Ep.6: "Take a Walk!" w/guest Leader Carolyn Hugley

What was behind the Ga House Democratic Caucus's decision to walk out of the House chamber on April 2, 2025? Who makes the House Democratic Caucus run, anyway? What are our plans for 2026? Find the answers in our conversation with the House Democratic Caucus Leader, Representative Carolyn Hugley. 

summary

In this episode of Georgia House Rules, State Representative Karen Lupton interviews Representative Carolyn Hugley, the leader of the Georgia House Democratic Caucus. They discuss the dynamics of leadership within the caucus, the challenges of being in the minority, and the unique aspects of the recent legislative session. Hugley shares insights from her extensive experience in the House, highlighting the importance of collaboration and the complexities of managing diverse interests within the caucus. The conversation also touches on the current political climate and the impact of recent legislation.

takeaways

• Leadership in the Georgia House requires managing diverse perspectives.
• The Democratic Caucus is characterized by a multitude of voices.
• Being in the minority necessitates a different leadership approach.
• Recent legislative sessions have seen increased tension and division.
• The structure of the caucus includes various leadership roles working collaboratively.
• Experience in leadership shapes the approach to current challenges.
• The political landscape is shifting, affecting legislative dynamics.
• Engagement and communication are key in a diverse caucus.
• The role of the leader is to unify and guide the caucus agenda.
• Legislative sessions can reflect broader societal issues and conflicts.

Thank you for listening!

Transcript

Karen Lupton (00:01)
and I am State Representative Karen Lupton. Thank you for joining us again in this, sixth, one, two, three, four, five, sixth episode of Georgia House Rules. I am thrilled, beyond thrilled to be talking today to our fearless leader, the Georgia House Democratic Caucus' leader, Representative Carolyn Hughley. Thank you so much for being with us today, leader. I so appreciate it.

Carolyn Hugley (00:32)
My pleasure. It was my pleasure to join you today.

Karen Lupton (00:36)
we have, of course, as of April 4th, come through our 40 day legislative session. And for those of you who don't know, because this podcast also, you know, educate folks, the caucus on the ha in the Democrat, the democratic caucus in the house elects new leadership every two years and leader Hugh Lee. When, when did we meet?

to elect you.

Carolyn Hugley (01:08)
It was November after the general election. was like mid November.

Karen Lupton (01:15)
Okay. Yes, that's right. Things pre-session tend to, you know, get shuffled out of my brain. But so we met as a caucus after we all, you know, everyone was elected officially. So we had some new folks. We had some folks that were returning. Everybody who won their election in November came in and elected you, Leader Hughley, as our brand new leader. Now,

This is not your first time in leadership for the caucus. Correct.

Carolyn Hugley (01:50)
Right? Right. I served as the whip for probably about 12 years. And I served with leader DeBose Porter as whip. I was with leaders Stacey Abrams and I was also with Bob. And so I served with all three of those leaders. All of them are very different. And of course our caucus is different now.

than the way we were at that particular time as well. So this is my 33rd session. Every session is different. As you can see, I was a child when I came to the Capitol.

Karen Lupton (02:36)
It's just a babe in arms, a babe in arms.

Carolyn Hugley (02:38)
Exactly,

exactly, exactly.

Karen Lupton (02:41)
Yes,

you've been here probably longer than most people in the chamber.

Carolyn Hugley (02:48)
I'm number four, if you can believe that, in terms of seniority. So there are only three other people who've been in the chamber longer than I have.

Karen Lupton (02:57)
And this is your first time being elected leader. You've been whipped.

Carolyn Hugley (03:02)
Yes, but not later.

Karen Lupton (03:04)
So I imagine, well not only have you seen the changes throughout the caucus, but and served under different leaders, but I imagine being leader now for the first time 33 years in is a whole different perspective as well.

