Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / Votenik 2026
Transcript
- Rick Outzen: One thing I love about my job is I get to meet interesting, cool people. And of this next guest is ⁓ I loved her from the moment I've known her. She's a activist. ⁓ She's an DJ, mental health counselor, just someone that I lean to to kind of help keep me grounded on what's going on in the community. ⁓ It's Hale Morsett. Hell, thank you. In Weekly Rising Hale Morrissette: Thanks for having me. I am. Rick Outzen: Cover girl. ⁓ we've had her on the cover of In Weekly. She is a dude. You've got this new project, vote Nick. Tell us about it. Hale Morrissette: I am a doer. Vote Nick. So the idea is to have our Super Bowl of voting, basically. festival. So vote Nick, which coined from the term freak nick, which is a big festival that happens in Atlanta, or used to, I should say. ⁓ But a huge thing. It's a big party. it is to bring people out and then ⁓ for us get on the buses to go vote, and just have a good time all around together. We don't have enough of that. So this is a big early voting block party basically. Rick Outzen: Well we've got a couple of dates. October fifth is the last chance to register to vote for the election. So if you're not registered, you can do it then. You can do it online. There's so many easy ways to do it. But that's date. But then we're gonna have a longer for early voting, almost two weeks. Yes. And we had Robert Bender on last week talking about it. So is it's you I both really we want as many people is eligible to vote and register to vote to vote. Yes. And and you vote however you want to vote, but I want to see that number turn out really, really high. So this is you've found a f sort of a big vacant lot on Certain Antees. the across the street we used to be Tom Ann Buddies. Tom and it's Ann, A-N-N Buddies. and you've got spot. It's from noon to five. Hale Morrissette: From noon to five. On a Sunday. On a Sunday. So come after church. Yeah. October twenty fifth. Okay. Come after church. If you didn't go to church, come church with us. We're gonna have all types of local artists that are gonna perform at the event, all different genres of music. But the DJs, because y'all know I'm a DJ, I gotta give the DJs some. So they are going to run this party. it is gonna be a field day, basically. I want people to come bring your chairs out, you know, bring your picnic, tablecloth, like layout. hang out, we're gonna dance, we're gonna have a good time, we're gonna have local vendors come because we always wanna pour back into local businesses. ⁓ been running block parties all summer. So is the culmination of all of those block parties I've been doing and the biggest way that we possibly can end out the block party season for me. Rick Outzen: Well yes. Hale was the DJ for the Best of the Coast party that we had. Yes. You know, and and in my staff, Best of the Coast doesn't happen in a week or two. It begins in May. And Joni Delasine, my runs the show and she was so happy to have that moment to to see everyone excited about it. ⁓ the other thing that that I think is important that really what's gonna make this work, Hel, is it's great to do it during early voting because don't have to go to a specific precinct. No. So y'all can have ⁓ and vans running a couple of spots. Yep. Downtown, Brownsville community center, there places close and so it's a real opportunity to really sort of advantage of the freedom of early Hale Morrissette: And that's gonna be the big deal and difference of I think some other things that we may have done in the past. Black Voters Matter is coming into town. if people are not familiar with Cliff and Latasha Harris, ⁓ are the founders. They'll be coming into town on a huge bus ⁓ to people to the polls also. ⁓ and have citizens, locals that are getting their cars and they're like, I will help people go to the polls. So between Spring Street and Brownsville, We should be really busy that day. Rick Outzen: That's great. Well, it'll be a little different than the last election and and were on the ballot in twenty twenty four. I was. You were. and was a great I I I r I talked to State Representative Andrade, who you ran against, and how he enjoyed being on the campaign because it was a really ⁓ it was a ⁓ a campaign about ideas. That's right. And I think that that your reputation in town goes across party lines. Yeah. And ⁓ but what drives you? What what drives you to do this? Hale Morrissette: well, number one is my kids. If be honest, ⁓ I a born and raised Pensacola girl. My kids are born and raised Pensacola kids and I just want this ⁓ community be better for them. to be the best for all of us. I think that there's always gonna be a Florida for everybody. so when I think about who I'm voting for and things like that, it's always about ⁓ who thinks that can be for everyone that's here, making it accessible for of us. That's just really important to me. Rick Outzen: Now how can people keep up with with vote nick in how to Hale Morrissette: ⁓ they can follow me. The best are to follow me on Facebook and Instagram. Dash Ellie. Yep. With the dash. and then they can also visit my website, lifeishell.com. I'll it all updated with all the details. There's video from we did do vote nick in twenty twenty four. So there's video from twenty twenty four's vote nick up there too. reflect Rick Outzen: DJ Hill. DJ Hill. Cool. Hopefully the weather will be good. It will be good. it's Beautiful. Well, you I I really appreciate you coming on. I think I'm excited what you're doing here. and of course we're we're working on our voter guide. We'll have that come out right before vote nix and we'll get one more shot to let people know what's going on. ⁓ Again, the voter Hale Morrissette: Good fall weather. Rick Outzen: ⁓ the last time to register on Monday, October fifth. You can do it through ScambiaVotes.gov or we've got a in issue of the paper, we actually have a QR code that will take you to vote.org that you also register there. So for us, we I consider a election a success. We have a good turnout. I think a huge turnout means that the election is the people have Mm-hmm. In an election with a small turnout, yeah, then you feel like we really didn't we really didn't get what we wanted. Yeah. So I I I think that that is is critical. We've got David I mean I'm sorry, Robert Bender, I think David Stafford Robert Bender's friend but Robert Bender they run a clean shop. Hale Morrissette: Robert loves his job too, and I love that about him. Rick Outzen: Very clean shop. You know, they they ninety nine per ninety nine point nine percent accurate in how they count the votes. There are a lot of local races out there, of course state races are huge. and a lot of the votes will matter. Hale Morrissette: Absolutely matter. single vote will matter. people just gotta do it. Right. Come do it with me. Let's have fun doing it. Rick Outzen: I do well. you so much for coming on. We be back. We'll go ahead and pay a few bills. and we've got much more coming.