is that for those that don't know Georgia, Georgia consists of 159 counties. Out of those 159 counties, 22 of them make up what's considered as the Metro Atlanta region. The Metro Atlanta region is the most prosperous region in the southeastern United States. When you take Atlanta, having the busiest airport in the world, you take areas like Fulton County and Cobb County and Roswell, where the technology boom is happening. You look all around Metro Atlanta, the movie industry has bought upwards of $9 billion. So is Georgia a prosperous state? Yes, but when you venture outside of that 22 county area and you start talking about in the free market when you talk about economic opportunity and prosperity, and you go down to Albany, Georgia, or you go into rural Georgia, those folks feel like, hey, what Georgia are we talking about? Because the Georgia we live in has high utility rates. The Georgia we live in, our kids can't get on the internet to do their homework because of COVID-19. The Georgia they live in has senior citizens that can't get online for telemedicine because their broadband internet access has been extremely slow for decades. So I think that you're absolutely right. There's one thing to make an argument, but at the end of the day, when you have a state with 10.6 million people and 1.9 million of them live in poverty, we have to really address the elephant in the room, no pun intended, but the elephant in the room is a severe case of poverty, specifically low and moderate income families who are struggling to make a decision between keeping their lights on and keeping food on the table. And that is a huge problem. We've got to make this race more personal and not just about utility regulation. Right, and thank you for laying out a little bit of the geography of Georgia to remind me that district four encompasses sort of the Northern run of the state. That's correct. Just about half the border of South Carolina, I believe includes Augusta. What, within, and then the other confusing thing is you would be district four commissioner, but it's a state, it's a statewide ballot, which is really striking to me. So could you lay out that district? I know it includes the Northwest corner where that Q and on lady got elected. North Georgia counties, which means that I will have a district larger than the majority of Georgia's congressional districts. So you're absolutely right. Georgia legislature, our state house and our state Senate passed legislation years ago that even though these were district races, they made them statewide elections. Now we believe that, you know, a lot of the decisions were made based on the ability for folks to be reelected. We think that when you look at Georgia and you look at Metro Atlanta, the reality is the demographics of Atlanta is predominantly African-American. It's more mixed population in Metro Atlanta. When you look at the state of Georgia, and I give you an example, district four is the majority of North Georgia, and you're right, we even have Augusta Richmond County. We got Raven County, which is so far North and Georgia sits on the North Carolina border. So when you look at counties like this and you understand what that means, and then you look at a county like district three, which is Fulton to Cabin Clayton, the three counties that got Joe Biden into a runoff, I mean, the 12,000 votes he needed to win the election. Look, when you look at that district alone, there almost always would be a Democrat and it would very likely be a person of color. So it really behoves a lot of people when they say, well, look, why is it that I have to vote for a guy that on paper doesn't really represent me? Now, the advantage I have, which is kind of strategic, is the demographics of Atlanta had changed, that the education level had that 22-county space I told you about is starting to widen. It's starting to go into counties that where I live for South County, Georgia. And now that it's starting to spread, more counties in North Georgia and rural Georgia are getting more folks that would have lived in Atlanta that are saying, hey, you know what? There's this county three counties away that's pretty nice and has good schools. So we're now in a position where it's actually working in our favor because the demographics of Georgia are changing. And they're not changing as fast as we would like them to, but they've gotten Joe Biden into the presidency and it looks like they're gonna get John Ossoff, Reverend Raphael Warnock and myself, Daniel Blackman, into a successful January 5th runoff and will represent the state correctly. So yeah, it's a pretty challenging space. It sounds like you're feeling the momentum on the ground. That's great to hear. And so getting into the nuts and bolts a little bit about what the Public Service Commission does, I visited their website and I was, and of course, everyone's got sort of their COVID disclaimers to lead with it, but then they had this statement, the Georgia PSC does not regulate cable internet or water providers, please contact them directly for assistance. So that leads me to think, they probably get a lot of like, hey, help me