As many Georgians celebrated the announcement Saturday that Joe Biden had been projected as the winner of the 2020 presidential race, Amy Baugher stood in Freedom Park with a sign that read, “Thank you Stacey.”
Baugher says Stacey Abrams inspired her to get involved in elections, beyond just voting.
“This is the first time that I went out and registered people to vote, too, and that’s really her inspirational leadership,” said Baugher. “We won, and she deserves her congratulations for that.”
Biden currently has a 14,000-vote lead in Georgia as counties wrap up their final vote tallies. If his advantage holds, he’d be the first Democrat to carry the state since 1992. And many are crediting Abrams as being the catalyst for that turnaround.
But as she sees it, it’s been a group effort.
“I’m humbled by the outpouring, but I want to always be very clear, I may have had the opportunity to bring resources to bear, to scale the work, and I’ve been a very dogged and aggressive cheerleader for Georgia’s future,” said Abrams. “But I worked in tandem with so many organizations that have been toiling for years.”
After a loss in a contentious governor’s race in 2018, Abrams dedicated her time to encouraging people to vote and battling for expanded voting rights for Georgians through her group, Fair Fight Action. The state has added some 1 million registered voters since 2016 and 2 million active voters in that time, many of them young and ethnically diverse.
“It’s taken time, but we saw in this election that millions of Georgians are ready to lead by selecting voices that will speak for them and selecting people who see their needs and challenges,” said Abrams.
The Nov. 3 election saw nearly 5 million Georgians vote for the first time in the state’s history. Millions voted early, and another 1.3 million voted by mail, another record in the state.
This helped reduce lines at polling places, something that encouraged Abrams. But she cautioned that changes that have made it easier to vote by mail, such as the introduction of secure drop boxes and an online request portal, are not guaranteed in the future.
“Changes that were made can be unmade,” said Abrams. “We have to not only pay attention to what happens in January in this runoff, but we need to watch the Georgia state Legislature closely to make sure that they don’t take steps to rescind the advances that we made.”
Abrams says Republicans’ baseless claims of voter fraud and widespread irregularities in Georgia are excuses for losing the state, which Trump won by 5 points in 2016.
“We should not use misinformation, false information or a temper tantrum by a defeated president … we should not allow that to direct our action and certainly not to impugn our elections,” said Abrams, who noted that both Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan have said there’s no evidence of widespread fraud.
As a statewide audit of the presidential race plays out, Abrams says she’ll be focused on the Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections.
She hopes the momentum from November’s election can carry over to the races. Control of the U.S. Senate is at stake with Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff trying to unseat incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
“I’m proud of how they’ve worked together to show that there is a unified front,” Abrams said of Warnock and Ossoff. “Saying we’re going to protect access to health care, access to jobs and recovery and access to justice.”
