Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

ALBANY — U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., visited Albany Wednesday to kick off his campaign for re-election to serve Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House, a position he’s held since 1993.

Bishop is the longest-serving U.S. Congressman from Georgia and recently accepted the ceremonial role of dean of the Georgia Congressional Delegation, he said during his campaign kickoff at the downtown Government Center. Bishop served Albany through the Flood of 1994, the tornadoes in 2018 and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, he noted.

In that time, Bishop said he’s continued to make decisions in the best interests of southwest Georgians, and he said Wednesday he’s well-positioned to continue to do so.

Bishop said he holds the “top slot” for Democrats in agriculture, which is important in a state with agriculture as its top industry. This slot is on the Agriculture, Rural Development and FDA Appropriations subcommittee.

He also serves on the Authorizing Committee of Agriculture. Through these positions he said, he’d helped work on the Farm Bill, which is a legislation package passed every five years. Bishop said the Farm Bill is “long overdue” in ensuring farmers have a safety net.

Bishop said he’s fought to create and maintain jobs at the Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Fort Moore in Columbus and Albany’s Marine Corps Logistics Base. The Congressman pointed to defense as Georgia’s second industry. He serves on the Military Construction Veterans Affairs Appropriations subcommittee.

“I’m here to ask you to renew my contract for another two years so that … I can continue to finish the job we’ve been working on,” he said. “We want to lower prices … make sure that you … thrive and that you get ahead. We’re trying to work for a strong retirement, a better education … safe communities, support for our law enforcement, affordable, accessible health care, for a strong national defense.”

Washita Drake, a 51-year-old Albany resident, and Roger Drake Jr., a 55-year-old Albany resident, listened to Bishop with campaign signs in hand. Washita Drake said she plans to plant the signs in their yard and tell everyone she can to vote for Bishop.

She’s lived in Albany for about 16 years and has voted for the congressman every two years. She said she’d love to see him re-elected.

“He is honorable, loyal, outspoken and on top of the job,” she said.

Both she and Roger Drake said they can feel Bishop’s presence in the community – that he’s not just in D.C.

“He actually has weight behind what he says,” Roger said. “He has eyes and ears in the community. When he’s not here, he has people looking into things.”

Drake said he’s seen first-hand the support Bishop’s secured for farmers in the wake of disasters like Hurricane Michael. He also applauded the Congressman’s efforts to secure funding for Albany’s sewer separation project. Roger lives in the Rawson Circle area and said the area used to be plagued by a sewage smell. He said since the project has progressed, the smell has disappeared.

Washita Drake said she hopes to see more effort made in solving the Albany area’s crime issue and expanding the Affordable Care Act if Bishop is re-elected.

Bishop spent much of his kickoff speech endorsing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for their presidential run.

On the same day he kicked off his campaign in Albany, Bishop joined Georgia Reps. Debbie Buckner and Michelle Au to talk about the Harris-Walz campaign and health care in rural Georgia.

They were joined by Dr. Karen Kinsell, the only full-time doctor in Clay County, a rural county about 50 miles west of Albany. The four shared the same sentiment: Georgia’s rural hospitals won’t survive another Trump presidency.

Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, have been vocal about ending the Affordable Care Act, an action that Au said would place 1.2 million Georgians at risk of losing health insurance coverage. Since 2010, nine rural Georgia hospitals have closed. Bishop said 18 more of the state’s rural hospitals are in danger of closing and leaving their communities if the ACA were to be disbanded.

“It would cut funds for rural hospitals and would raise the cost (of health care) for millions of rural Americans,” Bishop said.

Georgia is one of 10 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the ACA. Georgia also boasts a higher poverty rate than most states and has the second-highest rate in the nation of people without health insurance. These factors culminate to create a state that is one of the sickest states in the nation, Au said.

“Nowhere do these three conditions come together as visibly as in rural Georgia,” she said.

Bishop said Trump inflicted lasting damage on southwest Georgia communities. He pointed to Cuthbert’s Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center, which closed its doors in 2020 after 70 years of serving Cuthbert and surrounding rural communities.

“That left communities in our district without jobs, without a trusted hospital to turn to in times of sickness or illness or accidents,” Bishop said. “Another four years of Donald Trump in the White House will threaten the existence of hospitals all across rural America.”

Kinsell painted a picture of the underresourced health care system that struggles to serve rural southwest Georgia. The closest hospital to Clay County, she said, doesn’t have a computer for patient care and handwrites notes to patients. Nurse practitioners service the ER because there is only one doctor and pediatrician left in the county.

She said many of her patients fail to get basic care for common diseases like blood pressure or diabetes – they split pills in half because they can’t afford more.

“We deserve better,” she said.

Kinsell said Medicaid is crucial both for Georgians and Georgia hospitals. It keeps rural hospitals open by increasing the amount of care for which they’re reimbursed. She said it helps health care workers by creating a system that has the infrastructure and finances to pay its health care work force, attracting more doctors or nurses to more rural areas.

“Cuts to that coverage would exacerbate the struggles that they already face, particularly in underserved and uninsured populations,” she said. “I don’t think Donald Trump cares about the struggles of Georgians and rural hospitals. Do you think he’s ever worried about paying for a pill? Please. He only cares about catering to the corporations and his wealthy friends at the expense of rural … communities in Georgia and across the country.”

Kinsell said as a doctor in Georgia she believes Harris and her plans to lower health care costs and protect programs like the ACA are what’s best for Georgia.

Bishop said the Biden-Harris administration met rural Georgia’s medical woes head on. It capped the cost of insulin for seniors and fought to protect Medicare and Medicaid. He said Cuthbert is now on the path to re-open its hospital due to the Biden-Harris administration’s appropriation of millions of dollars of federal funding.

During his campaign kickoff, Bishop stressed the upcoming presidential election as being “extremely consequential.”

“The other side wants to take us back. We don’t want to go back,” he said. “We want to go forward.”

Staff Photo: Lucille Lannigan