with my cable, hey, help me with my internet. And so they regulate telecom, but what, landlines only? Or it sounds like they got a very narrow lane there and there's ways to expand it. Yeah, they have a narrow lane, but like even with pole attachments, they do deal with pole attachments. So there are areas where they can help drive it, but those decisions in Georgia, the way they're structured are passed through the Georgia legislature first. And once that happened through that process, the Public Service Commission is a quasi-governmental organization. This means there's multiple facets in which they operate and they facilitate their transactions and deals. So even from a broadband standpoint, AT&T is regulated by the Public Service Commission. So while they can't mandate that they expand broadband, they can work with AT&T, they can work with EMCs, which are electric membership corporations, and they can encourage and support the transition of more broadband throughout rural Georgia. So these dockets, a docket is simply a case that comes before the Public Service Commission include telecommunications, some of them include the expansion of broadband, whether it's through pole attachments or whatever, like there's a bill called HB244 right now that passed Georgia's house. And so there are things the Public Service Commission has a direct impact on, but to your point, the three areas that I think people should focus on to understand more than anything else is number one, utility regulation. Georgia has the fifth highest electric rates in the United States and the eighth highest overall utilities. On average in the United States, a person pays 5% of their income towards their utility bill. In Georgia, 18% of our income goes towards paying our utilities. And that's a huge problem, especially when you're talking about people that are living in or at or below poverty. So again, that's a huge issue within itself. Low income heating energy assistance program, LIHEAP, which is a federal program, has been cut for several years under the Trump administration. We've got to make sure that that's restored because when you look at what COVID-19 has done, it has literally crippled our economy and it's made folks that are unemployed and underworked, underemployed, they're in a really hard shape and they just need a little bit of help. Number two, clean energy. When you look at Georgia, we have not only a nuclear project that's five years behind schedule and it's 14 and a half billion over budget. I want people to understand this was a project that in 2009, ratepayers were told we would pay for, not the investor-owned company and their shareholders, but 100% financed by ratepayers. This project was supposed to be online by 2017. It's now not scheduled to be online until 2021, which means it's five years behind schedule. The initial price was 14 and a half billion dollars, billion with a B. Now it is a $30 billion project that ratepayers are paying for. So I want people to know that one of the reasons why Georgians and Georgia ratepayers pay so high in their utility bills is because the fixed costs are passed on to ratepayers. That alone increases the bill, whether it's by $10 or $12, you have every little bit counts. Then you have a coal ash problem. We have coal fire plants in Georgia, some of which are being decommissioned, but you have coal fire plants that have emitted an enormous amount of coal ash into our waterways, which they're not lined and protected well. The Trump administration, for example, has cut back 125 environmental protections over a four-year period. We're not protecting the air we breathe and the water we drink. We've heard a lot about the Flint water crisis. We don't hear about the fact that the Savannah River site, which is one of Georgia's largest bodies of water, we don't hear about how the Savannah River no longer has federal funding to test the drinking water. The ecosystem has been compromised because the nuclear facility is there. And quite frankly, we're just not testing the contaminants that are in our water. So the Public Service Commission has a direct impact on utilities, public health and the expansion of renewable energy specifically solar. And at the time, only 2, 3% of our total mix is solar. And I have a much more aggressive plan to accelerate that so that we can include more solar in our mix and we can not just make it utility scale, but expand community solar opportunities in the state of Georgia. Thank you. I would actually like to go a little deeper into that nuclear plant story. My understanding was that insurers wouldn't touch a new nuclear plant. It's just that the economics weren't there to get a new nuclear plant up and running. But you're saying the Public Service Commission okayed. Where is it is on the Atlantic coast? I mean, what the name of it? It sounds like there's quite a backstory there. It's Plant Vogel. In the 70s, we built Vogel one and two. Those were 1200% over budget. And where were those? Is it all along the Atlantic coast? Yeah, yes. So well, it's in Waynesboro, Georgia. So yes, you know, it's off the Savannah River site. So what people need to