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The LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce celebrated the new Troup County Republican Party Headquarters with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday afternoon.

The party’s new headquarters is located at 209 Church Street in LaGrange.

Troup County Republican Party Chairman Keenan Knight said they opened the new location to gear up for the upcoming election in November.

“We were searching everywhere downtown. We always are when a big election season rolls around. It just happened that this building was empty at the time we needed it. And I’ll give credit to JT Jones and Associates for letting us rent this place,” Knight said.

The party’s previous location was just a block away, also on Church Street.

Knight said the number one goal for the location is to greet people and help them get registered to vote.

“We can give them signs. We can sign them up. They can do phone banking, door-to-door canvassing, and just person-to-person anything with promoting the GOP and the Trump campaign,” Knight said.

“We’re here to get all Republicans elected,” Knight said. “And that’s what we did, even in the primary, the general primary season. We did it last fall with some of the municipal elections.”

Knight said the deadline to vote in the November election is coming up relatively quickly on Oct. 7. He encouraged everyone to get registered and vote early.

“We definitely want people to get out and vote early, and then a big push on election day. We will have ‘Have you voted signs?’ for people to take around the county and every precinct as a reminder to get out and vote,” Knight said. “We want Troup County to be a huge improvement over the last time, toward helping to turn Georgia red.”

Knight said two of their biggest pushes are for voters who only vote in presidential elections and younger voters.

“There are a lot of people that don’t vote unless it is a presidential election. That’s a big push we’re trying to get. They’re called low propensity voters,” Knight said. “I would also want to encourage people 40 and under to vote, because what we’ve done, we’ve looked at the voter rolls and the voter turnout from past elections, and those younger age groups have not been turning out, and we’re actually reaching out to them.”

Knight said the local party has started a Young Republicans chapter, but it’s in its infancy right now.

“We’re really trying to get that age group to get to the polls because we’re leaving a lot of votes on the table,” Knight said.