TIFTON, Ga. — Four Democratic candidates for state level offices visited Tifton to speak with voters on June 2, along with a fifth candidate joining by phone.

Fred Swann, candidate for Georgia agriculture commissioner, headlined the meeting with his “growth from the bottom up” philosophy.

He began with what he called the “slow death of the small family farm,” saying many of them are under contracts from large agricultural corporations which set the price for crops so low that family-owned outfits can’t invest in themselves and their communities.

Swann said that he also wants to make it more economically feasible for people to become farmers and have someone in the office of the ag commissioner to help individuals who want to get started navigate the regulations he said were enacted by lobbyists for big ag corporations in order to create barrier to entry for small operations.

“These aren’t people that are afraid of hard work,” he said. “They’re just tired of it being so hard to get to the point where they can do the job they want to do. We should be thinking of small farms as small businesses. As Democrats we harp on and on about how we want more small businesses in communities so those communities can grow themselves into prosperity. It’s time for us to begin thinking about (small family farms) as a way to promote growth from the bottom up.”

Swann highlighted food deserts as another issue he wants to work on should he be elected.

“It’s a problem in south Georgia,” he said. “In agricultural areas there are places where people don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables or to fresh meats in their communities. The only place they have to get food is some fast food place or Family Dollar. We can do better.”

Swann wants to use the power of the office to help end food insecurity by making sure that supermarkets and grocers are going into areas that are the most economically depressed, and are buttressing communities against supermarkets closing down because corporations decide stores in those areas aren’t profitable enough.

He also touted urban agriculture as a way to “uplift whole communities.”

“We can make it so a community can feed itself and begin to produce enough produce to create a community-owned co-op or business so they could raise themselves out of poverty and reduce blight. But we need a department that is interested in investing in communities, not just protecting the profits of big ag corporations and making sure nobody raises their price.”

Swann also spoke about the possible repercussions of recently-enacted tariffs on rural, agricultural areas.

“There’s no one at the helm saying we need to protect our rural communities that are about to get devastated by these tariffs,” he said. “We need somebody at the helm who recognizes that climate change is real, it’s largely man-made and is an imminent threat to us. We need somebody who is going to help lobby for changes to help us get through some of the energy challenges we face in order to deal with anthropogenic climate change.”

Sid Chapman and Otha Thornton, who are running for state school superintendent, were the first speakers.

Chapman, who was a social studies teacher and part time Methodist pastor, said that he has worked in many facets of the school system, from bus driver to president of the Georgia Association of Educators, and that public education is very important to him.

“When I was in high school, I dropped out,” he said. He ended up getting his GED and going to college, deciding that he wanted to be a high school teacher.

“I taught every grade, 9 through 12,” he said. “All the social sciences. I taught econ in college and had the pleasure to teach the GED classes also at a tech school.”

Chapman said that he has a lot of experience teaching and representing educators.

“Every student, regardless of zip code, should have the opportunity to be educated as well as anyone else,” he said. He highlighted increased investment in education; teacher retention; attracting new teachers to the profession by increasing pay; guaranteeing retirement funds; giving teachers more autonomy in the classroom; bringing back arts education; helping students living in poverty; and school safety being tied to mental health as the things he wants to focus on should he be elected.

“It’s what our priorities are,” he said. “Our priority really should be investing in our future. The children are our future.”

Otha Thornton joined in the meeting by phone. He was not able to be at the meeting in person due to taking care of his wife who recently had surgery.

Thornton said that he has worked in education for almost two decades, served as president of the national PTA, and worked as communications officer and HR director for the Obama administration. He said that he worked with the the United States Congress, the White House and the Department of Education to craft education policy as well as working to defeat the opportunity school districts in 2016.

“My top three priorities, if elected, are first, empowering families and educators and stakeholders through listening to folks and advocating to get concerns and needs addressed through the department.” he said. “The second thing is providing essential resources for our students through wrap-around services in our school systems. Before a kid can learn, their basic needs have to be met. I tell people in Georgia our kids are 25 percent of our population but 100 percent of our future. Unfortunately about 25 percent of our kids are also in poverty, about 1.8 million of them in our public schools. So we have to address those basic needs before children can learn, whether it’s special needs or nutrition. The third thing is fully funding education to 21st century standards.”

Thornton said that while the state has fully funded school systems this year for the first time, that funding doesn’t take into account the mental, social and security services and requirements that the schools need.  

