On Tuesday night in Georgia, Democrat Stacey Abrams made American history when she became the first black woman to be nominated for governor by a major political party. There were many doubts about her ability to win—due to her race and gender and because of a campaign strategy which specifically targeted a progressive coalition of Democratic voters, rather than moderate Republicans.
Yet Abrams easily defeated her opponent, Stacey Evans, by a whopping 53 percentage points. Now she moves on to the general election, where she will face a yet-to-be determined Republican candidate—either Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle or Secretary of State Brian Kemp who proceed to a runoff race on July 24. There is no doubt that the general election will be tough for a Democrat to win. And what Democrats do in this moment is not only important for Georgia but will also determine the future of the party.
We’ve heard it said time and time again that black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party. But as Eugene Scott of The Washington Post writes, can black women candidates finally move from being the supportive base of the party into becoming its leaders?
But the question remains: Will the group that produces voters reliably for the Democratic Party now produce some of the newest faces leading it?
This is the million dollar question. But its not one for black women to answer alone. Black women have been stepping up as candidates for elected office in record numbers. But they routinely face barriers in terms of support from Democratic Party leadership and funding. There is often quite a bit of support from Democrats when black women run in majority-black or majority-minority districts. But there are persistent questions about viability when a black woman runs for office state- or nationwide. This is compounded for Abrams as a black woman running for office in Georgia—a Southern and deeply red state. Even as she secured a historic victory, people continue to say, “Yeah, that’s nice, but she can’t win the state.”
Steve Phillips, national political leader and founder of Democracy in Color, doesn’t agree. In The Nation, he writes that Abrams’s win is revolutionary in terms of its strategy which relies on mathematical data and demographic trends. But this political approach is only effective if Democrats believe in the possibility of winning by doing something different.
Despite the proven success of the Obama model, conventional wisdom still maintains that Democrats can win larger shares of the white vote if they just increase their empathy for the anxieties of moderate white voters while decreasing the volume at which they champion racial justice. [...]
Georgia has historically been a conservative state because there were always too few people of color, and too few progressive whites, to sway statewide elections. That is no longer the case. In the 30 years since Democrats gathered in Atlanta for its national convention, the state’s population has grown increasingly racially diverse to the point where people of color are nearly a majority (47 percent) of the state’s population and 40 percent of all eligible voters.
People continue to dismiss Georgia as stuck in the past. Instead, part of the Democratic Party is. We need to abandon the notion that the old way of doing things, especially in the age of Trump, is the only path to victory. It is not. Abrams figured that out and, in a state where many think it can’t be done, it worked well for her. She won in all the state’s counties, except for six, which are diverse and urban, suburban and rural. And she did so by vocally supporting progressive causes and focusing on people of color and progressive whites. Now, of course, this was a primary and not the general. And that’s what naysayers will focus on. But it doesn’t mean she cannot do it again. She targeted voters in places where they don’t normally vote. She increased their turnout. This could be an effective strategy moving forward. In 2014, when Jason Carter ran for governor in Georgia, 1.5 million people of color who were eligible to vote, didn’t. This is the opportunity Abrams is seeking to take advantage of. As Jason Johnson of The Root writes about the campaign:
“We needed to show that we can turn out low-propensity voters” said a local activist who works in voter turnout. “We targeted counties and precincts that usually had 2 or 3 percent African-American turnout, and we jumped it up to 10 or 12 percent. That’s good news and donors need to hear our efforts are working.”
This is exactly why Abrams can’t do it alone. If she’s going to continue with her strategy, she needs the funding to do it. This is where Democrats need to put their money where their rhetoric is. The party is finally acknowledging the importance of black women—as voters and organizers. But will the party show love and invest in a black woman who has the chance to be a governor in the South? Here’s what Phillips of Democracy in Color has to say:
It will cost about $10 million to mobilize the 230,000 previously-uninspired voters of color required to close the gap in Georgia. The question and the challenge for the progressive movement is will they put their money where their mouth is? Progressives nationally moved upwards of $40 million to Elizabeth Warren’s 2012 Senate campaign and Wendy Davis’s Texas gubernatorial bid in 2014. Will there be similar enthusiasm and support for Abrams? If so, we can make history and fulfill the promise of what Georgia native Martin Luther King, Jr. predicted when he said, “Give us the ballot, and we will transform the South.”
That 230,000 is the number that Democrats in Georgia routinely lose by. The math says it can be obtained by concentrating on people of color, progressive whites and voters who are turned off by the ugly, divisive rhetoric of Republicans. But that GOTV effort requires big bucks. It also requires the same kind of money and energy and confidence that progressives channeled into Jon Ossoff’s race—even though he didn’t win. We routinely channel money and energy into white candidates, even when they are long shots. We need to do the same for Stacey Abrams.
This is another Obama moment for our party. How many Democrats thought it was impossible for a black man to win the nomination for the presidency? How many of us thought he’d never get elected? Since Abrams represents the diversity which is indicative of Georgia’s future and America’s, let’s use our imaginations and consider her candidacy with the same sense of viability we do for white candidates, especially white men. What if we allowed ourselves to think differently and see a progressive America and Georgia where a black woman can lead?
This is a watershed moment for the Democratic Party. Not only do we have a chance to win in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat for governor in 20 years, we have a chance to move black women from support roles into leadership. If we can’t support this race like we have so many others, it will send a dangerous message that we trust black women just enough to get others elected but we won’t trust them to lead. Black women are watching and waiting for the Democratic Party to do the right thing here. And if the party won’t do it, you can rest assured that black women will get out there and do it themselves.
Please donate $3 today to help elect Stacey Abrams as Georgia’s first black woman governor and turn the state blue!