SAVANNAH, Ga. — Offering grudging respect for Stacey Abrams, some Republican activists here are saying the Democratic phenom’s decision to skip the 2020 Senate race could seal President Trump’s hold on the Georgia’s critical 16 votes in the Electoral College.
Abrams, 45, lost her bid for governor last year. But the outcome was razor-thin, and Republicans credit her with accelerating the state’s gradual transition from red to purple and juicing Democratic turnout to levels unprecedented for midterm elections, especially in the Atlanta suburbs. Republicans in Georgia, preparing for perhaps their toughest fight for the presidency in several years, say the task is remarkably less daunting with Abrams off the field.
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“If she’s not running for anything, then I don’t think we’re going to have a problem,” said Bob Jessop, a veteran Republican activist from metropolitan Atlanta, who spoke to the Washington Examiner Thursday while attending the Georgia Republican Party’s annual convention in Savannah. “If she changes her mind … then it will be 2018 on steroids.”
Abrams was defeated by now-Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, by 1.4 percentage points. She has told Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate that her decision to forgo challenging freshman Republican Sen. David Perdue in 2020 is final. Abrams said in an interview this week, however, that she has not ruled out a run for the White House. The former state legislator has also been mentioned as a possible contender for vice president.
In 2018, Abrams campaigned as an unabashed progressive, rather than running as a centrist and appealing to the middle, as had been typical for Georgia Democrats since the Republican Party began dominating state politics in the 1990s. In doing so, she managed to overperform Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential tally in suburban Atlanta, helping her party flip the 6th Congressional District, which had been in GOP hands since 1978.
Her bold approach electrified Democrats here and across the country. Meanwhile, Democratic voter turnout scarred Republicans and sparked anxiety about next year, even though the GOP walked away from the midterm elections holding all of Georgia’s statewide offices and enter the presidential campaign favored to win the state’s electoral votes, albeit possibly by less than past recent contests.
“We’re keeping an eye what socialist Stacey Abrams and her liberal allies are doing in pushing forth because we know that she did very well in this past election,” said Scott Johnson, a candidate for state GOP chairman in elections that were scheduled for Saturday.
“She did a better job energizing her base than we did energizing our base — at least in the suburbs of Atlanta,” added David Shafer, another candidate for state chairman. “We’ve got to step up our game in the suburbs.”
The Republicans have not lost a presidential contest in Georgia since 1992. Trump won here in 2016, keeping the party’s streak alive, but only by five points.
Many Republicans expect that eventually Georgia will be a full-fledged presidential battleground. But some Republican insiders in the state say privately that Abrams might have sped up a timetable that had presumed that would not happen until the late 2020s — even if she’s not on the ballot next year — by making believers out of what had been a moribund Georgia Democratic Party.
“Stacey Abrams’ incredible work to transform the electorate has permanently changed Georgia Democratic politics,” state Democratic Party spokeswoman Maggie Chambers said. “She didn’t just inspire voters to show up to the polls and vote for her, she showed them that their vote matters.”
Abrams has not impressed everyone.
Some Democrats, never mind Republicans, say she failed at the most important job she had in 2018 — winning. A Democratic operative pointed out that Abrams did not perform that much better than other Democrats running for statewide office in 2018, which could indicate that Democratic turnout was fueled more by a desire to signal distaste with Trump and that she merely benefited from that.
Some Republicans contend that Abrams has irreparably damaged her political future in Georgia by refusing to concede that she lost to Kemp and claiming, without any evidence, that the election was stolen from her. And with Trump on the ballot next year, many Republicans expect their 2018 turnout issues to be solved, Abrams or no Abrams.
“She’s alienated enough people,” said Lance Brown, a local Republican activist.
