STACEY ABRAMS’S CAMPAIGN MEANS DEMOCRACY ON THE LINE
It’s not exactly a surprise that Stacey Abrams has announced she’ll be running for governor of Georgia in 2022, but given how things usually go in midterm election years — the president’s party is almost always at a disadvantage — Abrams faces a tall task after losing the governor’s race narrowly in 2018.
One thing her entry guarantees, however, is that Georgia will be the center of the political universe next year.
Nearly all of the conflicts that make our politics so intense and disturbing will play out there. In fact, it’s hard to recall a time when so much of national importance was going on in one state in one election.
To begin with, the Republican primary races will test Donald Trump’s power to dictate who is on his party’s ballot. For instance, Gov. Brian Kemp may be challenged by former senator David Perdue, an empty suit who would be little more than a vessel for Trump to take revenge on Kemp for not stealing the Georgia 2020 election for him.
Trump has encouraged Perdue to run, and takes any opportunity to blast Kemp for not being true to the lost cause of the 2020 election. Sean Hannity has used his Fox News show to urge Kemp to drop out of the race.
Also running for reelection is Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a conservative Republican who became famous for refusing to steal the election after Trump pressured him on Jan. 2nd to “find 11,780 votes” to make Trump the winner.
Trump has endorsed far-right Rep. Jody Hice, who is running against Raffensperger on what is essentially a Big Lie platform. So the Republican primaries will be a referendum on the idea that all Democratic election wins are fraudulent by definition, and worse, that future elections must be manipulated to guarantee Republican victory.
It isn’t as though Kemp (or even Raffensperger) is a squish when it comes to voter suppression. The governor signed a draconian suppression law earlier this year, and Republicans in the state are moving toward seizing control of local election boards.
If Kemp and Raffensperger lose in their primaries, they’ll be replaced by Big Lie-touting Trumpists. If they win, they’ll inevitably campaign by touting their own commitment to voter suppression in order to keep Trumpist GOP base voters energized. That’s particularly true given the presence of Abrams, who arouses fear and hatred from Republicans and will run a campaign based on registering and mobilizing large numbers of voters.
So what we’ll see is a Democratic mobilization drive greeted at every step by bogus Republican charges of fraud, tinged with race-baiting.
Then there’s the Senate campaign, in which Sen. Raphael Warnock will have to defend the seat he won in a January runoff of a special election. The likely Republican nominee is Herschel Walker, who has no political experience but is a personal friend of Trump. Control of the Senate could rest on that race.
Taken together, those two races added up to the most expensive congressional election in history, with half a billion dollars spent by the candidates and outside groups. That’s going to be nothing compared to the river of cash that will flood into Georgia in 2022.
One reason Biden won Georgia, and Warnock and Ossoff won their races, is that Abrams’ 2018 campaign built a grassroots infrastructure Democrats tapped into two years later. So here’s what’s at play in Georgia next year: Trump’s hold on the GOP, Republican voter suppression and election manipulation. Democratic multiracial coalition building vs. Republican White backlash. Control of the U.S. Senate. The 2024 presidential election.
There will be many important races around the country in 2022. But we may never have seen anything like what will happen in Georgia.