Carolyn Hugley (03:23)
It is, it's quite different because as leader, everybody's looking to you for what we're going to do, what our programs are going to be, what is our agenda, how are we going to manage staff, how are we going to raise money? All of that goes into being the leader of our caucus and nevermind that we have 79 other amazing leaders who all have great ideas and think.

differently sometimes about how we should do things and all of our districts are different. We represent everything from small towns to districts in metro Atlanta. So some of our districts you could walk within a day and others you know they're they they would encompass several counties. So all of that has to be taken into consideration and of course we look like Georgia.

So we have every aspect of Georgia in our caucus. So managing all of those things at the same time is a little bit different from what my Republican counterpart has to deal with.

Karen Lupton (04:35)
Thank you very much for bringing that up. Because one thing that this is something that I've talked about with many people, and maybe you've heard me say it, is that one thing that is different about managing a group of Democrats, no matter whether they're, and again, I'm so glad that you brought up the point that we're all elected leaders in our own right.

We're not the shy retiring type. If you're the type that runs for office and puts your name on a ballot. So to lead a whole bunch of democratic leaders, to lead a whole bunch of leaders is in itself a challenge. Then to lead a whole bunch of democratic leaders, where I feel a tenant of Democrats as in our, our, our brand, our party, so to speak.

Carolyn Hugley (05:07)
No.

Karen Lupton (05:32)
is that we do believe that every voice counts. And that means that we have a lot more sort of sometimes cooks in the kitchen than perhaps a Republican caucus would. Do you find that to be true?

Carolyn Hugley (05:49)
Yes, that's very true because not only that, we are the minority. If we're in the majority, you tell everybody to salute in March and that's how it was when we were in the majority. Whatever the speaker says, you got to salute in March. Otherwise you're going to lose your chairmanship. You're going to lose your office. You're going to lose all of the things that you have been awarded because you were an important part of the team. So

That's all he has to do, say salute and march. And for the most part, that's what happens. With us and the minority, we have to get permission from the people that you are leading in order to make things work. And it's always about managing competing interests, personalities, the needs of various districts. But I'm very proud of our caucus and very proud of our

session that we've just ended because we're in a different time now. We're in a different era and it's not so much that we were fighting about different policy proposals. We were fighting straight hate in this particular legislative session and I've never seen it like this before. But I guess that's what you expect when over in the Senate you got

all these people running for higher office and everybody's trying to jockey to see who could be the most like Maka. And they were trying to implement the America First agenda up to and including the license plate. So that's what we were fighting. That's what we were dealing with.

Karen Lupton (07:35)
horrible. Speaking of the license plate, yes, there was an America first license plate that came through the House that passed the House. it? Did it pass the Senate? So and leader, you would have been very unhappy with me. Maybe you were. Maybe you heard me. Where we sit in the chamber in the House chamber is leadership sits, you know, kind of upfront and center.

Carolyn Hugley (07:48)
I think so.

Karen Lupton (08:03)
So Leader Hughley, you have the first seat on the first row, front and center. I sit much farther in the back in the same kind of section of the house as you, but I sit farther in the back. And when the America First license plate was debated in the house and when the time came for a vote, I was quite vocal back at my chair about just what I thought of the people.

who were voting for this. There were, there were, there were, there were curse words uttered quite loudly from my seat in the back. And I'm glad they didn't make it up to you. Or maybe if they made it to you, you just ignored them. But there were racist MFers. That's what I was just saying openly at my seat. And what, and for you to say that in 33 years, you still haven't

Carolyn Hugley (08:52)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Lupton (09:02)
you hadn't yet experienced this sort of level of things. To me, it really says something.

that it's not run of the mill, hey, we've played this game before, we all know it's politics. That sort of understanding where you can disagree on the floor and then go into the anti-rooms and catch a donut together and say, well, we have a difference of opinion on this, but here we go. But that it's sort of shifted to a different gear. That's what I hear you saying.

