Stacey Abrams Helped Register 800,000 New Georgia Voters—And We're In Awe

From Oprah Magazine

• Former House of Representatives Minority Leader Stacey Abrams has earned wide praise for her successful voter rights efforts in Georgia, following her 2018 midterm governor race.

• In the past two years, the Fair Fight founder has worked to register 800,000 new Georgia voters through her two anti voter-suppression groups.

• Following Joe Biden's surge in Georgia, the Our Time Is Now author tweeted, "my heart is full." Here's what else to know about the lawyer, political leader, and author of novels and political books.

In 2018, just 55,000 votes prevented Stacey Abrams from becoming the first Black woman governor of Georgia. When the election narrowly went to then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, it reignited debate about how a long history of voter suppression in the state may have shaped the outcome. Given Abrams' proven organizing skills and her firsthand knowledge of the fact that every single vote counts, it should come as no surprise that the politician, lawyer, author, and organizer managed to help register at least 800,000 new voters in Georgia for the 2020 election. But that doesn't make the results of her years-long effort any less impressive.

As ballots in the state were still being counted in the days following November 3, Democratic voters, famous fans like Mark Ruffalo, and political pundits alike knew who to thank for candidate Joe Biden's surge and two runoff Senate elections: Stacey Abrams. The organizer graciously thanked those who "deserve credit for 10yrs to new Georgia" on Twitter on November 6, including Georgia Rep. and civil rights leader John Lewis, who died in July 2020. "My heart is full," she wrote.

"Public service has been calling for me as long as I can remember. Whether in elected office or as an active citizen, I believe we are required to find solutions to our most intractable problems, and to use our skills to expand opportunity for all," Abrams said in an April 2019 video announcing that she would not run for Senate.

She added then, "But let's be clear, I will do everything in my power to ensure Georgia elects a Democrat to the United States Senate in 2020." Through years of hard work through Fair Fight, the voter protection and education organization Abrams founded in 2018, and her previous registration effort the New Georgia Project, she's aimed to do just that.

Here are 13 things to know about the woman Oprah previously hailed as a "deemed a "changemaker" back in 2018—and has emerged as one of the most inspiring figures of the 2020 election.

Abrams called national attention to voter suppression after her 2018 campaign for governor.

In November 2016, Abrams identified Kemp as the winner of the midterm elections race following a 10-day period during which she refused to concede as she said ballots were yet to be counted.

“Let’s be clear: This is not a speech of concession," she said, according to the Associated Press. “Because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.”

Following Election Day 2018, Abrams first refused to concede to Kemp, demanding that all votes be counted before she do so. "I'm here tonight to tell you votes remain to be counted. There's voices that are waiting to be heard," she told supporters in Atlanta, according to CNN.

In a statement to CNN, Abrams's campaign said three of the state's largest counties were waiting on a portion of votes, and that four additional large counties "have reported exactly 0 votes by mail. The statement said her team expected 77,000 additional ballots, which includes absentee ballots.

"These counties also represent heavily-Democratic leaning constituencies, and the majority of those votes are anticipated to be for Stacey Abrams," the statement read.

She's created two successful voter drive organizations.

Abrams would found Fair Fight the same year as her gubernatorial campaign loss, which aims to "promote fair elections in Georgia and around the country, encourage voter participation in elections, and educate voters about elections and their voting rights."
But she'd already been working to register voters since 2014 through her New Georgia Project.

"New Georgia Project is part of a consortium of organizations that have been working hard to register voters of color and voters who are unlikely voters," Abrams told NPR in November. "We also have had easier voting processes made possible because of the Motor Voter Act being really fully implemented in the state of Georgia. And so 800,000 new voters are an incredible number, but the credit should be shared."

She writes romance novels and thrillers.

Abrams has been publishing books in the romance genre in the early 2000s (even political dynamos need a creative outlet). She writes under the pen name Selena Montgomery, and you can find her books on Amazon.

Those titles are in addition to Abrams' political nonfiction books, 2020's Our Time Is Now, and 2019's Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change

The voter suppression documentary All In centeres around Abrams.

Directors Liz Garbus (Lost Girls, I'll Be Gone in the Dark) and Lisa Cortés's film All In: The Fight for Democracy puts a spotlight on Stacey Abrams' experience running for governor. Specifically, the voter suppression obstacles that stood in both Abrams' and voters' way—largely, Black voters. The doc features interviews with Abrams herself, as well as opinions from local and national voting rights experts, providing a look at Abrams and her team's Fair Fight efforts through early 2020.

You can watch All In on Amazon Prime now.

She was born in Wisconsin, but grew up in both Mississippi and Georgia.

Abrams was born on December 9, 1973 in Madison, Wisconsin. However, she was raised in Gulfport, Mississippi, and stayed there through middle school. She and her family later moved to Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated as the first Black valedictorian from Avondale High School in DeKalb County, Georgia.

