Democrats have a chance to win another important election in 2025

Eric Gisler is running to become the next state representative for district 121. His Republican opponent is Mack “Dutch” Guest IV.

District 121 includes Watkinsville and other parts of Oconee County. It also includes a bit of southeast Athens; people living on or near South Milledge Avenue, University Drive, Riverbend Road, Whitehall Road, College Station Road, Barnett Shoals Road and Whit Davis Road can all vote in the December 9 special election.

Early voting is going on now at the ACC Elections Office (155 E. Washington Street). The Tennis Center (4460 Lexington Road) will open for early voting on Dec 1.

Watch the full interview here:

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TRANSCRIPT

Eric Gisler is running for state house against Mack Guest IV on December 9. I asked him about the increasing political divide in this country and this is what he had to say.

The way I kind of see it is you've got two tents, right? You've got the Republican tent, you've got the Democratic tent. And right now, the price of admission of the Republican tent is Donald Trump is infallible. Everything he says is the truth, everything is correct, you can't question it, right? If you want to be a Republican, that's where you gotta be. What does that mean? That means anyone that doesn't follow that has one other tent to go for, because there's only two. And like we said, first past the post, winner take all districts...that's the way our system is set up. You can dream about a third party all you want, but with the way the system works, third parties just aren't viable.

So you only have those two tents. Which means that the people who were in that Republican tent before that became the rule, I think they're not feeling very comfortable in that tent anymore, right? I have longtime friends who still consider themselves traditional conservative Republicans who cannot stand what's happening to their party. But that's all they know. Like that's what they're used to. That's how they identify, as Republicans. Some of my friends are still like that.

But if you're not going to fit in that that MAGA Republican party and you've only got one other tent to go into, it's a big tent. There's a lot of voices and there's a lot of different voices there. Which makes us look like, makes the Democratic Party look like we're discombobulated, right? We can't agree on anything, right? We're not strong on anything. We're weak on things because we tend to talk about things.

So yeah, it's messy right now, that's for sure.

I personally... it's getting to the point where I just, I can't even identify values that I agree with with MAGA Republicans. Traditional conservatives, yeah. You know, at end of the day, I think we have a lot of the same values. We all want people to be healthy. We all want people to have good education. We all want people to be fed. We want people to access healthcare. We may have different ideas on how to do that, but what I'm seeing right now at the federal, at the state level, not so much at the local level, but the federal and the state level is an extremist party that, I mean, most days doesn't even seem to care about the Constitution. But you mentioned the current shutdown, it's a perfect case in point. You've got the MAGA federal Republican party purposely starving 40 million Americans because they want to take away health care from 20 million Americans. And I'll say this to anybody watching, if you're a conservative and you disagree with that, I'd love to talk to you. Let's get on camera and talk about that because I don't see how anybody can see it any other way.