Carolyn Hugley (09:37)
It is,

yes, it is a whole different level of what you see. Some of the Republicans were even uncomfortable with the kind of rhetoric and the kinds of bills that were coming at us. So you don't normally see that. And because there was a dissonance within the Republican caucus, many of their bills did not get passed. We had...

about 1100 bills introduced and only I think it's like 186 passed. And normally you would have more bills than that passed in a legislative session. But because people were running for higher office were demanding that certain things be addressed in the house, that's what led to the Senate leaving before the house. That's not supposed to happen. And they left with a lot of work undone.

Karen Lupton (10:33)
Yeah

Carolyn Hugley (10:37)
And so of course it will carry over till next year, but you don't normally see that kind of activity to be nice.

Karen Lupton (10:48)
That's very interesting that you saw more Republican reluctance in the House. There's a joke, and of course you know it, our listeners might not, that the House runs the state and the Senate runs for office. That's a little joke that is often bandied about in that we get down on the House side of the state, of the state capitol.

Carolyn Hugley (11:03)
you

Karen Lupton (11:14)
We keep the trains running on time and the Senate does this bluster in order to make great headlines for their next campaign, their next statewide campaign. I want to get back to that sort of Republican reluctance, but I want to give people an insight into what it's like to lead the Democratic caucus, what it takes to do that, because you're not alone.

Carolyn Hugley (11:42)
Now we have a group of officers. So in addition to the leader, you have the whip and the whip is the assistant to the leader. And we have a chair, a vice chair. We have a chief deputy whip, a secretary and a treasurer. And those officers make up our leadership team. And we work together very closely to develop the agenda for the caucus and to help guide how we will move through this session.

Karen Lupton (00:01)
Yes, and I am happy to know many of the people in leadership. I love our leadership team. Who helps the leadership team behind them? What's the next layer of help that we have at the caucus?

Carolyn Hugley (00:17)
So in addition to our leadership team, also have, I mentioned the whip, but the whip has deputy whips that work along with him. And I think there's about 10 and they work with a group of members. So they have five to seven members each and they work directly with those members carrying the message of what the leadership is doing, bringing back from them any problems, any concerns.

any challenges that those members are having. that allows us to keep in direct contact with members. In addition to that, behind the scenes, we have a policy director, we have a caucus director, we also have a deputy policy director, we have a communications director, and all of them have

additional interns and externs and staff. When you come to our office, there's no place to sit because there's people everywhere. And it takes all of that. Yes, it takes all of that to keep us going. And we developed an outstanding team this year because in a minority, we're always responding to what someone else is doing. We're not setting the agenda for the day. Our team is looking to see

Karen Lupton (01:23)
That's good, we need all the help we can get.

Carolyn Hugley (01:43)
What are the Republicans putting out? And do we have the information so that we can inform our members about this bill or that bill? What's happening in this committee? What has been changed? What is coming to us from the Senate? So all of these things are operating in real time. And our communications team is working to push out what we're saying and what our response is to that and helping our members push out to their districts.

responses for certain things as well. So it is very, very busy. In the first few weeks of the session, I asked my team, do you all not think I go to the restroom sometimes? Because they me scheduled all day, every day.

Karen Lupton (02:32)
Give the girl a powder room break, please, man. We gotta touch up our lipstick when we're working this hard, damn. Pardon my French. But yeah, so okay, I hope they eased up a little bit.

Carolyn Hugley (02:36)
you

They did, they did. But, you know, as we first got started, there were so many members to see, so many vendors to talk to, because we were a new team and we were flying the plane and building it at the same time. So when I started as leader in November, from November to session, we had to put all these people in place. And

make sure that they could work together and learn what they were supposed to be doing as we were learning our new roles. So it was quite a busy place, was quite an experience for everyone, but I'm so very proud of them because they all rose to the occasion each and every time.

Karen Lupton (03:33)
We had a great team. I loved the contact that I had with them. And depending on what you're doing, what any one member of the caucus is doing, you have different interactions with the people who are helping run the caucus. We all get whip reports, which come from the whip and the people that are helping the whip research every bill that we vote on. So we get, and by we, mean the...

