SU alum works to increase Black voter turnout in Georgia Senate runoffs
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Syracuse University graduate Jeremy Edwards first took the oath of office when he began an internship in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York during his senior year at SU.
He has taken the oath three times since, and its principles have guided his career from the U.S. Supreme Court to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Now, the Syracuse native is the African American media director for the Democratic Party of Georgia, and he’s working to elect two senators in the state’s runoff election on Tuesday that could sway political control in Congress.
“(The oath) is something that has really stuck with me throughout my career,” Edwards said. “I want to serve the public and work as hard as I can to uphold the values enshrined in the Constitution.”
In his present role, Edwards tries to reach out to the state’s Black community to drum up support for Democrats in both runoff Senate races. It’s a two-part job, he said — getting Democrats out to the polls and involved in campaigning and also luring undecided voters to the Democratic ticket.
The Senate is currently divided, with Democrats holding 48 seats. If both Democrat Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock win their elections Tuesday, Democrats will take the Senate for the first time since 2012 and hold both houses of Congress and the presidency.
“Given the way that our political system is set up, if we don’t control the Senate, that can really hamper President Biden’s ability to create lasting and meaningful change,” Edwards said.
Edwards didn’t intend to work in campaign politics. He originally wanted to practice law — he followed a pre-law track and joined the mock trial team while at SU — but changed his mind after taking CRS 360, a two-week Maymester course focusing on political communications, during his final semester.
Edwards worked alongside Vice President-elect Kamala Harris at campaign events in Georgia. Courtesy of Jeremy Edwards
The course consists of two parts: one week on campus in Syracuse and one week meeting with communication professionals in Washington, D.C. The intensive course is designed to immerse students in the political communications industry, according to its instructor, Lynn Greenky, an associate professor at SU.
“My purpose is to teach the theory but also show how it comes out in practice,” Greenky said. “We see the faces of Washington, but their offices are run by people the same age as (my students). All they have to do is try and they can get in there, and Jeremy is a perfect example of that.”
The two-week course completely changed the trajectory of Edwards’ career, and Greenky could tell. Edwards’ class was one of the first groups of CRS 360 students she taught, and his drive to find a job in D.C. stuck out to her, she said.
In the years since, Edwards has welcomed classes of CRS 360 students into his own workplaces in D.C., giving to them some of what he experienced in 2013. The course was not taught in 2020 and will not be taught in 2021 due to COVID-19, but Greenky plans to teach it again in 2022.
After graduating, Edwards worked for three years in the U.S. Supreme Court with the Marshal’s Office. He then returned to the Department of Justice to work as a paralegal. He took a job as a press assistant in the same division a year later, solidifying his move from law to communications.
In D.C., Edwards would organize get-togethers with SU alumni for football and basketball games, and he often attended karaoke with fellow alumni and friends, said Mahlet Makonnen, an SU alumna and Edwards’ mock trial teammate.
“If there’s one word to describe Jeremy, it’s magnetic,” Makonnen said. “Both in his personal and professional life he brings 100%, and I saw that early on.”
But that also led to internal conflict with his DOJ work. A changing executive branch after the 2016 election meant a changing atmosphere in the department, Edwards said. He became disillusioned with the rising influence of partisan politics in the department and the increasingly destructive policies pushed by President Donald Trump’s administration, such as separating migrant children from their parents and attempting to defeat the Affordable Care Act in court.
For Edwards, upholding the values of the Constitution meant leaving his job at the DOJ and working more directly in politics.
“I remember seeing what was happening, not just at the DOJ … thinking of that oath I had taken and just being so disturbed,” Edwards said. “I thought to myself, ‘what can I do to correct this, to restore this institution that I revered previously?’ And to me, that was getting into the fight more directly and going to Congress.”
Edwards served as the press secretary for Georgia for the Biden campaign.Courtesy of Jeremy Edwards
He took a job as the communications director for Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), falling in love with the political side of communications. He was driven by the same push to advocate for what’s best for the American people and felt he could make the most impact in campaign politics, he said.
In late 2020, after returning home to Syracuse due to the COVID-19 pandemic and still working for Rush, Edwards had an opportunity to move South and work for Biden’s presidential campaign as its press secretary for Georgia. Understanding the importance of this election and how crucial Georgia would be, he agreed.
“Given the stakes of everything going on, I felt compelled to use the skills I had gained in my comms career and apply that to trying to win this election,” he said.
As part of his work, Edwards organized and attended campaign events throughout the state and often worked directly alongside Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris when they were in Georgia. His work paid off, and the Biden/Harris ticket carried that state by a slim margin, the first Democrats to do so since former president Bill Clinton in 1992.
In December, he returned to Georgia to work as the African American media director for the Democratic Party of Georgia — it’s a different campaign, but one that is equally important, he said.
Edwards no longer works directly with candidates. Instead, he organizes on the state-wide level for them, reaching out to media outlets and scheduling interviews, especially in the Black community.
And with the runoff election just a day away, Edwards will once again see if his work will pay off.
“There’s an excitement about what’s possible here in Georgia,” he said.