understand is we now are building Vogel three and four. This was approved by the Georgia legislature. So Democrats and Republicans in 2009 passed something called SB33, Senate Bill 33. That bill greenlit the construction of what we now know is the Vogel three and four expansion. Georgians are paying for it. The only two states in over 30 years to your point that were financed for new nuclear projects because it was way too risky was Georgia and South Carolina. South Carolina's project went bankrupt three years ago. So I want people to understand that Georgia is now a standalone project with a failed sister project in South Carolina. And that project, the financer of it and the company Westinghouse, they went bankrupt. So we're now in Georgia, not only fitting a bill that we're gonna be paying off for the next 60 years, but now we're dealing with a project that can cost billions more. In my estimation, Vogel three is not gonna go in line. I know they're saying 2021, I would probably say late 2021, early 2022, if they go online, that'd be Vogel three. And then we may not even see Vogel four online to the end of 2022 or 2023, which means that we may go from a $30 billion project to a mid or high $30 billion project by the end of this whole thing. That is way too expensive. It's such a fiscally irresponsible decision and the operations itself bringing into question, is the technology even gonna be available to be utilized at that time? I mean, if this project, it does not get completed, we are stuck with a big hole in the ground and a project that we'll be paying for for a long time. That's what I was wondering, if you've got something half built right now, way overrun in time and budget, do you cut your losses and just walk away or do you see this through and see what year it is when you're finally done? And who's making money there too? That's the other question. The other previous part about it is, Georgia Power, not only profits off of it, but it becomes an asset of theirs. So we pay for it and it becomes their asset, they get to recruit 12% off of the profits of those reactors when they're online. I want people to understand right now to your listeners, to those who are gonna be paying attention to this, I want you to think of $30 billion and then I want you to think of your state. I want you to think of all the things a state can do with education, with criminal justice reform, with the expansion of clean energy, all the things we can do with $30 billion. If we walk away from a $30 billion project, I don't know if there is a fathomable answer that you can give to ratepayers to excuse why $30 billion of their money was wasted. You could not in your right mind as an investor-owned company explain to your shareholders why $30 billion was mismanaged. So in this particular case, even though Georgia Power is not the sole owner of the project, the reality is Georgians are paying for it, schools are paying for it, churches are paying for it. And we have to explain to them why the project is delayed and behind schedule and over budget, or when it goes online, why they paid for such an expensive vehicle that's not giving them the results they need. If I bought a Ferrari for $400,000 and it drove around like a minivan, I'd have a problem. And that's an issue that we're gonna have to speak to Georgia ratepayers about and there's no easy way to do it. It's no way to give this plane of soft landing. Just one last thought on this nuclear before we move on, this is fascinating stuff. So it is cited in one of the districts of one of the public service commissions districts. And I imagine those, but those people don't, because it's a statewide vote, geographically, it seems really, I mean, the state could decide let's dump it in district, whatever. I don't know what district these plants are in, but it seems really strange that you'd have a statewide vote on something that's so geographically specific, like who gets the nuclear plant? Well, what's the question? You're asking me, why is that? Which district does this new plant fall into? It's in Burt County, Georgia. Okay. Wainsboro, so what people need to understand, you're right, geographically, it's in a part of the state. And by the way, Burt County, Georgia is one of the poorest counties east of the Mississippi River. Jobs were touted here and opportunities. And we see as a struggling community that's trying to keep up. And the reality of it is Burt County, Georgia has struggled. I mean, this is an area that you're right. Folks that live in that part of the state, they don't make regular trips to Atlanta to what we call the gold dome to sit down and watch the legislation be passed. They're not having these conversations. It's not that they're not smart people. It's not that they're not hardworking families. It's just that they are working jobs and living in economic conditions that don't afford them the opportunity to drive four or five hours to Atlanta to sit in on a meeting for an hour or 30 minutes because it's gonna cost them their paycheck. And it's sad. And that's why I'm running. I mean, this is gonna sound like a really cliche and cheesy answer to some