House Democratic caucus members get printouts of the bills that we're voting on on any day and a short breakdown of them and whether the caucus has a position on it or not. We get that every day and those have to be developed very quickly because everything that we're voting on for a day is not necessarily set when we show up in the morgue.

Carolyn Hugley (04:25)
Exactly. We go to rules, they set an agenda, and then our team has to go and produce that report, produce all of that information for our members. And as I said, the Republicans, they know what's going to be on there. So their stuff is already done and our stuff has to be worked on. So we're the Ginger Rogers to their Fred Astaire because we're always...

Karen Lupton (04:42)
Thanks.

doing things backwards and in heels, that's what we're doing.

Carolyn Hugley (04:54)
Exactly,

exactly. So that is how that works. And that's always how it works when you're in the minority because you are working harder with less information and less time to prepare. And that's why I'm so very proud of our team because they were able to do that each and every time, each and every day.

And sometimes we were able to anticipate. have to anticipate what's going to happen, what's coming to us. Our team looks at what's going on in the Senate. So they let us know this is what they're doing in the Senate so we can expect this to come to us in the second half of the session. So all of that has to work together. And this year we decided to do a Wednesday lunch and learn series where we brought in our new caucus members.

to talk about what was gonna happen next, to give members an opportunity to learn more about the issues that we knew we were gonna face, such as we had several sessions about tort, because we knew we were gonna have to deal with tort reform. And there were sessions on the rules and how things work and how members can anticipate.

things that are coming up in committee and how do you work together with other members of the caucus and committee? How to best utilize the rules to your advantage because everything is set up to disadvantage us because we're in the minority. So if it looks like we're in a committee and looks like we're gonna win the day, then they will bring in their ex-official officers to make sure that that does not happen. So we're always working very, very hard.

to try and anticipate as much as we can and fight for the people that send us there.

Karen Lupton (06:53)
Very good point about committees. We have to keep our eyes on who is in a committee meeting because people will come in and out of committee meetings. Republicans and Democrats are double and triple scheduled a lot of times. So people will pop in and out of committees. So every once in a while, if the Democratic members see that we have actually a majority at the moment,

for something, we want to make a motion to table a bill or we want to make a motion for an amendment that we want to pass. The Republicans always have a couple extra people in the bag that are just floating around there. I think the speaker, the pro tem, the majority leader, are they all ex officio?

Carolyn Hugley (07:36)
All

of their officers can work or can vote on anything in any committee. So they're all ex-official of every committee.

Karen Lupton (07:47)
Yeah, they can just walk in and all of a sudden what we thought was a two, two person advantage becomes, gosh, now they brought three, four five people into the room and well, we're back to where we started. This stuff fascinates me and I love talking about it to people out there who never experienced what happens in the state house, because they have no idea that any of this happens. So to get them in touch with

Carolyn Hugley (08:10)
Right.

Karen Lupton (08:16)
just how little we know, as you said, in the minority, working with less information, having to work harder with less information and less time can really be a grind. But I have to say, you handle it with a lot of grace. And there were some very emotional and big fights this year in this past session, the 2025 session. There was tort reform, which was just massive.

And I want to take the chance to personally thank you for your leadership on that issue. Even though we did not win the day, I was generally pretty proud of how the Democrats performed. Because having been a member of this caucus, this is my third year as a member of the caucus, I know that what we, the cohesion that we had would not have been possible in the first two years that I served here. So I want to thank you for that, Leader Hughley.

And there were also very emotional debates over the trans sports bills. And you led us in kind of a very dramatic statement. What was it? Was it the second? Was it day 39? Day 39. People know that, maybe people know.

Carolyn Hugley (09:36)
Day 39.

Karen Lupton (09:44)
The House Democrats chose to walk out of the chamber as a group to draw attention to the fact that while Democrats wish to take care of the business of the state, Republicans have made a priority this past session of picking up a problem and running on a problem that doesn't exist, inflaming passions, getting people all overwrought about an issue that does not help.

everyday Georgians at all. Can you talk me through the process of getting to that walkout?

