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Olivia Volkert and Quinn Mulholland, two recent 22-year-old college graduates, had their tractors stacked, their talking points ready and an application in hand that directed them to the doors of their potential supporters. They explained why this time – with this Democratic candidate – felt so different.
"First of all, it's an African-American woman running for governorship in Georgia, which speaks for itself," said Volkert.
"I also think," added Mulholland, "that there is something to be said about the novelty of a Southern Democrat posing as a shamelessly progressive. You do not see it often, so I think it's something that excites the country's Democrats. "
They called it a "new notebook" – a rejection, according to Volkert, of "the centrist approach in the middle of the road did not work for Jason Carter". Carter, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, challenged Governor Nathan Deal in 2014. He led what had long been the textbook campaign for the Democrats of Georgia and, as it became customary he was lost.
Abrams, they said, was going another way.
"Mobilize and excite grassroots and increase voter turnout among Democrats," Mulholland said. "It really has not been tried (here) before and I think it's something that could become a national model if it works."
This strategy is being tested in the race of the governor of Georgia, which opposes Abrams to the Republican Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, who won his primary with the support of President Donald Trump. Abrams and Kemp will face for the first time Tuesday night in a debate.
A look at Georgia's political visitor newspaper in 2018 suggests that young solicitors were interested in something. Democrats planning to run for the presidency have been monitoring the state for months, from the earliest stages of a primary that Abrams would capture in a landslide until the last week of the general election. If it came out on November 6 – or after a second round in December, if no candidate in this neck-and-neck race won a majority next month – as governor-elect, that would strengthen the sense of democratic viability of Republican stronghold, turning it into the eyes of political strategists into a 2020 battlefield.
The Abrams campaign, driven by a progressive political agenda and political vocabulary, but linked to friendly calls to the state's cautious business community, would be touted as a way to win.
National fights return home to Georgia
On the Republican side, Kemp follows his own roadmap.
His campaign has tirelessly tried to portray Abrams as an extremist, falsely accusing him of trying to drive undocumented voters, and describing the former minority leader of the State House as a agent of the far left. He will probably continue this line of attack in Tuesday's debate, which comes one day after Abrams took part in a protest in 1992 that involved burning the flag of Georgia, which at the time included the emblem of the Confederate battle resurfaced in the New York Times.
In response to questions about the treatment of voter registrations by his office, Kemp, in a recent editorial, hinted, as he always did, that concerns had been corrected by a campaign campaign. Abrams who had "felt a sudden loss of speed".
"Instead of taking the road to connect the voters of Georgia," he wrote, "they created a" crisis "and asked the leftist allies to fan the flames". (Abrams began on Oct. 15 an "Advance Voting Bus Tour", which will run intermittently until polling day.)
In an interview after speaking at a summit on education held at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Abrams recalled skepticism about the tactics of his campaign.
"I am an African-American woman who is tracing a very different path to achieve this," said Abrams. "I think people want to know: it will work, but I also think they are excited about the possibility that it works, because it changes the conversation about how we conduct these debates, the way we run these campaigns, which shows that there is another way to win. "
A few hours earlier, Ayanna Pressley, a Boston city councilor, who is poised to become the first African-American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress, spoke alongside Abrams at digitalundivided, an incubator for women entrepreneurs belonging to of minorities, located in downtown Atlanta.
"I've always rejected the idea that people do not vote and do not show up because they're ignorant, indifferent, apathetic, do not know better," said Pressley afterward. "People do not participate because they have not been invited. Because in some states this is not practical. There are real barriers. "
During the first week of in-person voting in Georgia, these hurdles – real and perceived – made headlines, while Kemp, the state's election official, had effectively used a controversial law as a ## 147 ## 39, instrument of repression of minorities. s & # 39; be. Its record of more than eight years in which the state has purged more than one million of its "inactive" voters has sparked deep distrust among political opponents and activists, particularly in the communities Abrams has been working for. energize this cycle.
Civil rights groups have filed two lawsuits, while Kemp and his office have denied any allegations of wrongdoing, accused Abrams of using the information to excite his base and calling the hubbub "work from outside agents", a term steeped in history that dates back to the era of civil rights, while touting a new record of registered voters.
