Contributed photos
Darryl Brackeen Jr. in Lawrenceville, Jayuan Carter in McDonough Tuesday.
A New Haven knock came on many Georgia voters’ doors Tuesday as history hung in the balance.
Darryl Brackeen Jr. and Jayuan Carter made that knock as part of a brigade seeking to turn out the vote for Democrat Raphael Warnock against Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a run-off election that will determine whether Democrats have 50 or 51 seats in the U.S. Senate for the next two years — and whether they’ll be able to control committees and pass legislation without needing a vice-presidential tie-breaking vote or concessions to a single hold-out senator.
Turnout is considered crucial in the too-close-to-call election. New Haven’s UNITE HERE unions and related New Haven Rising organization helped send local campaign veterans like Brackeen, a New Haven alder, and Carter to the front. (UNITE HERE also sent locals down to Georgia to knock on doors and help Warnock and fellow Senate Democrat Jon Ossoff win their seats in January 2021.)
For the past week, Brackeen has knocked on the doors of Democratic voters in rural, urban, and suburban stretches of Gwinnett County, first to help them arrange to vote early, then on Tuesday to make it to the polls on official Election Day. Carter has done the same in the city of McDonough.
The pair took a mid-day break to discuss their efforts on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
They were asked how Georgia voters react to people from Connecticut appearing at their doors about an in-state election.
Brackeen said he’s up front about his hometown — and in this case it helps.
“Hey, I’m Darryl Brackeen coming from New Haven, Connecticut,” he said he begins by saying. “Georgians realize the impact that they’re having on the rest of the United States of America. We’re all connected. Every vote counts. ‘Look. I drove down 20 hours down this way to ensure that you are able to vote.’ People are pretty impressed by that.”
Brackeen does play a local card as well: His family has been rooted in Georgia since the 1700s. Family members still live there. So he talks about that, and about the Atlanta Falcons. He wears the shirt of the historically Black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, to which both he and Warnock belong. And he does run into some fraternity brothers on some doors.
Carter said he makes the case for how turnout will determine this election: “If Warnock is your guy, you have to understand that the [Republican] governor just won a race by 300,000. That operation is on the ground for Walker. So every vote matters. If you can get out there, we can make sure Warnock can remain in that seat” to send “good jobs” and policy changes like cheaper insulin to Georgia.
Both men said they have seen concrete results in their work, with arrangements made for numerous voters who might not have otherwise cast ballots.
Brackeen Tuesday encountered one household in rural Duluth with seven adults eager to vote — and no way to get there because of an absence of public transit. The campaign arranged rides for all of them. “They were just so ecstatic that someone came to their door.”
Carter spoke of one disabled voter he met Tuesday who hadn’t received an absentee ballot; Carter called his campaign “lead” who arrived with a vehicle big enough to accommodate her wheelchair. (Carter’s two-door wouldn’t do the job.)
Both candidates on the ballot in Georgia Tuesday are Black. Brackeen reported a recurring theme among Black voters he has met: Outrage over the Republican Party’s selection of a Black candidate they consider unfit for the office.
“People are insulted to know that the Republican Party would insult the intelligence of Black people. That’s been coming up on the doors constantly,” Brackeen said. “I feel that’s also driving out the vote: Just because someone’s an individual of color, football player, does not mean that we’re an uneducated voter or a voter that is not informed about our candidates.”
Click on the video to watch the full conversation with Darryl Brackeen Jr. and Jayuan Carter on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
If only they had this much time and energy to devote to local problems... especially an elected alder.