CUTHBERT, Ga. — As Stacey Abrams began her second campaign for Georgia governor with a speech this week about Medicaid expansion in front of a shuttered rural hospital, the crowd of about 50 peppered her with questions on issues like paving new roads.But Sandra Willis, the mayor pro tem of this town of roughly 3,500 people, had a broader point to make. “Once you get elected, you won’t forget us, will you?” she asked.The question reflected Ms. Abrams’s status as a national Democratic celebrity, who was widely credited with helping to deliver Georgia for her party in the 2020 elections and has made her name synonymous with the fight for voting rights.But she has shown little desire to put ballot access at the center of her bid. Her first days on the campaign trail have been spent largely in small, rural towns like Cuthbert, where she is more interested in discussing Medicaid expansion and aid to small businesses than the flagship issue that helped catapult her to national fame.Ms. Abrams’s strategy amounts to a major bet that her campaign can survive a bleak election year for Democrats by capitalizing on Georgia’s fast-changing demographics and winning over on-the-fence voters who want their governor to largely stay above the fray of national political battles.“I am a Georgian first,” she said in an interview. “And my job is to spend especially these first few months anchoring the conversation about Georgia.”In Cuthbert, where Ms. Abrams was pressed on Monday by Ms. Willis on her commitment to Georgia’s small communities, she reminded onlookers that this was not her first visit to town — and she promised it would not be her last. The town sits in Randolph County, one of a handful of rural, predominantly Black counties that were crucial to Democrats’ victories in Georgia in the last cycle. Upward of 96 percent of Black voters who cast ballots here in the 2020 presidential election voted in the 2021 Senate runoff elections.Randolph has also been held up as an example of the state’s neglect of its low-income, rural residents: The county’s only hospital shut down in October 2020.“I’m here to help,” Ms. Abrams said in her Monday speech in front of the closed hospital. Listing the names of seven counties surrounding Randolph, she promised to be a “governor for all of Georgia, especially southwest Georgia.”ImageGeorgia’s population continues to grow younger and more racially diverse, trends that have historically benefited Democrats.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMs. Abrams’s focus on state and hyperlocal issues reflects an understanding that to win Georgia, any Democrat must capture votes in all corners of the state. That also means knowing the issues closest to voters in every corner.“Everything either happens in Atlanta, or outside of Atlanta in the suburbs,” said Bobby Jenkins, the mayor of Cuthbert and a Democrat. “But as the election in November showed, you’ve got a lot of Democrats, a lot of people in these rural areas, and you cannot overlook them. There aren’t many in this county. But when you band all of these counties together in southwest Georgia, then you can create some impact.”Ms. Abrams has also used visits like the one to Cuthbert and a later meet-and-greet in the central Georgia town of Warner Robins to criticize Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who beat her in the same race in 2018, over what she called his weakening of the state’s public health infrastructure during the pandemic and his underinvestment in rural communities.“If we do not have a governor who sees and focuses on how Georgia can mitigate these harms, how Georgia can bolster opportunity, then the national environment is less relevant, because the deepest pain comes from closer to home,” Ms. Abrams said in the interview.Still, that national environment remains unfriendly to Democrats. Less than eight months before the November midterm elections, the party is staring down a record number of House retirements, a failure to pass the bulk of President Biden’s agenda and a pessimistic electorate that is driving his low approval ratings.Yet Democrats see reasons for hope in Georgia. The state continues to grow younger and more racially diverse, in a boon to the network of organizations that helped turn out the voters who flipped Georgia blue in 2020. Many of those groups remain well-staffed and well-funded. And while Ms. Abrams is running unopposed in the Democratic primary, Mr. Kemp faces four challengers, including a Trump-backed candidate, former Senator David Perdue.All of this is why, while Ms. Abrams’s public image has expanded, she has not deviated much from the campaign strategy she employed in 2018. During her first run for governor, she visited all 159 of Georgia’s counties and aimed for surges in turnout in deep-blue By: Maya King
Title: Why Stacey Abrams Isn’t Embracing Her Democratic Stardom (So Far)
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/us/politics/stacey-abrams-georgia-governor.html
Published Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2022 09:00:12 +0000
Read More
Did you miss our previous article...
https://badpoliticians.com/us-politics/justice-dept-to-expand-training-available-to-local-law-enforcement
UK PoliticsWorld PoliticsVideosPrivacy PolicyTerms And Conditions
