'We need your impatience': Raphael Warnock visits UGA Chapel, encourages students to vote

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock paid a visit to the University of Georgia on Oct. 20 to campaign for his re-election.

The Baptist minister turned senator held a rally with other local Democrats, including Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz, Athens Commissioner Tim Denson and state Sen. Jen Jordan at the UGA Chapel.

Warnock, who drew a crowd of about 200 students, discussed his plans for re-election and the importance of the youth vote.

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The battle for the Bulldogs

Nowhere in Georgia is this race more keenly contested than on the UGA campus.

Athens remains one of Georgia's progressive strongholds, with liberal students backing Warnock for re-election. But Republican candidate and former UGA football star Herschel Walker has maintained a strong student base of conservative supporters.

It was most apparent while students waited to enter the chapel. In addition to Warnock supporters, about a dozen people bearing Herschel Walker signs stood outside taking photos. 

UGA student Austin Myhre, who helps run the student political group Dawgs for Warnock, said it showed how contentious things could get on campus. 

"I know you all saw those ugly Herschel Walker stickers all around the football field," he said. "And frankly, they really frustrated me because I was looking around and saying, 'These don't represent me. And they don't represent most students on campus.'

"Some of the people outside earlier and some people in here now will tell you that this is a Herschel Walker campus, but I'm here to tell you that's not true." 

"Infrastructure is spiritual"

After remarks from Jordan, Denson and Girtz, Warnock took the stage. Chief among his talking points was infrastructure.

"Now this is what happens when you send a preacher to the Senate. I even believe that infrastructure is spiritual," he said. "Infrastructure in the real sense is about the recognition that we live in the same house; that we're stuck with one another. And so it is in our enlightened self interest to work on the house that we live in together."

Warnock discussed several bipartisan measures he worked on in his two years in the Senate, such as the Warnock-Cruz Amendment to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The amendment, which he made with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, provided for the revitalization of interstate 14. 

"I didn't mind working with Sen. Ted Cruz because I will work with anybody if it helps me to do good things for the people who hired me," he said.

The youth vote

As the rally came to a close, Warnock discussed the future of American politics. On the night of the Senate's confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, he wrote his daughter a letter encouraging her to look to the future. 

"I love all of our children. And that's what drives me every single day," he said.

He similarly encouraged student supporters to exercise their rights to vote on Election Day.

"As a student of history, as a student of our country's movement towards its ideals, I'm clear that there have never been any great movements for change without the energy, the passion, the enthusiasm and the intelligence of young people," he said.

"We need you," Warnock said. "We need your idealism. We need your impatience."