Vikram Bharadwaj, Democratic Party field organizer for Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties, in a meeting with Oconee County Democrats earlier this month, emphasized the importance of making personal contact with voters leading up to the Nov. 3 election.
Democrats Eric Gisler, Susanna Karatassos, and Ray Smith, seeking to represent Oconee County in the Georgia General Assembly, have fewer resources to spend on advertising than their Republican counterparts.
Bharadwaj suggested that disadvantage can be offset by a strong ground game based on in-person canvassing and telephone conversations with voters.
Advertisements are not everything, Bharadwaj said.
To really move people, he said “we've got to make sure we're having these conversations, that we're chatting with people, that we're really trying to understand the different visions of people we're talking to.”
“That's what canvassing is,” he said. “That's what phonebanking is, trying to understand their stories. Because at the end of the day, that's what makes a difference between not making it and making it.”
Bharadwaj said canvassing and phonebanking are well underway with the goal of learning about voters and creating a database. That information will be used for follow-up contacts to get voters to cast a ballot.
House District 121 Rep. Gisler and House District 120 candidate Karatassos had already signed up to work with the Athens-Clarke County and Oconee Field Office, Bharadwaj said.
Smith, candidate for Senate District 46, was in the audience and said he intended to join as well.
Focus On Democrats And Independents
Bharadwaj, a paid party staffer from Buford who came to Athens-Clarke County as a student at the University of Georgia, was the featured speaker at the Aug. 6 meeting of the Oconee County Democratic Party.
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| Bharadwaj 8.6/2026 |
The meeting took place in the Lobby Meeting Room of Piedmont Oconee Health Campus, 1305 Jennings Road Road, and was attended by 28 people.
Party Chair Harold Thompson, in introducing Bharadwaj, said the Athens-Clarke and Oconee Coordinating Campaign office is one of 30 field offices in the state.
“In the old days, we used to operate campaigns out of silos,” Thompson said. “Everybody kind of did their own thing, set up shop in their own places, and found canvassers and volunteers their own way.”
“But now it's just a holistic approach,” Thompson said. “We're kind of wrapping a lot of campaigns for state, federal, legislative into one central point.”
“So you want yard signs, you want literature, it's just one place to go,” he said. The office is at 650 Oglethorpe Ave., Unit 5, in Athens.
Thompson said the party has been open for a month, and the Democratic Party didn’t open an office locally two years ago until September.
The Democrats already are canvassing weekly in Oconee County.
Focus On Democrats And Independents
“We're really trying to coordinate a lot of the different focuses and trying to engage with different campaigns and help them out in as many ways as we can,” Bharadwaj said.
“My biggest thing is being able to help you all,” he added.
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| Gisler 8/6/2026 |
“The job we're trying to do is close the field margin,” Bharadwaj said. “The field margin is like 2 percent to 3 percent of the vote. That's all it takes to win the election.”
“You’ve just got to get 10 neighbors who don't maybe even know that we’ve got a midterm coming up,” he said. “There's a lot of people don't realize that.”
“Most of the work we're going to be doing right now, between now and October, is talking to people who are Democrat likely or are independent,” he said, “and really trying to make sure they know about this vote, really trying to convince them that this is the best way forward, that we can get our people in office.”
“We’ve got to be respectful,” Bharadwaj said. “People have their beliefs for a reason, and getting into yelling matches doesn't change minds.”
“Being empathetic and listening to why they believe what they believe in is the best way to change minds,” he said.
It may be hard to get someone to change her or his vote in a statewide race, Bharadwaj said, “but maybe you can get them to vote for Eric, maybe you can get them to vote for Susanna.”
“We're really wasting our time if we're just talking to people who are hardcore Republicans especially, or people who are really leaning right,” he said. “That's time we could be spending on trying to convince people who are in the likely Dem or in the independent margin.”
Oconee Precincts
All of Oconee County is in Senate District 46, with Smith, from Oconee County, and Republican Marc McMain, from Walton County, competing for the open seat.
Three of Oconee County’s four precincts–Oconee South, Oconee Central, and Dark Corner–are in House District 121. Incumbent Gisler is from Oconee County, as is Mack “Dutch” Guest IV, the Republican candidate for House District 121.
Oconee Northeast Precinct is in House District 120, with Karatassos and Republican Ward Black competing for that open seat. Both are from Jackson County.
The July 31 campaign contribution reports show all three of the Republicans with larger balances in their campaign accounts than the Democrats.
Video
The video below is of the full Aug. 6 meeting of the Oconee County Democratic Party.
Thompson introduced Bharadwaj at 2:35 in the video.
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