Abrams tells Oprah she wants to protect Georgia from Kemp and Clarence Thomas

During a virtual campaign event with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday, Democrat Stacey Abrams took aim at her Republican opponent for governor and a U.S. Supreme Court justice when asked what’s at stake in this year’s election.

“I call it Stacey Abrams versus Clarence Thomas,” Abrams said, describing the conservative justice’s desire to overturn federal protections — including the Voting Rights Act, the right to access contraception and a ruling allowing same-sex couples to marry — much in the same manner that the court struck down the national right to have an abortion by leaving the decisions to individual states.

That means, Abrams argued, that state governors would then play a central role in determining whether to maintain protections on all of those issues to their citizens.

“Brian Kemp has proven that he doesn’t care and he won’t help,” said Abrams, the former Georgia House Minority Leader, noting that what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, LGBTQ access to public accommodations and same-sex marriage would be in peril under Kemp.

After a narrow 2018 gubernatorial loss to Kemp, Abrams told Winfrey she was seeking redemption this year so that “every voter in Georgia is heard.”

“If you believe in democracy, there’s the Moore decision,” Abrams said in reference to the Moore v. Harper case currently before the Supreme Court, “which is going to say that governors and legislators alone have the authority to determine Electoral College election laws, meaning that you don’t have to commit treason like Donald Trump tried to. All you have to do is have a governor who changes the law.”

More than half a million Georgians have cast their ballots in the midterm elections through four days of early voting, according to Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s top election official, crushing the previous four-day record for votes cast in a midterm election that was set in 2018 and keeping pace with the historic 2020 turnout in the presidential election.

The high early voting numbers could be a positive sign for Democrats, who historically fare better than Republicans with early voter turnout. Abrams’s efforts to increase voter turnout are widely credited with helping to put President Biden and two Democratic senators over the top in 2020, turning Georgia from a red state into one with a more purple hue. But Abrams was clear-eyed Thursday about the direction the state will head in if she once again fails to defeat Kemp.

“If we don’t elect me, we won’t have health care for half a million Georgians, our children will continue to go to underfunded schools … we will have divisive laws that say you have to lie to your children about their history, members of LGBTQ will not have protection, no access to affordable housing and he has already shown that he will attack our freedoms, especially if you’re a woman,” Abrams said.

Four years ago Oprah campaigned with Abrams, going door-to-door to encourage Georgians to get out and vote. This time, with both women wearing purple tops to signify Georgia’s changing electorate, Winfrey said, “We have unfinished business.”

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Cover thumbnail: Stacey Abrams, One Georgia