The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Stacey Abrams shows the art of the possible
If you were born in the South, you will always be a Southerner.
The way you speak. The values you carry with you. The way you view relationships between the sexes and the races all are a part of your genetic core.
Though your views might evolve over time, there is no getting away from the fact that the mores of the Deep South helped to create the person you are.
As an African-American woman born in a small town in Georgia, I have not always been proud of where I came from. But today, I am beaming as I stand amid chips of glass from a ceiling that, as a young girl in the 1960s, was so high I couldn’t even see it.
On Tuesday night, Stacey Abrams cracked that glass ceiling, becoming the first African-American woman in the nation to win the nomination for governor by a major political party.
Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, didn’t just win the Democratic primary; she took it by a landslide. She defeated her challenger, Stacey Evans, with 76.5 percent of the vote.
That is a magnificent feat in a region that once gave us Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox, Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett. But times are changing in America, and perhaps the South can be nudged to come along with us.
As African-American women have increasingly become the backbone of the Democratic Party, it’s about time we stepped up and started taking our due. Abrams’ partisan victory cracked the surface of a ceiling that has always been held up by white men. She will need much more help to bring it down.
It is not entirely impossible for a modern-day Democrat to win the gubernatorial election in Georgia, though it has been 15 years since it last happened. But for a black woman running in a red state, it would take nothing short of a miracle.
Even with Georgia’s changing demographics, Abrams will face an uphill battle against her Republican challenger in November. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Secretary of State Brian Kemp must face off in a runoff on the Republican side, but either candidate would be a tough opponent.
In a state where the number of white eligible voters is more than twice that of eligible AfricanAmericans, it would seem impossible for a black candidate to win a general election without the support of at least some whites who voted for Trump in 2016.
But being the maverick that she is, Abrams plans to give it a try.
Instead of following the traditional Democratic route of going after white working-class and swing voters who leaned right, Abrams is focused on building a coalition of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and young progressive people whose needs have not been met by either the Democratic or Republican parties. Coalescing these disenfranchised citizens - who will soon comprise the majority in America - could be the key to victory.
It is here that Abrams sees an untapped resource of new supporters - people who tend to stay home on election day because they feel abandoned. And while they are among the most difficult to get to the polls, her progressive message of investing in education, small businesses and expanding Medicaid has been well received.
Her strong primary showing indicates that white Democrats already have her back. Her personal story of being one of six children growing up in Mississippi in a working-class family that struggled to make ends meet might even be appealing to a few white conservatives. But certainly, not everyone relates.
White men, regardless of their educational background or economic status, are the least likely to vote for an African-American candidate and most assuredly, not a black woman. So Abrams can pretty much count them out.
White women are more unpredictable. Even when they had the opportunity to push a white woman though the highest glass ceiling in the nation, the majority of them - 53 percent - chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. It is very likely that most white female voters in Georgia will fall in line behind the Republican male candidate.
Black women, on the other hand, gave Clinton her highest percentage of votes, 94 percent. Another 68 percent of Hispanic or Latino female voters also chose Clinton.
And last year, when Alabama was poised to send the former state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore to the U.S. Senate, black women stopped it with the power of their vote.
Abrams seems to think that black women are strong enough to form the core of a fresh coalition. It is an untested strategy, but many eyes will be on Georgia in November as Democrats seek to turn the nation blue.
No doubt Abrams could win handily if she were able to add the South’s largest constituency to her coalition - poor and working-class whites. Though in sheer numbers, they would benefit most from the policies and programs that Abrams is promoting, they could never bring themselves to vote for her.
Though Georgia and the rest of the South has seen much improvement over the last half-century, this bloc of southerners has long insisted on voting against their own best interests, supporting candidates with whom they have nothing in common other than skin color.
In too much of the South, race remains the most powerful political force.
That is what I like least about my home. And no matter how far away we Southerners go, that is what still causes many of us the most shame.
I am beaming as I stand amid chips of glass from a ceiling that, as a young girl in the 1960s, was so high I couldn’t even see it.