Stacey Abrams

In 2006, Abrams ran from the 89th district for the Georgia House of Representatives, following JoAnn McClinton's announcement that she would not seek reelection. Abrams ran in the Democratic Party primary election against former state legislator George Maddox and political operative Dexter Porter. She outraised her two opponents and won the primary election with 51% of the vote, avoiding a runoff election.[17]

Abrams with John Lewis in 2017

Abrams represented House District 89, which includes portions of the City of Atlanta and unincorporated DeKalb County,[18] covering the communities of Candler Park, Cedar Grove, Columbia, Druid Hills, Edgewood, Highland Park, Kelley Lake, Kirkwood, Lake Claire, South DeKalb, Toney Valley, and Tilson.[19] She served on the Appropriations, Ethics, Judiciary Non-Civil, Rules and Ways & Means committees.[20]

In November 2010, the Democratic caucus elected Abrams to succeed DuBose Porter as minority leader over Virgil Fludd.[21] Abrams's first major action as minority leader was to cooperate with Republican governor Nathan Deal's administration to reform the HOPE Scholarship program. She co-sponsored the 2011 legislation that preserved the HOPE program by decreasing the scholarship amount paid to Georgia students and funded a 1% low-interest loan program for students.[22]

According to Time magazine, Abrams "can credibly boast of having single-handedly stopped the largest tax increase in Georgia history."[23] In 2011 Abrams argued that a Republican proposal to cut income taxes while increasing a tax on cable service would lead to a net increase in taxes paid by most people.[23] She performed an analysis of the bill that showed that 82% of Georgians would see net tax increases, and left a copy of the analysis on the desk of every house legislator.[23] The bill subsequently failed.[23]

Abrams also worked with Deal on criminal-justice reforms that reduced prison costs without increasing crime,[23] and with Republicans on the state's biggest-ever public transportation funding package.[23]

On August 25, 2017, Abrams resigned from the General Assembly to focus on her gubernatorial campaign.[24]

Abrams campaigning in 2018

Wikinews has related news: Stacey Abrams becomes first black woman to gain major U.S. party nomination for governor of Georgia

Abrams ran for governor of Georgia in 2018.[25] In the Democratic primary she ran against Stacey Evans, another member of the Georgia House of Representatives,[25] in what some called "the battle of the Staceys". Abrams was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Our Revolution.[26][27] On May 22, she won the Democratic nomination, making her the first black woman in the U.S. to be a major party's nominee for governor.[28]

After winning the primary, Abrams secured a number of high-profile endorsements, including one from former President Barack Obama.[29][30]

Almost a week before election day, the Republican nominee, Brian Kemp, canceled a debate scheduled seven weeks earlier in order to attend a Trump rally in Georgia. Kemp blamed Abrams for the cancellation, saying that she was unwilling to reschedule it. Abrams responded, “We refuse to callously take Georgians for granted and cancel on them. Just because Brian Kemp breaks his promises doesn’t mean anyone else should.”[31]

Two days before the election, Kemp's office announced that it was investigating the Georgia Democratic Party for unspecified "possible cybercrimes"; the Georgia Democratic Party stated that "Kemp's scurrilous claims are 100 percent false" and described them as a "political stunt."[32] A 2020 investigation by the Georgia Attorney General's office concluded that there was no evidence of computer crimes.[33] Later that year, it was revealed that the alleged cybercrime against Kemp's office was in fact a planned security test that one of Kemp's staff members had signed off on three months prior.[34]

As Georgia's secretary of state, Kemp was in charge of elections and voter registration during the election. Between 2012 and 2018, Kemp's office cancelled over 1.4 million voter registrations, with nearly 700,000 cancellations in 2017 alone.[35] On a single night in July 2017, half a million voters had their registrations cancelled. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, election-law experts said that this "may represent the largest mass disenfranchisement in US history."[3] Kemp oversaw the removals as Secretary of State, and did so eight months after he declared that he was going to run for governor.[36] An investigative journalism group run by Greg Palast found that of the approximately 534,000 Georgians whose voter registrations were purged between 2016 and 2017 more than 334,000 still lived where they were registered.[37] The voters were given no notice that they had been purged.[38] Palast ultimately sued Kemp, claiming over 300,000 voters were purged illegally.[4] Kemp's office denied any wrongdoing, saying that by "regularly updating our rolls, we prevent fraud and ensure that all votes are cast by eligible Georgia voters."[39]