Carolyn Hugley (10:22)
So as you say, Republicans manufactured a problem and they say, look at me, I have a solution. And what they were doing was punching down to the most marginalized group that they could find.

How does anyone say the number one priority for us in the state of Georgia is the sports band, the trans sports band, when it's not happening because we've already addressed that. The High School Athletic Association already has rules to make sure that what they were talking about does not happen, but because it sells.

As I said, if we want to merchandise something, we use sex. But in politics, if we want to sell something, we use hate. Because we have to punch down at people so that people can say, no, that's terrible. We're not like those people and we need to do something about that, even though it is not happening. So they created a situation that was not happening in order to codify hate in our law.

In addition to the sports band, on day 39, they come up with this bill having to do with inmates. We were told by the author of the bill that there are only five, five transgender inmates in the entire Department of Corrections. Five. And they felt that it was a priority on day 39.

One day before we have to end everything, we got to stop everything and have an hour plus debate over providing health care to five possibly transgender inmates who had not asked for these surgeries that they were trying to warn everybody, we can't do this. We can't have sex change surgeries. We know.

that when you take away a person's liberty, you have to provide them with healthcare. Period. Exclamation point. You have to provide them with medically necessary healthcare. So what we need to stop doing is playing doctor.

we need to stop playing doctor in the Georgia House and Senate. Because every time we do it, it does not end well. So at this particular point, I had members who were waiting on their bills to be heard, members who had worked really hard on issues that mattered to everyday Georgians. They were waiting on bills.

such as the earned income tax credit. They were waiting on bills that they had to raise the minimum wage. They were waiting on bills to feed hungry children. They were waiting on bills to revamp hope so that more students can participate in that particular program. These are important things to our constituents, but they got us sitting here talking about five, possibly five people.

who they say are transgender who may ask for additional gender affirming care or transgender surgeries. First of all, they don't know what they're talking about and neither do we.

Karen Lupton (13:59)
Very true.

Carolyn Hugley (14:02)
And so that is not something we should be spending our precious time because the clock is ticking on day 39, the clock is ticking and it's all about political theater. And so I decided that if we're going to do political theater, let's give them a show. So.

Karen Lupton (14:09)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Carolyn Hugley (14:22)
We politely got up, put our buttons on excuse, and took a walk that afternoon because they were not serious about taking care of the business of Georgia. And so we did not want to participate in that kind of political theater. We don't want to participate in disadvantaging anyone. We don't want to participate in making life more difficult for anyone.

That is not why we were elected. And so as the leader, I asked the members to join me in taking an afternoon walk to dramatize the fact that we were not taking up serious bills and that we were not taking care of the people of Georgia with this political shenanigans.

Karen Lupton (15:13)
Amen. Amen, political shenanigans. It was thrilling. You let us out. We were very polite and orderly. And the people in the Capitol that day, what I experienced, following you out there and gathering on the steps and kind of holding a little impromptu press conference, we were chanting, we were...

unified in our message of let's do business. And if you're not going to do business, we don't need to be here. Let's get real. Let's get serious. We have work to do. Let's get down to work. And if and if you don't want to work, if you want to, know, shenanigan, you can count us out. We're here to work. The people in the Capitol that day seem to be very

uplifted by our actions as Democrats. Did you experience that?

Carolyn Hugley (16:18)
Yes, when we walked out, people were chanting, they were applauding us as we left because everybody knows what this is about. Everybody knows what this is about. All of those hateful bills came from the same authors in the Senate. And if you look at those authors, you can see those are people who are running for higher office. So they should not do that at the expense of real

legislation to help real Georgians. As I said, we had over a thousand bills introduced and only 186 passed.

Karen Lupton (16:57)
And what, less than 20 of those were Democratic bills when we're coming out of the House.

Carolyn Hugley (17:01)
Right. We had 20 bills

to leave the House from the Democrats going over to the Senate. And at the end of session, only two of those bills passed.

Karen Lupton (17:15)
Those are not good numbers, man.

