Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize following her work to rally Democrats in both the 2020 presidential election and the highly contested Senate runoffs.
Lars Haltbrekken, a Socialist Party member of Norway’s Parliament, made the nomination on Monday, arguing that Abrams, hailed by Democrats as a voting rights activist, is a trailblazer.
“Abrams’s work follows in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s footsteps in the fight for equality before the law and for civil rights,” Haltbrekken said. “[Her] efforts to complete King’s work are crucial if the United States of America shall succeed in its effort to create fraternity between all its peoples and a peaceful and just society.”
Abrams joins a growing list of nominees for the prize, which includes teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his deputy Avi Berkowitz were also selected for nomination on Monday in recognition of their work on the Abraham Accords, which seeks to normalize relations between Israel and neighboring nations such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.
Nobel Peace Prize nominations are accepted from any politician serving at a national level, and those submitting have 2,000 words to state the reasoning for selection.
The deadline for 2021 submissions is Monday. A committee will prepare a shortlist of nominations by the end of March, and the winner is selected in October, followed by an award ceremony slated for Dec. 10.
Abrams is the founder of Fair Fight, which claims to “promote fair elections in Georgia and around the country, encourage voter participation in elections, and educate voters about elections and their voting rights” for the furtherance of “progressive leaders.”
President Biden credited Abrams, who lost a governor’s race in 2018, with “changing Georgia” following a “blue wave” that saw the election of Democratic contenders up and down the ballot in 2020 contests.
“Let’s hear it for Stacey Abrams. Nobody, nobody in America has done more for the right to vote than Stacey,” Biden said at a campaign rally in early January. “Stacey, you are changing Georgia. You have changed America.”
Abrams, who is also the founder of the New Georgia Project, has faced controversy too. Between 2017 and 2020, the group was reportedly hit with liens for failing to pay unemployment taxes over the course of three quarters in 2018. Republicans have attempted to stunt Abrams’s growing popularity in the Peach State, introducing a “Stop Stacey” campaign designed to thwart a second gubernatorial bid in 2022.
“We will do whatever it takes to expose Stacey Abrams’s radical network, highlight her dangerous agenda, and ultimately defeat her — and her left-wing candidates — at the ballot box,” StopStacey.org spokesman Jeremy Brand said in a statement. “There is no time to waste: We must stand up, fight back, and Stop Stacey.”
The “Stop Stacey” campaign was introduced ahead of a potential 2022 rematch between Abrams and Gov. Brian Kemp, an effort spearheaded by Abrams since her 2018 defeat. Biden won Georgia, which has long been a Republican stronghold, by 11,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1996.
Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock took both U.S. Senate seats during the state’s runoffs on Jan. 5, which handed Democrats control of the upper chamber. Two independents caucus with the Democrats, resulting in a 50-50 Senate split that will render Vice President Kamala Harris the deciding vote in the event of a tie.