But aside from a volley of screams of fundraising and a call for Kemp's resignation as election official, the Abrams campaign has mainly outsourced these struggles to the State party, which runs its own "voter protection" hotline, and advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, whose legal director said Tuesday that the law was at the center of prosecutions "a literacy test reminiscent of Jim Crow's".
Abrams "the extremist" against Abrams the negotiator
Like many other party members in 2018, the Abrams speech is generally based on health care prescriptions. Unlike Kemp, she wants to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, a transition that would cover about half a million uninsured people. The campaign says the move would also create more than 50,000 jobs and would work as a "law enforcement tool," as argued by Abrams, referring to the potential for new funds for mental health .
Abrams, who has built a reputation as a negotiator during her term as legislator, is confident in her ability to convince Republican lawmakers to support their expansion, particularly those in rural counties where hospitals and doctors leave or disappear.
"I do not expect to overthrow the House and the Senate," she told The Carter Center, "but I'm waiting to add new friends."
State representative Allen Peake, one of the GOP votes that Abrams would probably need, argues Kemp and said he expected the Republican to maintain the series of GOP victories. He does not want to expand Medicaid or disagree with the "policies and program that she intends to promote".
Nevertheless, he is happy to describe her as a friend and talks about her meeting with the future leader of the minority when they take office together in the same legislative class in 2007.
"It was clear that she was a very smart woman, actually one of the smartest people I've ever met, quite frankly," said Peake. It's not surprising that the national spotlight shines on Abrams, and ambitious Democrats – like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who rallied to Abrams and Pressley last week – from across the country are heading to the south to stand at his side.
"Demographics in Georgia continues to evolve and, with the growth of Atlanta, we are bringing more progressives into our state, so I think that at the national level, people are coming to realize that Maybe there might be a turning point and a change in Georgia in the future, "says Peake. "I'm not sure if I bought it completely, but it's true that demographics are changing."
Democrats have for years counted on this changing demographics to give them power in traditionally red states like Texas and Arizona. That did not happen Even though Georgia is changing, some things have remained constant. Republican rule is one of them.
The GOP took control of the governor's residence in 2003, took control of the state legislature in 2005 and has been holding good since then. For about a decade, African-American voters have consistently accounted for 30 percent of all voters, according to political science professor Charles Bullock of the University of Georgia.
"Abrams will really try to mobilize individuals who are registered but have attended previous elections," Bullock said. "That's what makes the competition so interesting: it takes a different approach from what has been done in the past."
The 2020 class can not stay out of the way
This new quest, he added, has prolonged the campaign's desire – in fact, their desire – to campaign with and alongside members of the expected 2020 presidential primary class, a group presented by national figures like Warren and his fellow countryman Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and former Vice President Joe Biden – all progressives, to varying degrees, from blue states outside the South.
"In the past, if Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, that kind of people, came to Georgia, the Democrats would have invaded the hills, they would have disappeared, they would not want to be in range of the camera." Bullock said with a laugh. "So, it's very different."
On the last day of voter registration, Warren was greeted by a large crowd in Atlanta and surrounding areas. First at a rally at Clayton State University and then a telephone bank just minutes south of Jonesboro.
"I'm here this morning because I believe in Stacey Abrams," Warren said in the morning, before speaking now about the new battle over the new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, by linking in his Speech the process that the rigged system that rolls on women, rolls on African Americans, rolls on students, rolls on all those who enter the country. "
"It hurts," Warren said. "But now it's time to turn our pain into power."
Jeff Young, a retired 68-year-old Atlanta patent attorney who said he was "big fan" of Warren, applauded every turn.
"I admire Stacey Abrams for wanting to have it here because Stacey Abrams has not fled her principles," Young said before the start of the event. "We need a party that says we need a free market that accepts its debt to society for its use of the nation's resources," he added, relaying an old argument of Warren, "and I speak of both natural resources and human resources."
The Abrams campaign sees this embrace as mutually beneficial. They believe that the Democrats of Georgia, whose generation has never seen their candidate win major national elections, see national stars on the ground, fighting for their candidate offers a stamp of validation – evidence that the momentum that they feel is real and that victory is possible.
"I want our friends to come from all over the country," said Abrams, "because you need people to believe things for you before you believe it for yourself."
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