Carolyn Hugley (17:17)
Two

out of 186 bills, two of them belong to our members. So you were not there to take care of the real business of the people of Georgia. And what they wanted to do was to create something that they would put on a political scorecard and that they would campaign on against our members as though that was the Democratic Party's

Karen Lupton (17:30)
Yeah.

Carolyn Hugley (17:46)
or the Democratic caucus agenda item. It was not our agenda item. It was not something that we asked for. But when it's time to stand for people, we have to stand. I'm so tired of people talking about Democrats need to leave with their faith. Well, people of faith understand what Jesus would do. Jesus would with the downtrodden. Jesus was over there with the lepers.

Karen Lupton (17:48)
Correct. Correct.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Carolyn Hugley (18:16)
not the crowds. So even though this is just a small part of our population, we still have to stand up for them. And I'm very proud of our caucus for doing so.

Karen Lupton (18:25)
yeah.

Me too, and I'm glad that we had a leadership between you and the staff and the rest of the leadership team to rely on to trust when, hey, we're gonna do this. We gotta keep our powder dry. That's a great saying that I did not know that that phrase existed before I came and served.

as an elected official, but keeping our powder dry among ourselves. I think that the Republican leadership was honestly surprised when we got up and walked out. I don't think anybody expected that.

Carolyn Hugley (19:10)
And they were because that is not something and I don't want my members to think we're going to do that every year. That's not something that you would do because of the extraordinary circumstances that we face and because of the fact that I knew that they wanted a scorecard vote for my members. The way that our caucuses show that we were unified and standing up for people who were trying to be marginalized was to lead the change.

Karen Lupton (19:15)
Hahaha

It was great. I loved it. And I was glad that people in advocates for transgender folks, especially were there in the Capitol and felt the love. were so touched that we were taking a stand for them and bringing attention to the kind of insanity that

Kinda we have to deal with sometimes.

Carolyn Hugley (20:11)
The other thing that motivated me, and I want to be really clear about this, is that I can never forget the fact that in the Georgia General Assembly was where people who looked like me were determined to be unworthy of certain things. That's where the laws were established to have colored water fountains and all of those things, because people there...

Karen Lupton (20:14)
Yeah.

Carolyn Hugley (20:41)
were not willing to stand up for people who were marginalized, who did not look like them. And so we cannot do that. We cannot go there and fail to meet the moment. We didn't choose it. It was given to us, but we had to meet the moment of standing up for people who were being marginalized.

Karen Lupton (21:04)
Beautiful. I'm glad that we did it and thank you so much for your leadership again. What do you see? Like we made it through this through this year. mean, now 2026, we will not meet again as the legislature until January 2026. That will be the actual like that's an election year for everybody in this state capital.

Meaning that we all run every two years. You run every two years, I run every two years. Speaker runs every two years. it's an election year. And as you said, people were setting up for bigger runs statewide. So we will still have a whole bunch of people running for higher office, especially on the Senate side of the building. Do you anticipate anything?

have anything specific for 2026 or you just kind of like it's gonna be a free for all we have no idea what's going on.

Carolyn Hugley (22:08)
2026 is going to be, this is going to be challenging in a lot of ways. 2025, normally what we saw this year is what you would see in a lecture year, but because some announcements had already been made, I think that kind of sped up the process of all of this political theater that we saw. Next year is going to be more of the same, but I believe

that we now have an opportunity during this interim to work with our caucus, to unite behind our agenda, to make sure that we firm up our team and we get ready to take the field as it relates to elections. So we're bringing on additional staff. We're bringing on our political director and we're gonna have field people that are gonna start working this year to prepare.

for next year. So because the 2026 election cycle has already started and so we're going to approach it as such. And so therefore we'll be working with our members and working in the areas where we want to expand to get ready for 2026. So the first thing that we're going to do after session is we're going to have a series of town halls where we're going to visit

the people of Georgia and have face to face conversations with them about this legislative session, about what we can expect going forward, as well as hear from them their concerns. Because we not only have to be concerned about what happens under our gold dome, but the things that are coming down to us from Washington will have an effect on everything that we do. The changes

in terms of federal funding can upend our budget, which is the only thing that we're constitutionally mandated to do is a budget. And if that happens, you may see me every day in special session more than you would like to see me again. So that's concern that everybody has.

