Abrams tests new approach to Ga. politics with historic campaign
WASHINGTON – Twenty-seven years ago, Stacey Abrams recalled, she was the only high school valedictorian invited to the Georgia Governor’s Mansion who arrived on a bus and had a guard try to block her from getting in the gate.
“He told us it was a private event, that we didn’t belong there and to go on our way,” the Democratic gubernatorial candidate told USA TODAY. The guard relented after a “very robust debate” with her parents, but she said, “It’s an extraordinary moment, and it’s often the anecdote I tell, because it’s what galvanizes me.”
After winning Georgia’s Democratic primary election Tuesday, she has a historic shot at making that mansion her home.
If she wins in November, Abrams, 44, will be the nation’s first AfricanAmerican female governor. She takes an unconventional approach to politics in her state that some said could serve as a model for elections in the South.
Rather than using most of her resources to chase Republican-leaning swing voters, Abrams wants to expand the electorate by building a broad coalition and mobilizing non-voters, including more people of color. After running a full campaign in every county, Abrams trounced her primary opponent, former state representative Stacey Evans, winning 76.5% of the vote.
“My mission is to use my campaign as a proof of concept that we can go and find (the voters we need), and we can lift their voices up, and we can create a new narrative,” she said Friday.
Abrams’ primary victory “sends a strong a signal, particularly in the South” of the path Democrats can use to seize seats, said Steve Phillips, a longtime Democratic activist and do- nor who helped collect $1.5 million in outside funding to boost Abrams’ candidacy in the primary. Phillips and his wife, California banking heir and philanthropist Susan Sandler, lead an effort to collect $10 million to help Abrams win in November.
Abrams has an uphill battle in a red state that has elected Republican governors since 2003. In November, she will face either Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle or Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republicans who advanced to a runoff primary July 24. The Republican Governors Association says she is “too far left” and “too extreme.”
During the primary, Abrams veered far from the centrist path adopted by other Democrats who have sought statewide office in the state in recent years. She embraced LGBT causes and called for the removal of the Confederate images carved onto Stone Mountain in suburban Atlanta. She focused on an expansion of Medicaid, childcare affordability, criminal justice reform and economic development that invests in small business.
As the state House minority leader, Abrams has already made history. She was the first woman to lead either party in the Georgia General Assembly and the first African American to lead in the state’s House of Representatives. Now she is the first black woman to win a major party nomination for governor in the country.
A Yale Law School graduate, Abrams’ career has included work as a tax attorney, small business owner and even a romantic suspense author, who writes under the name “Selena Montgomery.”
Abrams never married or had children. The daughter of United Methodist ministers, she is one of six children who grew up in a family that she says “struggled to stay above the poverty line” and sometimes went without lights or running water. Her father taught her, “Never tell yourself no. Let somebody else do it.”
Her personal story is at the center of her campaign. While calling for Medicaid expansion and criminal justice reform, she often speaks of her brother Walter, who has a drug addiction and was recently released from prison. He suffers from mental health issues that went undiagnosed because her family lacked health insurance, she says.
Abrams’ debt became an issue during the primary and has already resurfaced as a Republican general-election strategy. She owes the IRS more than $50,000 in deferred payments and holds more than $170,000 in credit card and student loan debt.
Abrams says Georgia families can relate to her circumstance. Along with her college debt, she racked up bills supporting her parents, who are both battling illnesses, caring for her grandmother, and raising her brother Walter’s daughter.
During her post-election speech Tuesday, Abrams called on her supporters to “register every last person,” talk to Georgians “from all walks of life” and “hit the phones, the doors and the streets.” She wants to reach out to those “who do not believe their voices matter.”