Both candidates were asked their opinion about HB273 by a parent who said her Kindergarten-age daughter only got about 15 minutes of outside time per day.

HB273 refers to an amendment to the Quality Education Act saying that elementary schools must include an average of 30 minutes a day for recess.

Chapman said that the decline in recess comes back to waivers for charter school districts. When school districts were applying to be a charter school, they had to choose to cut out things, like recess, vocational training or teacher planning.

“School districts need more flexibility,” Chapman said. “But they don’t need to be able to just throw out everything that’s worthwhile just because they have flexibility.”

He ended by saying that he believed in recess as a break for both teachers and students.

Thornton said that he advocated for the bill because he wanted to make sure the schools help kids morally, mentally and physically.

 “I believe that we should have longer recesses because I think by having more time for kids to play, you’ll cut down on some of the discipline problems in our schools,” he said. “If you have to sit at a desk for six to eight hours a day, that’s not good. You have to give kids the opportunity to release some of that energy.”

Richard Keatley, Democratic candidate for commissioner of labor, focused on “fighting for working families” by boosting protections for workers and increasing education and training opportunities to they can get jobs and move up in those jobs.

“Georgia ranks as number 42 in economic opportunity according to studies from the Economic Policy Institute,” he said. “Number 42 also in the conditions of workers because of the lack of protection of pension programs, health care, health insurance, the ability of management to fire people without cause. All of these things put working families at risk. Generally in Georgia we say we’re number one for business. We’re 42 for workers, but number one for business.”

He served as an officer in the Navy, obtained a doctorate and taught at universities, including 15 years at Georgia State University.

“The story of the last 40 years is, as America has grown more and more wealthy, working families have not seen any of that,” he said. “Wages have stagnated. America is much richer. It’s not trade in itself that has caused this. It’s the fact that we haven’t paid attention to the things that have protected workers such as health care, health insurance, pension programs.”

Keatley wants to connect resources like colleges, universities and apprenticeship programs offered by unions with those who want to work. He also wants business leaders, community leaders and labor leaders to come together to help develop job plans to make sure that Georgians get the good jobs when large companies locate in the state.

Keatley said that he thinks the minimum wage should be raised, family paid leave should be fought for and that inmates in jails and prisons should be educated so they can get jobs and not fall back into the activities that got them incarcerated in the first place.

He also said that he would advocate to change the law that makes Georgia a right to work state.

“It was clearly written in the 1940s as a reaction to the perceived growth of the civil rights movement,” Keatley said. “I think it’s clear that’s the intention. It’s impact is broader. It affects all workers. Not just minorities suffer from this, but anyone who works can be fired for no reason, cannot organize.”

He reiterated that by bringing business, community and labor leaders together, he hopes to foster “a more mature form of cooperation between the various elements.”

Dawn Randolph is running for public service commissioner, which regulates public utilities. She urged people to turn out to vote and to make sure they voted down ballot.

“If people had voted all the way down (the ballot) we would have pulled more votes on the Democratic side than the Republican side,” she said. “I am a 30 year career public policy person. I’ve worked on every imaginable federal issue you can imagine. Energy and the environment are two that I really have a great passion for.”

The main tenants of her campaign are making sure Georgia utilities are safe, reliable and resistant to cyber attacks; that they’re affordable with fair rates; making sure that the taxpayers aren’t paying for cost overruns; and making sure they’re sustainable by branching out to solar and other non-coal or nuclear energy sources.

Randolph said that net metering, which is an energy buyback she said Georgia Power has fought against, could end up lowering everyone’s rates, wether they use solar panels or not.

“If we took some of these costly coal plants offline and pulled in the solar, we’d have the ability to lower everyone’s rates,” she said. “It’s really a public good for all. And it would definitely encourage more solar panels.”

“We need an independent voice that has the background and the policy understanding as well as the technology,” she said. “Georgia is the largest state east of the Mississippi. We have the eighth largest population and our utility bills are the eighth most expensive. So we need to think about how we can move that in the opposite direction.”

Randolph said that energy use is an issue that affects all residents regardless of political party.

“Everybody has to pay their electric bills,” she said. “I think we can make an argument as Democrats that says we are consumer advocates. We know that the incumbents right now are only looking after Southern Company and Georgia Power because they’ve taken over 70 percent of their campaign funds from Southern Company, Georgia Power and Atlanta Gas Light.”

Follow Eve Copeland on Twitter @EveCopelandTTG.