of your viewers, but I'm running to be a voice for the little guy, for the rate payer. We got enough voices for the utility companies. Folks in Georgia right now feel like, you know what, I don't care about that race, number one, because I don't know what the heck they do. But number two, they don't care about me. They don't care about me in Albany, Georgia or Macon, Georgia or Savannah. They don't care about me. All they care about is making these utility companies a bunch of money. So that's why at the beginning of our campaign, we took two pledges. Number one, not to take any money from the fossil fuel industry because we felt that that was just in direct opposition to what we stood for and what we believed. But number two, we decided not to take any money from utility companies regulated by the Public Service Commission. My opponent has taken 85% of his money. It's come literally from the utility industry. That's the problem. Because if he comes down to the deciding vote, if there's five members and two of them vote one way and the other two, the other way, and my opponent is the deciding vote and 85% of his money has come from the other side. And your right thinking as a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or an Independent, we all know that decision is not gonna be in our favor. It's gonna be in favor of those who financed his ability to be reelected. And that is a huge challenge within itself. Right. I also, my year also picked up when you said community solar. And that's just, is there a way the Public Service Commission could work towards like decentralizing electrical production? With, it sounds like the solar rollout in Georgia has been pretty large scale stuff. And I don't know what your incentives are. Would it be possible to get the electric meter rolling backwards and actually having people get a credit for being small energy production? Well, my opponent doesn't believe in incentives and Georgia to our credit, we've done the little we've done without incentives but I personally am a believer which I know a lot of people might not agree with but I think we're living in a day and time where statewide mandate should be in place and incentives should also be in place. The Public Service Commission will not directly have a chance to decentralize, but I think when you look at the way in which deregulation versus regulation exists in the state of Georgia and around the country, we have to understand that they have to be dramatic, drastic changes. I believe in incentives and rebates and opportunities. My opponent doesn't, he's on record of saying that. I believe that we should reward companies and businesses and do what Los Angeles did. Look, for their landlords, they incentivized landlords to use rooftop solar and that offered a tremendous benefit to families that couldn't afford it. I mean, the average person can't afford a 10 to 15,000 solar system on their home. So why not incentivize builders and landlords and different varying organizations? I think that is a great opportunity. I mean, even if you look at the Bush and the Obama administrations, they used incentives where weatherization was concerned and more recently we've seen governor, the governor, the Republican governor out of Florida create incentives to expand electric vehicle charging stations throughout Florida's interstate. Incentives work and they accelerate progress. So that's a very distinct difference between you and your opponent. He's on record as saying you, I guess you allow these major utility companies to pace out how they want to. Exactly. I believe in acceleration he believes in pacing and I think that for my generation, my father, my grandfather was a diplomat to the United Nations and there's a sustainable goal that says we are well able to meet the needs of the present without compromising future generations to meet their own needs. We are literally compromising my children and your children and your grandchildren that we're compromising our children and our families and our community's ability to have the kind of investment into clean tech that they could have because we feel that the market should dictate it. I'm sorry, but when you look at extreme weather hitting rural Georgia, when you look at sea level rise and the weather getting hotter and these things that are being impacted based on what the science is telling us, we must put these incentives in place and pass statewide mandates that protect our most vulnerable communities because they can't protect themselves. So that sort of free market solutions rhetoric and let business do what it just it really you're getting a nice framework here for we're really in this kind of it's that's the rhetoric of Reaganism and that way it's like the whole country's in this hangover and it reminds me that George's Jimmy Carter's the guy put the solar panels on the White House. So I, you know, I do get I do get the sense that the in Georgia, there's some momentum to think beyond this just, you know, you know, the business knows best get out of the way anti-tax, anti-regulate that just that drumbeat. It seems like the potential for breaking through that