With Georgia Democratic Primary Win, Stacey Abrams Is One Step Closer to Becoming the First Black Woman Governor
Georgia Democrats handed Stacey Abrams a landmark win in Tuesday’s primary, propelling her to a shot at becoming America’s first black woman governor.
The contest between Abrams and Stacey Evans was bound to make history no matter who won: no woman has ever been the Democratic nominee for Georgia’s top job.
Right now, women run the state houses of Alabama, Iowa, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon and Rhode Island. There are currently no sitting black governors at all.
Abrams declared victory in a 9 p.m. Facebook post, saying her win belonged to “everyone who believed that a little Black girl who sometimes had to go without lights or running water – who grew up to become the first woman to lead in the Georgia General Assembly – could become the first woman gubernatorial nominee from either party in Georgia’s history.”
Georgia’s “Stacey vs. Stacey” showdown came in a midterm year that’s drawn a record number of female candidates, although many face steep challenges to ultimately winning office.
The high-profile race played out in a traditionally Republican southern state where voters must choose a successor to term-limited Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. Democrats are hoping to make inroads in the Peach State, where Donald Trump convincingly defeated Hillary Clinton by about 51 percent to 46 percent in the 2016 presidential election.
Abrams attracted endorsements from Clinton and other marquee Democrats in the leadup to her decisive primary win over Evans. Whether she can defeat the GOP nominee to break the next glass ceiling isn’t yet clear.
As put to Glamour Tuesday by University of Georgia associate professor of political science Audrey Haynes, Democrats in the South tend to run moderates who “can appeal to pragmatic voters who may straddle the two major political parties, or generally, appeal to more educated white Republican voters who are fiscal conservatives [and] law-and-order oriented, but not as invested in the culture war.”
That battle plan, Haynes said, has been in part based on who historically shows up at the polls in past midterm election cycles. “Republican voters consistently turn out; minority voters less so. But that may be changing, particularly when you have a candidate who is visibly identifiable as a member of a minority group,” she said. “If Abrams wins by turning out large numbers of minority voters across the state, that will be a game-changer. But there are questions about her appeal to that more moderate voter.”
Analysts have taken specific note of the role black women have played in recent elections. Their participation in the 2012 presidential vote outstripped that of other groups, and they overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 while white women split between Clinton and Trump. African-American women also had a significant role in the victory of Alabama Democrat Doug Jones in a widely watched 2017 special election for U.S. Senate.
A SurveyUSA poll conducted this month found that in a hypothetical November matchup for governor, Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle led Abrams 46 percent to 41 percent, with 14 percent of likely voters undecided.
Abrams ran as a Yale-educated lawyer, businesswoman, novelist and veteran of the Georgia House of Representatives. Having experienced discrimination in her own life, as well as struggling with personal debt, she said as governor she’d champion “a vision for Georgia where equality fosters prosperity, and where everyone has the opportunity to succeed – not just survive.”
Evans, meanwhile, said the challenges of her life, including an impoverished childhood, had fueled and informed her achievements. She worked her way through college, supplementing scholarships with jobs as a telemarketer and waitress, before going on to law school, a career as an attorney, and election to the Georgia House.
The two women, both in their 40s, shared many of the same Democratic planks during a campaign that at times exposed racial tensions.
In a notable campaign flashpoint, Evans accused Abrams of having shorted the disadvantaged while a legislator by buying into a Republican-led deal that slashed scholarship funding. Per the Washington Post, Abrams countered that the program she supported “preserved money for pre-kindergarten programs and staved off even tougher academic requirements she says Republicans wanted for all four-year award recipients.”
According to an NBC News analysis, television and radio ad spending on the Democratic primary ran into the millions: The Evans for GA Governor group plunged $1.5 million into the race. Abrams for GA Governor spent $475,000, but other pro-Abrams groups, such as BlackPAC and PowerPAC, threw in more than $2 million.
https://twitter.com/DecisionDeskHQ/status/999085394070327297
Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said the primary highlighted alternative Democratic approaches to the electorate for women running in a heated 2018 cycle. Abrams, he said, “focused on an appeal to progressive voters and people of color” in hopes of riding a “wave of anti-Trump sentiment into the general election.” By contrast, West said an Evans win could have been interpreted as the primary electorate betting “a moderate Democrat has a better shot at beating a male Republican in the general election.”
Jeanne Zaino, a political science professor at Iona College, said while gender will unavoidably be an issue in a November vote that pits a Democratic woman against a Republican man, “what also matters is their ability to appeal to voters on the ground and address issues of concern to Georgian voters, as well as the all-important issues of fundraising and turnout.”
Zaino noted that “among Democrats across the nation, in the special elections we’ve seen so far that turnout has been rivaling presidential election years.”
Given the state’s traditional Republican leanings, she cautioned, “It may be too early to call Georgia a swing state or talk about a ‘blue wave’ sweeping Georgia.”