To say that Stacey Abrams, former House minority leader in the Georgia legislature, deserved the governor’s seat would be an understatement. She could have given up her fight for office in the historically red state four years ago when she first lost to Gov. Brian Kemp amid allegations of vote suppression in 2018. Abrams lost by fewer than 55,000 votes then, and she didn’t give up. She worked with the New Georgia Project nonprofit to register an estimated 800,000 new voters, mainly people of color and young people. Fast forward two years and the state of Georgia would elect a Democrat as president for the first time since Bill Clinton in 1992. Georgia voters also elected Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
It’s difficult not to believe Abrams played some role in that, especially when observing the GOP response: a bill of voting restrictions rushed through the legislature and rubber-stamped by Kemp.
Still, Abrams put up a formidable fight in her race to turn the red state blue at the highest level. With 96.86% of precincts reporting, she secured 45.85% of the vote against Kemp in this year's gubernatorial race. A 1.8 million Georgians voted for her. Though she secured 298,400 fewer votes than Kemp's 2.1 million.
Abrams knew late Tuesday night that she had to concede.
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“I am doing what is clearly the responsible thing,” she said. “I am suspending my campaign for governor.”
She paused her speech to say “I love you too” to a supporter who screamed the words from the audience.
“I may no longer be seeking the office of governor, but I will never stop doing everything in my power to ensure the people of Georgia have a voice,” Abrams added.
For years, she has done the kind of work to prove she means exactly what she says.
RELATED STORY: Stacey Abrams makes Brian Kemp eat every one of his horrible policy decisions in final debate
She was the first woman to lead either party in the Georgia General Assembly and the first Black person to lead the state’s House of Representatives, according to her bio.
Journalist Jelani Cobb wrote for The New Yorker in 2019, when Abrams had only recently gained national notoriety, that the "tax attorney, romance novelist, and former state representative, has been working on electoral reform—particularly on voter registration—in Georgia for some fifteen years."
Cobb described her as “a symbol of the new Georgia,” with a population that has been majority-white historically but is expected to be "majority-minority" by 2033.
For many, Abrams is still that symbol of what Georgia could become. Perhaps that’s why her defeat delivered such a blow.
She represents the hope that Georgians will one day consider the needs of its Black residents, its homeless residents, and its child-bearers as something other than tangential. Tuesday’s concession was yet another reminder that day isn’t today.
“It’s a real loss for the immediate future of the South where new leadership is so needed,” Sherrilyn Ifill, an attorney and former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, wrote of Abrams’ defeat and of that of other Black candidates.
Knowing far too well the tendencies of liberal writers, Ifill also tried to get ahead of efforts to cast away the South. She wrote that before “you say any snarky things about writing off the south, don’t.”
“And please remember that a majority of Black people in this country still live in the South, many struggling under the worst state leadership,” Ifill penned.
Other Twitter users worked to get ahead of sure-to-come efforts to lay Abrams’ loss at the feet of Black voters.
Researcher and professor Uju Anya tweeted: "They will tell you Stacey Abrams lost, because Black men didn’t vote for her. It’s not true. She lost, because white people didn’t vote for her. Do not fall for the narrative that blames Black people for white racism and misogynoir."
Journalist Jemele Hill—who faced the GOP’s wrath for calling former President Donald Trump the white supremacist he is—highlighted a question that should be at the heart of public discussion following Abrams’ defeat. That question is “why white people in Georgia couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Stacey Abrams.”
That is the only news analysis I want to see, the only talking point worth discussing where Abrams is concerned. White women preferred to support a man who enacted legislation to criminalize lifesaving medical care, criminalize miscarriages, and criminalize abortion. They voted against a Black woman who vehemently fought to protect their own access to lifesaving reproductive health care. Why?
It’s hardly a mystery. Race trumps everything else in this country. It always has. I can only hope that will change.