and turn in the page is there. I mean, look, the reality is that our forefathers idea of capitalism is not working the way it should work. It has to evolve. It has to, there has to be shifts in this idea of capitalism. We saw it with the recession from the Obama administration. We're seeing it with the global pandemic. When you look at how markets are have when they're unregulated and when they're not being watched are not only getting corporate bailouts but when you look at overall challenges to where the economy is versus the profitability of businesses. I mean, the wealthiest individuals in the United States have made a trillion dollars in the last eight months. I'm not against people making money. I think that, you know, let's be honest, you know, Bezos over at Amazon has probably seen more deliveries in the last eight months than anything else because we've been quarantined. I mean, I'm not gonna knock the guy but when he's not paying from a corporate tax standpoint the same way or when you have these big businesses that are saying, hey, you know what? We're gonna catch up to your idea of sustainable goals by 2050. Man, a lot of folks' lungs don't have until 2022. So we can't keep on talking about this long range of what we're trying to accomplish. The free market cannot just sit back unregulated and, you know, without any incentivized opportunities to create the space that they think is best for them because at the end of the day all it takes is one or two or three bad CEOs. And when these individuals create a trend it's not only a snowball effect, it's actually an avalanche for folks that are at the bottom of this conversation. And I don't mean to veer too far off but two of my heroes were Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They died within 61 days of each other and they died fighting for the same thing, poor people. You know, Dr. King died when he was in Memphis working and fighting on the poor people's campaign and Bobby Kennedy died after he left. Three months earlier he was in Appalachia talking about working on behalf of poor people in this country. And I don't remember another time in history where a national leader that could have become president and a civil rights leader that had the ear of the world could have collaborated and fixed the problem of poverty since 68, I do not remember a period where the interest of the low and moderate income families to working poor has been a priority in this country and that's why my position on incentives and opportunities and expanding programs and statewide mandates is so important. Yeah, that's definitely not a tangent. And now actually just to bring it home a little bit the Public Service Commission, they okay rate increases or they have a role in what someone's electric bill looks like or their phone bill or it's okay. So there's a proposal and is that usually a rubber stamp or is there like go back and make it 10% less and then we'll okay it or? I mean, that's a tricky question. In an election year, it's a balance. Out of an election year, it's a blank check. Sure. You know, I'll give you an example in December of last year, we had a rate increase, base rate increase on electric and gas. Well, lo and behold, the two Republicans that are on the ballot this year voted no. Well, they know they're gonna get the other three votes from the other three commissioners. There's a stagger there. Years prior, it was yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Let me give you an example. You mentioned the nuclear project earlier. If we have been constructing this for 10 years and each year it's cost billions more, each year is another year or two years added, why are we continuing to give the utility company a blank check and not tell them, hey, you know what, the buck stops with us and your shareholders gotta get some skin in the game. And I have two issues with cost overruns. Number one, they should be capped. If you are gonna charge or make ratepayers pay, then you need to be able to explain it and tell them at what point you're paying stops if this becomes a fiscally irresponsible decision. That's number one, but number two, we can no longer be in a position where shareholders do not take some kind of responsibility and role in this area. The Public Service Commission over and over again, year after year, check after check, recession after recession has given the utility companies a blank check, a green light and they've left a crack in the door while the rest of us have to knock and wait for someone to unlock the hinge. We can't operate in a state like that when the ratepayers are on the menu and the utility companies are at the table. Thank you. I'm still trying to figure out the PSC and telecom regulation. They regulate landlines and cell phones so a massive company like Comcast or AT&T, it's got their hands in internet, got their hands in cable. The PSC regulates only a sliver of their sort of corporate portfolio. Is that- So here's how it works. The Georgia legislative body, they pass legislation. So for instance, HB 244, that allowed poll extensions to go up throughout Georgia. That then will have an AT&T or