Stacey Abrams is a 47-year-old attorney who launched her political
career as a Democrat in 2006 when she was elected to the Georgia House
of Representatives, where she held a seat until August 2017. Since
losing a 2018 gubernatorial bid in Georgia, she has emerged as a leading
promoter of fellow Democrats Raphael Warnock
and Jon Ossoff, who seek to win the upcoming Georgia runoff elections
that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. On Monday,
Abrams boasted to CBS This Morning
that 1.2 million Georgians – including 85,000 who did not vote in the
November elections six weeks ago -- have already requested absentee
ballots for the runoffs. Added Abrams: “They are disproportionately
voters between the ages of 18 and 29 and disproportionately people of
color,” demographics that tend to heavily favor Democrats.
In recent weeks, Abrams also collaborated with a group of Hollywood
entertainers to organize “Rock the Runoff,” a “get-out-the-vote” online
concert/fundraiser in support of Warnock and Ossoff. Among the
performers who participated in this December 3rd concert
were John Legend, Common, Earthgang, and the Indigo Girls. During the
concert, Abrams told viewers that her goal was to use the runoff
elections to “change America.”
Let us take a closer look at exactly who Stacey Abrams is.
Voter-Registration Corruption
In 2013, Abrams co-founded the New Georgia Project (NGP), a partisan
voter-registration organization designed to register hundreds of
thousands of new Democrat voters across the state. From 2017 through
February 21, 2020, Raphael Warnock served as NGP's Chief Executive Officer. According to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, NGP illegally “sent
voter registration applications to New York City” in 2020. “Voting in
Georgia when you are not a resident of Georgia is a felony,” said
Raffensperger.
Describing Illegal Aliens as Key Participants in a “Blue Wave”
In 2018, Abrams ran against Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp
in Georgia’s gubernatorial race. In October of that year, she predicted
that the upcoming midterm elections would see a “blue wave” of Democrat
victories sweep across the country, and that “undocumented” aliens
would be key contributors to it. “The thing of it is,” said Abrams, “the
blue wave is African American. It’s white, it’s Latino, it’s
Asian-Pacific Islander, it is disabled, it is differently-abled, it is
LGBTQ, it is law enforcement, it is veterans. It is made up of those
who’ve been told that they are not worthy of being here. It is comprised
of those who are documented and undocumented.”
Opposing Safeguards for Election Integrity
Also in October 2018, Abrams derided Brian Kemp’s use of an “exact match”
system that had placed more than 50,000 Georgia voter registrations on
hold because of discrepancies between different sets of government
records, or because they were flagged as registrations of potential
non-citizens. She charged that “the exact match system has a disproportionate
effect on people of color and women,” causing many of them to be
“disenfranchised.” In short, Abrams believes that efforts to accurately
verify the identity of voters, are racist measures designed to prevent
African Americans from participating in political elections.
Disparaging Free-Market Capitalism
At an October 2018 town hall, Abrams said she was “sick and tired
of hearing about the free market being the solution” to problems in the
health care system, adding: “I’ve never seen the free market write a
prescription in rural Georgia. I’ve never seen the free market show up
to give someone Metformin, so they can have a little control over their
diabetes before it turns into an amputation of their foot. I’ve never
seen the free market say 'I’m going to replace that stent in your heart
next door and not make you go 200 miles to get it done.' The problem
with the free market is the free market needs to make a profit, and
there is no profit in doing the right thing.”
Opposing the Second Amendment
A key focus of Abrams' 2018 campaign was the Second Amendment and gun-ownership rights.
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Two years earlier, Abrams had sponsored HB 731,
legislation that designated certain commonly owned semiautomatic
firearms – such as AR-15s, AK-47s, Ruger Mini 14s, and .50 caliber
rifles – as contraband. The bill required the Georgia Bureau of
Investigation to seize those weapons from their owners, and sought to
bar the sale or use of “high capacity” magazines.
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In October 2018 the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Abrams, who has described
AR-15 rifles as “weapons of mass destruction,” was calling for
“universal background checks for private sales of firearms, a ban of
high-powered assault rifles, and a repeal of campus gun legislation”
that allowed concealed-permit holders to be armed on college campuses.
