Stacey Abrams still believes that she can defeat conservative Georgians

Sure On Thursday night, in Carrollton, Georgia, near the frontline of Alabama, Stacey Abrams, Democratic nominee for the governorship, addressed a crowd of two hundred and fifty supporters. Abrams was housed in a community center built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, three decades before the Voting Rights Act guaranteed the voting rights of African Americans, including Abrams' parents. Abrams told the story three decades later, in the early 90s, when she was a follower of high school and was invited to the governor's mansion. She took a bus with her father and mother, and they were repulsed, she said, by an incredulous guard at the manor's doors. "He looked at me, as well as my parents, and told them," I told you, it 's about a private event, you do not have your place here, "she told a diverse crowd, adding," I remember his mocking face, this devalued look, because he could not imagine that someone who got off the bus can enter the governor's house. " Abrams, now forty-four years old, hopes she'll be soon. walk in the mansion to stay. Outside of the event at Carrollton, a conservative city west of Atlanta, some Georgians waved Confederate flags attacking her. Thursday, they were well outnumbered.

Abrams has positioned herself as a progressive candidate in a state that Donald Trump has won by five points in the 2016 presidential election. She has promised the Carrollton crowd that she would be the "governor of public education "that would have saved HOPE, a financial aid program for students in Georgia. She said that she would expand Medicaid. She said "climate change is real". She insisted that she was the governor candidate who includes all of Georgia. "My opponent and I went to one hundred and fifty-nine counties," she said at one point, referring to current Republican candidate and Secretary of State Brian Kemp. "But the difference is that I think it was me who listened when I was there." The crowd roared. She and Kemp are in a statistical relationship, according to recent polls.

An hour later, I climbed into the big Abrams countryside bus and accompanied her to Newnan, another conservative trend city closer to Atlanta. The bus has a mini kitchen, a flat screen TV, a shower and bunk beds for naps that no one seemed to take. Abrams' press secretary and his digital strategist, two women in their twenties, were seated at a small table near piles of takeaway food. A makeup artist was touching Abrams at the back of the bus. In front, the driver was looking at a card on his phone. (Previously, he used it to film Confederate flag agitations.) Given thousands of kilometers traveled by her and the acceleration of attacks from her opponents, Abrams seemed rested and optimistic. Also: relentless. As the bus slowed down at the sidewalk, she told a staff member, "What are we waiting for?

"For you to finish, Leader," said a staff member. Her staff generally referred to her as a leader, a title she held from 2007 to 2017, when she held the position of leader of the Georgian parliamentary minority. ("Minority Leader" is also the title of his recent memoir.)

Sitting on the couch with Abrams in the back, I mentioned a young man I met in front of the Carrollton rally, a Trump supporter, Justin Purchase, who was wearing a MAGA and claimed to be undecided in the race of the governor of the state. (Trump approved Kemp.) Purchase had told Abrams: "I love it as a human being. This is a very humanitarian person, from what I've seen. She's very kind. A very beautiful lady. In order to make a decision about the race, Purchase said he planned to follow the recent Abrams debate with his opponents, Kemp and the libertarian Ted Metz. He was curious to know what was going on at the rally, but he had decided not to go "because I felt like I was being watched, maybe judged". He rejected the hesitations of the Confederate flag, saying, "I am like, 'You are wasting your time."

"We target all voters," said Abrams, when I described my conversation with Purchase. "I go to Republican-like places like Carroll County because there are people in those counties who will vote for me, even if they are not Democrats by inclination." Regarding Purchase, she said: "I've had a number of conversations with guys like him" – voters voting, she thought, who have never voted for a Democrat – "who want an expansion of Medicaid, who want better jobs, who love my educational platform and who will vote for me. "

Abrams also mentioned places like Thomasville and Chatsworth, where he could only stay a handful of Democrats. "The places where you can not turn blue," she says, "but you can go from brown to pink. Or you can create small blue dots. "Compared to the campaigns of the Democrats of Georgia in the past, the Abrams campaign has been remarkable in focusing on the state as a whole – on the achievement of each community instead of choosing votes, "as she put it.

In such a polarized election, conventional wisdom says that there are not many people left in the middle. But Abrams is still looking for them. "People have a lot of problems that they prioritize," Abrams said. "Some give it to their ideology. Some their economy. Some their health. My responsibility is to give them a framework that allows them to decide that I can meet enough of their interests and must vote for me. I will not try to reject what they believe or change who they are. My job is to say, "Here's who I am, here's what I can do, and if you vote for me, here's what will be there for you."

But no candidate, not even as well financed as Abrams, can go to all the districts of the eighth most populous state in the country. On recent trips to the poor, rural corner of southwestern Georgia, in counties like Clay and Crisp, I met a number of voters, including many African Americans, who have never heard of Abrams. In a rural clinic, a woman who desperately needed Medicaid, said, "I will vote for the one who will help me get health care." She did not know that it was Abrams, not Kemp, who had made the expansion of Medicaid a priority. . On the back of the bus, Abrams mentioned the loss of rural hospitals as one of the major concerns of Georgians under the potential Kemp administration. If Kemp were elected, she said, we could "have a health care crisis that will take lives. It's not only dangerous, she added, it's immoral.

I asked Abrams if she envisioned it as some of them were in the press – as part of a growing wave of black Democrats running for governor, along with Andrew Gillum, Florida, and Ben Jealous, Maryland. Abrams has generally accepted, but it has added Mexican-American David Garcia, Democratic candidate for the governorship of Arizona, to his cohort, as well as Hispanic Michelle Lujan Grisham, Democrat candidate for the governorship of the New Mexico, stressing that it was a wave. "We share the belief that it is necessary to have voices that are not normally present at the table," she said. "We have all focused on how we help people who are disadvantaged because of their income or because they are not considered the norm. I am proud to form a coalition with them this year. "

Abrams continued, "Andrew and I have both grown up in families where – he is the first generation college, I am second generation. Ben understands that access to education comes from the leadership of N.A.A.C.P. We have all worked in communities where the lack of economic equality is real and corrosive. We share the same conviction as the reform of the criminal justice system. "In the end," she said, "their common belief is that everyone should have the opportunity. It sounds ridiculous, but it's really what motivates each of us, "she added. "And we've been talking about it together and separately for over a decade."

Saturday, I checked with Purchase, to see if he had followed the debate and ask him what he thought. He had not looked at her yet, he told me. He would have liked to see Abrams talk, he said. He had found a "Voter's Guide" of one page in the work bin, which classified the candidates by question and read it again. "His tax plan and his position on abortion bother me," he told Abrams. "I just do not know."