By early October 2018, more than 53,000 voter registration applications had been put on hold by Kemp's office, with more than 75% belonging to minorities.[40][41] The voters are eligible to re-register assuming they still live in Georgia, and they have not died.[42][41][43][37]

Kemp's office was found to have violated the law before and immediately after the 2018 midterm elections.[44] In a ruling against Kemp, District Judge Amy Totenberg found that Kemp's office had violated the Help America Vote Act and said an attempt by Kemp's office to expedite the certification of results "appears to suggest the Secretary’s foregoing of its responsibility to confirm the accuracy of the results prior to final certification, including the assessment of whether serious provisional balloting count issues have been consistently and properly handled." [45][46]

Abrams lost the election by 50,000 votes. Abrams considered but ultimately did not mount a legal challenge to the election results.[47] In her speech ending her campaign,[48] she announced the creation of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights nonprofit organization that sued the Secretary of State and state election board in federal court for voter suppression.[49] As of March 2020, the lawsuit was still ongoing.[50]

Since losing the election, Abrams has repeatedly claimed that the election was not fairly conducted[51] and that Kemp is not the legitimate governor of Georgia.[52] Her position is that Kemp, who oversaw the election in his role as Secretary of State, had a conflict of interest and suppressed turnout by purging nearly 670,000 voter registrations in 2017, and that about 53,000 voter registrations were pending a month before the election.[51][53] She has said, "I have no empirical evidence that I would have achieved a higher number of votes. However, I have sufficient and I think legally sufficient doubt about the process to say that it was not a fair election."[51]

Stacey Abrams and Nancy Pelosi in January 2019

On January 29, 2019, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced that Abrams would deliver the response to the State of the Union address on February 5.[54] She was the first African-American woman to give the rebuttal to the address, as well as the first and only non-office-holding person to do so since the SOTU responses began in 1966.[55]

On April 30, 2019, Abrams announced that she would not run for the U.S. Senate in 2020.[56]

On August 17, 2019, Abrams announced the founding of Fair Fight 2020,[57] an organization that will assist Democrats financially and technically to build voter protection teams in 20 states.[58] Abrams is Fair Fight Action 2020's chair.[59] Billionaire and former Republican New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg contributed $5 million shortly after announcing his run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.[60][61] On ABC’s The View, Abrams defended Bloomberg’s spending, saying, “Every person is allowed to run and should run the race that they think they should run, and Mike Bloomberg has chosen to use his finances. Other people are using their dog, their charisma, their whatever.”[62] Abrams declined to endorse Bloomberg personally.[63]

During the 2020 Democratic presidential primary election, Abrams actively promoted herself for consideration as former Vice President Joe Biden's running mate.[64] Biden later shortlisted Abrams for the position.[65]

In her campaign for governor, Abrams said her top priority was Medicaid expansion.[23][70] She cited research showing that Medicaid expansion improved health care access for low-income residents and made hospitals in rural locations financially viable.[70] She also created a plan to address Georgia's high maternal mortality rate.[71]

Abrams would like to increase spending on public education.[23] She opposes private school vouchers, instead advocating improvements to the public education system. She supports smaller class sizes, more school counselors, protected pensions, better pay for teachers, and expanded early childhood education.[72]

Abrams supports criminal justice reform in the form of no cash bail for poor defendants, abolishing the death penalty, and decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.[66][73] She also supports community policing to keep communities safe as part of criminal justice reform.[74]

Abrams is a strong supporter of Israel and rejects "the demonization and delegitimization of Israel represented" by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign," which she has called "anti-Semitic."[75][76] But she voted against Georgia's anti-BDS legislation that punishes companies that choose to boycott Israel or Israeli-occupied territories.[77] Abrams wrote, "Boycotts have been a critical part of social justice in American history, particularly for African-Americans. As the Anti-Defamation League notes, the origin of BDS is based in the anti-apartheid movement."[75]