Stacey Abrams, a Democrat from Georgia, campaigned openly to become Joe Biden's running mate. However, despite her being passed over, many fellow Democrats credit her with Biden's win in the state.
Who is Stacey Abrams?
The 46-year-old Abrams emerged from the November 3 election with a boosted profile and validation of her claim that the state of Georgia is a swing state. The current count in the state favors Democrat Joe Biden by 1,570 votes, according to The New York Times.
Abrams graduated from Yale Law School and barely lost in her bid to become governor in 2018. She is now the subject of preliminary talks about a role in a Biden administration. Her supporters on social media are promoting her for attorney general.
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Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and a close Biden ally, said in an MSNBC interview that they had a very strong ground game in the state of Georgia because of the leadership of Stacey Abrams.
Georgia is considered as one of the final states to complete ballot counting, keeping the presidential election outcome in limbo. Georgia had not been won by a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Abrams was born in Wisconsin and raised in Mississippi. She lost her campaign for Georgia governor to Republican Brian Kemp by fewer than 55,000 votes. Her candidacy shaped a remarkable upswing in Democratic support in the state that is traditionally Republican.
Abrams, at the time, refused to concede to Kemp, saying that concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true, or proper. She and many others blamed her loss on Kemp's purge of 1.4 million registered voters in his role as the Secretary of State of Georgia.
Many called it a conflict of interest that should have seen him recuse himself from that role in the middle of the election. Democrats have rallied to Abrams' cause, according to The Washington Post.
Fair Fight organization
After her defeat, Abrams formed the organization Fair Fight in 2019 to push her policy priorities. Her supporters credit her with contributing to at least an 800,000 people increase in registered voters in the state since 2016.
However, Abrams' candid ambition grated on fellow Democrats, and Joe Biden ultimately chose another black woman, Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California.
In an interview for Elle magazine back in April, Abrams made the case that she would be an excellent running mate. A key weakness for Abrams was that she has never won a statewide election, although she was a minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017.
President Trump then scoffed at Abrams' influence, saying that she could not win major endorsements. He said that the Democrats had President Obama, Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey, and all Kemp had was him, and Kemp won. He added that Abrams wants to give illegal aliens the right to vote.
For the past four years, the residents who get a driver's license in Georgia are automatically registered to vote, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Brennan Center for Justice released a study last year and showed a 94 percent increase in voter registration.
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