Karen Lupton (24:17)
in special session.

Carolyn Hugley (24:26)
Even though Republicans are not really talking about that, but they have to be concerned about that because that's reality. We cannot have a budget that's out of balance. Unlike what they do in Washington, our budget has to be in balance. And so the governor might have to call us back if things go off track, particularly in terms of Medicaid, education funding, those kinds of things.

Karen Lupton (24:50)
Yeah, if federal... Yeah.

Carolyn Hugley (24:55)
would bring us back. So we're going to be visiting the people of Georgia talking to them about what the Democrats are all about. We are going to write our own story and not let Republicans write the story for us because that's what they want to do. And that's why you have the political theater that you saw so that they can do ads and do all of these things to say these Democrats are terrible people. As a matter of fact, I was

Karen Lupton (25:07)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Carolyn Hugley (25:24)
traveling to Florida last weekend and there's big billboard that says how terrible Democrats are on the side of the road. So we have to tell our own story in North Georgia, in South Georgia, East and West Georgia, as well as in Metro Atlanta. And people need to understand that in every instance, when we stand for any particular group,

Karen Lupton (25:36)
Hmm

Carolyn Hugley (25:55)
We're standing because we have to. We're standing because we don't have any Georgians that are disposable. All are important and all have to be represented. And it falls on us to do that. So because if we don't, if we say, it's okay, you can do that to them, then what's going to happen with the next group and the next group?

in the next group.

Karen Lupton (26:27)
It just doesn't stop.

Carolyn Hugley (26:29)
It does not stop. So that's what we're going to be about. We're going to write our own story. We're going to prepare our team and we're going to be ready for 2026 because I believe, I believe that we're going to be well on our way toward getting to majority. That's our goal to get to majority because if we really want to affect public policy, we need to be in the driver's seat in order to do that. And so

Karen Lupton (26:56)
Yes.

Carolyn Hugley (26:57)
All of our plans, all of our goals, all of our good bills will not mean as much as long as we stay in the minority. If we want to make a change, we've got to get to majority. That's the message that we got to take to the people of this state. If you're unhappy with the laws or the policies of the state of Georgia, you need to help us change their lawmakers.

Karen Lupton (27:22)
Change the lawmakers. I love the town hall idea. I look forward to more information about that so that we can pump that out and let everybody know where to meet the Democrats of the state house because we do want to represent the people and that means hearing directly from you. We're not interested in high level talking points if it doesn't help the people that we're here to serve.

Carolyn Hugley (27:49)
Exactly.

Karen Lupton (27:51)
Well, Leader Hughley, I'm so grateful that you took this time to talk with all of us and with me. We had some technical snafus, so this has all taken quite a bit longer than what is actually going to be released. So I thank you for your patience and thank you again for your leadership and your wisdom. We're going to go strong into 2026, I believe.

Carolyn Hugley (28:15)
Well, thank you, Karen. You are such an important part of our team. I wish I had more members who are as fearless as you are.

Karen Lupton (28:26)
no!

Be careful what you wish for!

Carolyn Hugley (28:32)
Cause that's what it's gonna take. That's what it's gonna take.

Karen Lupton (28:35)
Yeah, brave, brave, brave souls and, and able to carry burdens for others. It's a pleasure to have this job. It's a pleasure to be under your leadership. And I, I hope that I don't have to see you at a special session, but, we'll see. Thank you so much for listening to us today with this is our sixth episode. Hopefully our seventh will be coming out soon, but for, but today thanks to.

leader Carolyn Hughley for being with us and telling us about the Democratic caucus in the House.

Carolyn Hugley (29:11)
Thank you.