The Music Midtown festival in Georgia was canceled this year due to Georgia’s gun laws, which wouldn’t have allowed organizers to prohibit firearms on the festival grounds.
The cancellation of next month’s event is expected to incur a $50 million loss to the Peach State. Enter Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
“[Gov.] Brian Kemp’s dangerous and extreme gun agenda endangers the lives of Georgians, and the cancellation of Music Midtown is proof that his reckless policies endanger Georgia’s economy as well,” said Abrams. “In dire economic times for so many Georgians, this cancellation will cost Georgia’s economy a proven $50 million. This means that small businesses and workers who rely on events like Music Midtown and their tremendous economic impact have now lost incomes that help put food on the table and a roof over their heads.”
It is quite rich for Abrams to decry an economic fallout for Georgia.
In 2021, the MLB All-Star Game was relocated from Atlanta to Denver due to misguided calls to protest the game over Georgia’s electoral reform law. This move cost Georgia an estimated $100 million. At the time, Abrams sympathized with calls to skip the game.
“The impassioned response to the racist, classist bill that is now the law of Georgia is to boycott in order to achieve change. Events hosted by major league baseball, world class soccer, college sports and dozens of Hollywood films hang in the balance,” Abrams wrote in a USA Today opinion piece. “At the same time, activists urge Georgians to swear off of hometown products to express our outrage. Until we hear clear, unequivocal statements that show Georgia-based companies get what’s at stake, I can’t argue with an individual’s choice to opt for their competition.”
Abrams later lamented the All-Star Game being moved out of Atlanta, but only after the MLB had made the decision.
Abrams has thus demonstrated she only cares about Georgia’s people and economy when it is an election year and her prospects of defeating Kemp are slim. Georgia voters should see Abrams for who she is: a fraud.
Jackson Richman is a journalist in Washington, D.C. Follow him @jacksonrichman.