Comcast go before the Public Service Commission and argue, hey, we think the ratepayers should pay for this or we think that the Public Service Commission's role is once the legislation has been passed, those companies then create their proposals. Georgia Power, for example, will say, hey, we are extending this nuclear facility. We're gonna need an extra billion, so we're gonna have to raise utility rates by about $2.22. They will take that proposal to the Public Service Commission. The Public Service Commission gets to say, hey, we don't think that we're gonna raise rates at all, so you're not gonna get the $2.22. Or in most cases, they'll say, you know what, we think you can do it with $2.13. Now, what all of us in the know, what we realize is that a utility company, they ask for $2.22, they probably need $1.80. So they've probably worked out an equation where they're gonna start off at the highest number because they know the Public Service Commission to come down a little to make sure that they appease them. That's the claim that's being played and we have to recognize and protect ratepayers and consumers. So yeah, the padding's built in, I hear you there. So we are, I wish we could keep going, but we are tight for time. And I just do wanna ask you about campaigning in the age of COVID and sort of designing the new model of how to reach people at a distance. I don't know if you've shared any rally time with Warnock and Ossoff or drive-ins. I've been with Warnock, I mean, with Ossoff today. I've been with them all, I mean, I've been to probably 20, 30 campaign styles with them. It's been amazing, it's been a great journey. We'll be with Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on Sunday, we'll be with President-Elect Biden on Monday. It has been a journey, Georgia is excited, Georgia is motivated, Georgia is coming back to the polls and record numbers. Here are three things I'll share with you about COVID. In a pre-COVID world, we were unprepared. Rural Georgia, but more importantly, rural United States has been left behind for a long time. There has not been a comprehensive infrastructure package in place to help out, to expand broadband in the US for years. I mean, we all know that rural America has been left behind from education and technology investment standpoint forever. I was pleased to hear this year that the FCC announced a $20 billion investment into green and renewable energy, which I think is gonna go a long way. But that's gonna take time. In a state like Georgia, where 88% of our prison population reads at a third grade level, COVID has created a double kind of like whammy on our state, number one. In the United States, reading scores have stabilized, but math and science scores have dropped since COVID. Now, why did I bring up the prison example? Most kids in rural America, predominantly black and brown kids, but most kids in rural America that don't have economic opportunities, they live in towns that may have one stoplight or they may have two or three grocery stores, but no recreation, no green space, those kids have to survive. And that's why the opioid problem and crime are so high in these areas. So what COVID-19 has shown us is how unprepared and unwired these communities in these counties are, specifically in a state like Georgia, where kids have to now make a decision, well, not even kids, parents have to make a decision. Do they put their kid at risk to go to school? Why? Not because they wanna put their kid in the line of fire, but because if they miss a day or two of work, they may lose their job and they can't have their kid at home by themselves. So now for those that can keep their kids at home, they've gotta try and figure out, and again, I'm not saying this in a disingenuous way, but imagine if a parent has a high school diploma or a little bit of college. The shame that goes into a parent that's at home that can't help their kid with their homework is a problem, especially when that kid doesn't have the internet. So now you have a scenario where these kids are at home, they can't get on the internet, they can't really communicate with their schools, and if they're not in school, they now have these barriers to success and to acceleration, that is a challenge. So I think what I've learned in campaigning is, we can't just make campaigning about our candidacy as much as we have to make it about reassuring to people that we wanna be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. Most people that I have visited, I've gone to cities three, four, five, six times, and people ask me all the time, man, you've been to Albany three times, man, I mean, it's a big state, why don't you go somewhere else? And my answer to them is, because when I went there the first time, they didn't believe I would come back. When I went there the second time, they showed up. When I went to the third time, they were hit so hard with COVID that they felt like they didn't wanna go back out to the polls. And when I went there the fourth time, I had to make sure they knew that if you get Joe Biden and Kamala Harris elected, you can really change this narrative. And if I can work