"Mississippi had perfected soul-crushing poverty wrapped in gentility," she writes in her upcoming memoir, Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change, which will be released on November 9.

She has five siblings, and her parents are Methodist ministers.

Abrams is the second-oldest of six children, and she has three sisters and two brothers. Her oldest sister, Dr. Andrea Abrams, is an author and professor at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Leslie Abrams also works in politics as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, and Leslie was also a former Assistant United States Attorney appointed by President Barack Obama.

Dr. Jeanine Abrams is an evolutionary biologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of her brothers, Richard Abrams, is a social worker. In addition, Abrams has been vocal about her brother, Walter Abrams, and his struggles with addiction and bipolar disorder.

Abrams's parents, Robert and Carolyn Abrams, became Methodist ministers when they moved the family to Atlanta. There, they studied divinity at Emory University and eventually became United Methodist ministers.

She was part of a Girl Scouts troop.

In addition to reading plenty and watching a lot of PBS as a child, Abrams was picked to represent her native state of Mississippi at a Girl Scouts national conference in Arizona in the '80s. However, that decision by her troop leaders was met with controversy, as Abrams has said that some folks were unhappy about a Black girl "being selected." Those same people tried to thwart her plans of attending the conference by changing her flight reservation. But in typical Abrams fashion, she seized the moment and flew by herself.

"They thought if they left me behind, I’d stay gone," she said during a fundraiser held in February. "There are gonna be a lot of people who try to stop you from getting on that plane. There are a lot of people organizing themselves to make sure I land at the wrong destination. There are folks who don’t think it’s time for a Black woman to be governor of any state, let alone a state in the Deep South. But there’s no wrong time for a Black woman to be in charge."

Her parents raised her on three mantras, which shaped her politics today.

According to Abrams’s website, she and her siblings were raised on these three principles: go to school, go to church, and take care of each other. She followed all three, but the doctrine encouraging her to take care of others spilled into her career as a government official. She's been adamantly working to look after the underserved, underrepresented, and vulnerable populations of Georgia.

"[My parents'] commitment to assuring that we served people other than ourselves ran pretty deep," Abrams told South Fulton Lifestyle magazine. "We may have found ourselves volunteering at a homeless shelter or working at Vacation Bible School to teach people to read. Our privilege was that we had two parents who loved us, and that privilege meant that we had an obligation to serve."

She attended a historically Black college and university (HBCU) as well as an Ivy League school.

After graduating high school, Abrams attended Spelman College, a private HBCU for women that boasts legendary graduates such as The Color Purple author Alice Walker, activist Bernice King, actress LaTanya Richardson, and poet Pearl Cleage. While pursuing her undergraduate degree, she was elected student president by her peers. She graduated magna cum laude in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies.

She then earned a Master of Public Affairs in 1998 from the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs. In 1999, she earned her law degree from Yale, where she would later use it as a tax attorney. More on that factoid later.

She worked as a research assistant for a Georgia mayor and as a political speechwriter.

Abrams's first significant political gig came in 1992, surrounding the Rodney King riots that ripped through the country. She ended up working as a research assistant in the youth services department for Atlanta's first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson. It was a job she earned simply by speaking out against social injustice and challenging Jackson. Previously, she served as a political speechwriter at the age 17, a job she scored after impressing a congressional campaign committee with edits she made while typing.

She's achieved major firsts.

Abrams was appointed Atlanta's Deputy City Attorney at just 29 years old. She also was the first woman to lead either party in the Georgia General Assembly in 2006, and she was the first Black person elected to lead in the Georgia House of Representatives in 2010.

She helped to pass a bipartisan transportation bill and fix the HOPE scholarship.

Per TIME, Abrams was instrumental in preventing a large tax increase from affecting Georgians. As House Minority Leader, she worked with current GOP Governor, Nathan Deal, on criminal justice reform. In addition, she worked with Republicans to pass the state's largest public transportation spending package. In 2011, she reached across the aisle again to co-write legislation to save the HOPE scholarship program from being cut.

"Republicans would bring me their bills and ask me to look at them," she told TIME in July 2018. "They didn’t always agree with me, but they knew they could trust me, and not every disagreement has to become a battle."

She's well-versed in tax laws.

Abrams knows her stuff when it comes to the complicated world of taxes. Her previous job was working as a tax attorney at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan law firm in Atlanta, where she focused on tax exemptions, healthcare, and public finance. She also started two small businesses: a water bottle company and a payment company, according to TIME.

She's dedicated to service, not just politics.

Even though she's received support from major celebrities such as Oprah, Common, Will Ferrell, Michael B. Jordan, John Legend, and Mark Ruffalo, Abrams isn't letting the optics of Hollywood endorsements and politics distract her from the work that's left.

During her 2018 campaign, Abrams said she planned to increase Georgia’s education budget, encourage more small business owners, and expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. In addition, she promised to prioritize state programs and focus on criminal justice reform. She said she wants to make sure people suffering from mental health disorders, like her brother Walter, have a chance to thrive.

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