District Attorney for Georgia’s Western Judicial Circuit Deborah Gonzalez sits in her office at the Athens Clarke-County Courthouse on March 28. After coming into politics following the 2016 presidential election, Gonzalez is now the first woman to be elected as a DA in this Judicial Circuit. “We have to be intentional about recognizing and appreciating the contributions made by these distinct (minority) groups because it’s not the norm (and) it’s not the routine (to recognize them). Madeleine Albright (once said), ‘there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.’ I think that’s really true. We all know how difficult it is to be a woman in this world. We should all be there helping each other as sisters.” Photo by Janie Ripps
Social Media Coordinator Janie Ripps talks with District Attorney for Georgia’s Western Judicial Circuit Deborah Gonzalez about being a woman in politics.
Social Media Coordinator Janie Ripps: So just tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get into politics?
District Attorney for Georgia’s Western Judicial Circuit Deborah Gonzalez: I started in politics after the results of the 2016 presidential election came out. I was very concerned, not that Hillary Clinton had lost, but that Donald Trump had won. I had received a text from my daughter saying, “I’m scared,” and I thought, “well, I have to do something,” because I felt very down about what had happened. A friend of mine had suggested that I go to a democratic meeting, and I did. While I was there, I had heard about (how) our current State (Representative) at that time, Regina Quick, had co-sponsored Campus Carry and a really horrendous bill regarding victims of sexual harassment on campus and mandatory reporting, but nobody was really standing up and saying they would run. So I said, “I’ll run,” and that’s how I got involved in politics. I literally went home and Googled, “How do you run a political campaign?” Because I had no idea. This wasn’t something that I had ever thought I would do. I was very content being an entertainment lawyer. I was doing my own thing. But I just felt somebody had to do it and nobody was standing up. That’s how it all started.
JR: What have you learned from switching from law to politics?
DG: You have to be in it for the right reasons, and that reason should be about serving the people. What I’ve learned between being a (state representative), and now being a (District Attorney) is how hands-off you really are as a (state representative.) (As a District Attorney) I see the impact of my decisions every day in this office and what is happening in my community. I have a staff that helps me do this work and I’m responsible for that staff, responsible for the budget, responsible for those things on a local level that I had nothing at all to do with when I was a State Rep. One thing is that sometimes people think, “Oh, it’s the bigger seats that you can do stuff.” Don’t belittle the local seats, because you can (have) a lot of direct impact in those seats.
JR: As a former state representative and current DA, how has it been for you to be a woman in politics?
DG: Tough. It’s very difficult. Women are held to very different standards than men and being a woman of color, being Latina, those standards are even higher for us. I am the first woman in this role ever for this circuit. I am the first minority in this role ever in this circuit. I am the first Latina DA in the entire state of Georgia ever, and I am the first Puerto Rican woman DA in the country. Representation matters and just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean that we should not try to reach these heights and have our seats at the table. But there’s a lot of sexism, there’s a lot of misogyny, there’s a lot of racism in Georgia politics. It is very obviously out there. You can look at the way the media portrays me or talks about me versus the way that they spoke about my opponents. It’s those old-fashioned stereotypes. (With) law enforcement, the court system, lawyers, police officers, most people think of men. They don’t think that a woman can be as tough in that situation or that she can do that kind of work, and I think that does such a disservice to our community. There are things that women can bring to a role that men will never be able to bring: the way that we communicate with others, the way that we interact, the way that we engage with the community, that our male counterparts do not do as much of.
JR: What does this mean to you as a person and as a politician to be in this position as a minority?
DG: It’s something that I’m very proud of. I had to fight to get into this. I had to sue the governor, first of all, just to have an election. He had canceled it by not appointing somebody, so that was the first hurdle. 150,000 people had lost their right to vote and we sued (and) we won. We went all the way up to the Georgia Supreme Court and the federal courts, and we won our case five times. So finally, we’re on the ballot, and then we had to fight for the votes (of) people. (They had to) understand one, what is the DA? What does a DA do? Why is it so important to have a DA? And why I, as a woman and a minority, would make the right DA for what the people wanted? Our community really wanted to challenge the status quo, they didn’t want the same thing, they wanted a new approach to justice. That was something that I was able to bring as a woman looking at this from a very different standpoint, looking at it as a mother and a grandmother. Being a woman, I think, helps me bring those other perspectives that have not been here and have not been part of leadership. There may have been female attorneys, but they were not making the decisions in terms of policy.
JR: So as you were campaigning for DA, was there support from the community?
DG: A mix. I think a lot of that comes down to even the two counties, Athens and Oconee, that are part of this jurisdiction. Athens is much more liberal (and) much more progressive. They were the ones really crying out for a different approach to justice. Oconee is much more conservative (and) is much more tough on crime and I think that became very evident in the election results. I won Athens by two-thirds (and) my opponent won Oconee by two-thirds, but Athens had more people so I was able to win the election. So there (are) some people who are very happy, (but) there are some people I can never do enough for and there are some people who think I just do too much and I should rev it down and not do all that I am trying to do.
JR: How have you worked with those around you to generate that change and diversify our community through politics, maybe from a gender standpoint but also from a minority standpoint?
DG: A lot of conversations, a lot of panels, a lot of interviews to get the issues out there (and) to start a dialogue, to show people just how important it is by sharing my story, by sharing other women’s stories who have stepped up to run. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they may have won but even just the act of running for a seat, of being able to stand out there and start a conversation where none had been before. When I ran for DA, it had been 18 years since this community had a conversation about what does justice mean for us, because the prior DA ran without opposition, so we didn’t talk about it. If there’s no election, there’s no conversation. And so being able to have that election, being able to have that conversation and continue it, you know transparency is really important to us. So we have a Facebook page, we’re getting ready to launch our data dashboard. We’ve got a newsletter that goes out every month. I write an article in the Oconee Enterprise to continue that education about what we do in this office and about what justice could be if we all work towards it together.