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Abrams' 2018 campaign webpage said that she also planned
to enact gun-confiscation orders, commonly referred to as “red flag
laws,” which allow judges to authorize police to enter a gun owner’s
home and take his or her firearms.
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During a November 4, 2018 appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Abrams called
for more restrictions on “semiautomatic weapons” in general,
acknowledging that one possible result of her gun-control policies could
be that “people would turn their guns in.” She also spoke about the possibility of the government enacting mandatory “buybacks” of certain firearms.
Refusing to Admit Defeat in Her Failed 2018 Gubernatorial Campaign
Abrams lost the November 2018 gubernatorial election by approximately 50,000 votes, but she disputed the result. In her speech
announcing the end of her campaign, she also announced the creation of
Fair Fight Georgia, a voting-rights nonprofit organization that sued the
Georgia Secretary of State and the Georgia State Election Board in
federal court for “the gross mismanagement of this election.”
On November 18, 2018 on CNN’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper asked Abrams if she believed that Brian Kemp was the “legitimate” Governor-elect of Georgia. She replied evasively:
“The law, as it stands, says that he received an adequate number of
votes to become the governor of Georgia, and I acknowledge the law as it
stands. I am a lawyer by training and I have taken the Constitutional
oath to uphold the law.” When Tapper reiterated his question, Abrams
answered: “He is the person who won the adequate number of votes to
become the governor.”
Support for Permitting Non-Citizens to Vote
In a January 2019 interview on PBS’s Firing Line,
host Margaret Hoover asked Abrams: “What is your view about some
municipalities, like San Francisco, who have decided that it’s okay for
some non-citizens to vote in local elections?” Abrams replied: “I think …
the granularity of what cities decide is so specific, as to, I think,
allow for people to be participants in the process without it somehow
undermining our larger democratic ethic that says that you should be a
citizen to be a part of the conversation.” Hoover then asked: “So, in
some cases, you would be supportive of non-citizens voting?” Abrams
answered: “I wouldn’t be — I wouldn’t oppose it.”
Supporting Reparations for Blacks & Native Americans
In April 2019, Abrams said that she saw a “credible [political]
path” to the implementation of reparations for African Americans and
Native Americans, “the groups that by law had been stripped of their
autonomy and their participation in our society.” “I think that
reparations make sense,” she added.
“[W]e have to acknowledge that in the United States of America it
wasn’t simply that we didn’t like a certain group, we’ve built — no. Not
we, they. The government built systems designed to exclude and to
diminish the capacity of communities to participate in their own
economic survival.”
Praising "Identity Politics"
During a May 2019 Ideas Conference at the Center for American Progress,
Abrams criticized Democrat presidential hopeful and South Bend, Indiana
Mayor Pete Buttigieg, for having cited identity politics as a chief
cause of social conflict. Said Abrams:
“The notion of identity politics has been peddled for the past 10 years
and it’s been used as a dog whistle to say we shouldn’t pay too much
attention to the voices coming into progress. I would argue that
identity politics is exactly who we are and exactly how we won. When I
hear Democratic candidates, progressive candidates, American candidates
decrying the identity of their voters, I’m deeply worried for our
democracy.”
Position on Lowering the Legal Voting Age to 16
In May 2019, Abrams told Scholastic News that
the legal voting age should be lowered to 16 for school board
elections, and perhaps for federal elections as well: “I think we should
test it out for local elections. I do believe we need to investigate
lowering the voting age for federal elections, but I’m not convinced
yet. I remember being 16. I remember how involved and engaged I was.
While there certainly is a difference between being 16 and 18, I don’t
know that the difference is wide enough to say that you should not be
able to participate in federal elections, so I’m willing to be
convinced.”
Advocating the Abolition of the Electoral College
In August 2019, MSNBC host Chris Hayes asked Abrams if she was in favor of doing away with the Electoral College. She responded,
“Absolutely. The Electoral College was not designed to make certain
that people in small states weren’t subject to the tyranny of urban
areas. That wasn’t the conversation at the time. It was because those in
power did not believe that working people had the intellectual capacity
to directly elect the leader of the free world. We have long passed
that time, and it’s time for direct election and popular vote.”