with you harder, we can help to keep your lights on. When people see consistency, people are more apt to say, I wanna support that guy, I wanna support that woman, I wanna support that individual because they see me, they hear me, they acknowledge me. I spoke to the disability caucus, one of the areas we're now talking about in the era of COVID is our disability community. Individuals that are struggling with pre-existing conditions, like a gentleman in Griffin, Georgia, who is a diabetic and had no power for 98 days in his home. He had no refrigeration for his insulin. So he had to buy a cooler and he had to go to the store every morning and fill that cooler up with ice and bring it back to his home so his insulin doesn't go bad. In Georgia, our disability community has a higher fatality rate than the national disability average. So when you talk about COVID-19, we've got to talk about it in the way in which not having your power on, not having access to broadband and not being protected in our most vulnerable communities have an impact. And I'll close with this portion. I have had Republicans calling me from this state that have literally said to me, Daniel, I voted for Donald Trump. I don't like Joe Biden. I don't think that John Ostoff or Reverend Raphael Warren, I could do a good job. And I'm not saying that against my friends, Raphael and John, but then they come to me and they say this, but my light bill is high. My neighbor, water is contaminated and I've got creeks down the street from where I grew up in that are so polluted that I wouldn't take my grandkids to sit outside of those same creeks. When you have Republicans calling around the state to a Democratic candidate that's fighting for lower utility rates, cleaner energy and expanded solar, what they realize is that kilowatt hours aren't Democrat or Republican. What they realize is that asthma rates amongst our children are not Democrat or Republican. What they realize is that their neighbor's lights were cut off just like the Democratic neighbors that are around the street, around the corner and down the block. And when they realize these things, it puts them in a position where they vote based on their pocketbook and their public health and not on the D or the R behind a person's name. Right, and Washington can seem so far away, but you've really driven home the point that decisions the Public Service Commission makes affect everybody's day to day. That's right. Air, health, technological connection. Yeah, keeping the lights on. Daniel, thank you for sharing so much knowledge it's a lot to digest, but I mean, the decision is clear. You're leading with Public Service here and we need to get back to thinking of politics as dedication and not keep sending people into political positions who are kind of anti-politics who are like, get government out of the way. That seems to be across so many realms that that philosophy has just made us incredibly unprepared for the challenges of the future. So January 5th, George's got the ability to really help us turn the page nationally and on a statewide level. So and I'll say this, man, there was an article that came out and first of all, man, thank you so much for this opportunity. I mean, our race has definitely picked up on media attention, but every story, every conversation counts. I want people to know that believe in the fight, the climate fight that believe in the science that exists that believes that we have to begin to change and transition in our communities and our society. This is the only race in the United States. And I'm saying this very specifically that has a direct impact and yes, I am running in Georgia, but if the southeastern United States were a country, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, if those states made up a country, it would be the 10th largest polluter in the world. That is according to the Department of Energy and the world report that was released in 2019, March of 2019, if I'm not mistaken. The reason why that's such a critical conversation is because this race has an opportunity to transform the United States from right here in Georgia. If we can expand clean energy in Georgia and increase solar opportunity, they can do it in Georgia. I mean, in Florida, they can do it in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina. We wanna create something that builds so much momentum that the future that seems so far away from us can be within reach. So I wanna thank you for the opportunity. I've got an event with John Ossoff. We'd love to spend another 30 or 40 minutes with you, but I thank you so much for this opportunity. Yeah, I can't imagine how tight your time is right now as we get closer and closer to the day. So, you know, so much appreciated for making the time and just sharing the lay of the land there. There's so much impact that you'll have. And, you know, best of luck. And the people of Georgia are, you know, really, really have, that looks like such an easy decision. So, yeah, thanks so much. Take care. Thanks, man. Bye-bye. It's an absolute honor, man. So much here, too. Thank you. Georgia, Georgia, Georgia, Georgia, Georgia.