Black women key in Georgia bid for governor
ATLANTA — As soon as Stacey Abrams announced she was running for governor, Marlene Taylor-Crawford knew she was going to give the Kirkwood Democrat her vote.
The president of the Gwinnett County nonprofit the United Ebony Society, TaylorCrawford sings the praises of the former House Democratic leader to anyone she comes across.
Many black women like Taylor-Crawford are uniting behind Abrams, hoping to help make her the country’s first black woman to serve as a governor.
“We’ve shown that we’re a voting bloc that votes very consistently,” Taylor-Crawford said. “And we’re consistent in encouraging other people to vote.”
After watching black women in Alabama pool their voting power to successfully block a controversial Republican candidate endorsed by the president from becoming that state’s next U.S. senator and sending a Democrat to the chamber for the first time in 25 years, many black women in Georgia have set their sights on getting Abrams to the Governor’s Mansion.
Not all black women are lining up behind Abrams. Vivian Childs, a minister from Warner Robbins, is backing Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp.
“Why would you change things when they’re working? And Georgia is working right now,” said Childs, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.S. House in 2014. “At what point do we stop telling people to just vote based on how someone looks instead of what’s going to make everyone in the community better off ?”
Abrams’ campaign has said she isn’t expecting all black women to vote for her just because she is from the same demographic group. She’s unveiled detailed plans to address health care access and education, issues that many black women said are extremely important to them.
And while black women typically vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates, their support is something Abrams said she is not taking for granted.
“We are leveraging the enthusiasm and support of the African-American women’s community to motivate and galvanize the communities that they touch — and that means every community in the state of Georgia,” Abrams told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Paula Benton, a Stone Mountain resident who works in sales at a department store, said she is glad that part of Abrams’ strategy involves actively reaching out to black women.
“It’s time black women started getting the recognition they’re getting,” she said. “We’ve always been the backbone of everything.”
For the past several elections, black women have been a major voting bloc for Democrats in Georgia and nationwide.
In 2012, black women voted at a higher rate nationally than any other demographic group overall.
The same was true in Georgia, where black women turned out at a slightly higher rate than white women — 77 percent to 76 percent. Overall, turnout in Georgia in 2012 was 72 percent.
In 2014, a CNN exit poll found that 89 percent of black women who voted cast their ballot in the governor’s race for Democrat Jason Carter, who lost to Gov. Nathan Deal.
“We are seeing that black women may be accounting for the gender gap that gives Democrats the edge in the women’s vote,” University of Georgia political science professor Audrey A. Haynes said. “White women are splitting a bit more evenly across Democratic and Republican candidates.”
According to a recent AJC/Channel 2 Action News poll, 49 percent of female voters said they plan to support Abrams and 38 percent back Kemp. The rest were undecided or planned to vote for the Libertarian candidate.
In Alabama last year, exit polls showed that 98 percent of the black women who cast ballots in the special U.S. Senate election supported Democrat Doug Jones after his campaign invested time and energy in reaching the black community.