Supporting Vote-by-Mail and Ballot Harvesting
During an April 1, 2020 appearance on MSNBC Live, Abrams said
that in light of the health risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic,
all voters should be permitted and encouraged to vote by mail in the
2020 presidential election: “Vote by mail is the safest way to vote. And
right now, I would say almost every state has the capacity to vote by
mail. The challenge is that in a lot of states you have to have an
excuse.” In an April 21 interview, Abrams told MSNBC’s Morning Joe
that President Donald Trump’s concern about possible fraud connected to
mail-in voting was unfounded: “Voter fraud is, by and large, a myth.”
In a podcast interview two days later with CNN analyst David Axelrod,” Abrams, asserting that President Trump was “illegitimate” and “should not hold office,” accused Mr.
Trump of being “afraid” of vote-by-mail “despite the fact that there is
no evidence of fraud” associated with it. In yet another interview,
Abrams said that “voter fraud is nearly mythological,” adding that “you are more likely to be struck by lightning than for there to be an incident of voting fraud.”
Abrams also advocates the
use of ballot harvesting, a process that involves the gathering and
submitting of completed absentee or mail-in voter ballots by third-party
individuals, as opposed to requiring voters themselves to submit their
ballots directly to official collection sites.
Accusing a White Atlanta Police Officer of "Murder"
In June 2020, Abrams was deeply angered by a police shooting in Atlanta that killed Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man who had a long history of criminal violence dating back 13 years. Shortly after 10:40 PM on June 12, Atlanta officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan responded to a complaint stating that Brooks was asleep in a car which was blocking a Wendy’s restaurant drive-through lane. They administered a
sobriety test to Brooks and found him to have an alcohol level higher
than the legal limit. When the officers tried to arrest him, Brooks
instigated a violent fight
during which he wrestled Brosnan’s taser away from him, fought his way
free, punched Rolfe, and then began to flee on foot. Officer Rolfe at
that moment fired his taser at Brooks, but it failed to bring him down.
Rolfe then proceeded to chase Brooks, who at one point turned and fired
the stolen taser in the officer’s general direction. Rolfe drew his
handgun and shot Brooks twice in the back as the suspect turned to run.
Brooks was then rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died after
undergoing surgery.
After the incident, Abrams said:
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“This is a man who had been frisked,
so they knew he did not possess a deadly weapon,” They knew that he was
impaired because he had parked in that [Wendy's] driveway, and they
knew when he ran away that he did not pose a danger that was a deadly
force incentive.”
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“The decision
to shoot him in the back was one made out of maybe impatience or
frustration or panic, but it was not one that justifies deadly force. It
was murder.”
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“A murder because a man made a mistake,
not a mistake that would have cost the police officer his life but a
mistake that was caused out of some form of dehumanization of Rayshard
Brooks.”
Denouncing Senator Tom Cotton's Claim That Slavery Was a "Necessary Evil"
In June 2020 as well, Abrams denounced Republican Senator Tom
Cotton's recent assertion that slavery was, “the Founding Fathers said,…
the necessary evil upon which the union was built.” Cotton's point was that the Southern states would never have agreed
to join the Union if the institution of slavery were to have been
abolished outright. But Abrams, in an elaborate display of
virtue-signaling and feigned outrage, said:
“There is no such thing as a necessary evil. Evil is evil, and slavery
is one of the ultimate evils. If Tom Cotton is sincere in his desire to
understand history then he should be celebrating the 1619 Project. He should be celebrating The Voting Rights Act renewal. He should be celebrating Black Lives Matter
because the continuity of evil in our country has led us to this
moment. We can only extinguish evil by acknowledging that it exists and
doing everything in our power to defeat it, not to celebrate it, not to
excuse it, and certainly not to use it as a polemic way to justify the
racism that runs through the party that is lifting up Tom Cotton.”
So, let us review: Stacey Abrams opposes measures designed to ensure
the integrity of our political elections. She views free-market
capitalism as an inherently oppressive and unjust economic system. She
opposes the Second Amendment. She believes that U.S. residents should be
permitted to vote regardless of their citizenship status or legal
status. She believes that we should consider allowing 16-year-olds to
vote. She favors the abolition of the Electoral College. She supports
widespread vote-by-mail and ballot-harvesting schemes, which are
notorious for facilitating election fraud. And, detecting racism
wherever she casts her gaze, she endorses the spirit of racial grievance
and “identity politics” that underlies the movement for reparations.
In short, Stacey Abrams is a Democrat.
