"Hello, I'm Oprah:" The Georgia Governors' race is in full swing – and now the cavalry has arrived.



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Democrat Democratic Democrat Georgia, Stacey Abrams, left, with Oprah Winfrey – the biggest celebrity to have caused a storm in the state during a very well-attended campaign – at a rally in New York. Marietta Thursday. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Georgia in your mind? Georgia worries everyone, but especially Oprah. Recently, she was "sitting at home," as she says, and "led a good life" – presumably in her palace in Montecito, California – when she understood that she had to go to Georgia . There is a race of devil's governor here, but he was missing something, and that was her. Candidates having voted at one point of the other, Oprah could possibly make the difference.

On Thursday morning, Travis Nichols was cleaning the kitchen from his home located in a side street of Marietta, in Cobb County, historically red just northwest of Atlanta. The bell rang. Oprah Winfrey was on the porch with a notebook, soliciting for the first time in her life.

"Hello, I'm Oprah," said Oprah. Oprah asked them if they had an early voting plan and they said they had already voted for Oprah's favorite candidate, Democrat Stacey Abrams. And so there was nothing else to do than to exchange jokes and take pictures.

"She seemed to be showing some kind of goodwill," said 39-year-old Greenpeace author and media director Nichols. Oprah's commitment to running at the last minute "makes you believe that something amazing is happening in our state, not just under our porch."

The cavalry was called, as if the fate of the nation depended on Georgia. Oprah Thursday at Marietta and Decatur, Barack Obama Friday at Morehouse College in Atlanta. President Trump, this Sunday, further south, to Macon. At the same time that Oprah held public meetings with Abrams, Vice President Pence participated in rallies in Dalton, Grovetown and Savannah on behalf of his Republican opponent Brian Kemp, Secretary of State of Georgia, sued by charges of removal of voters.

"I heard about Oprah in town today," said Pence at the Dalton Convention Center in northern Georgia, half an hour from Tennessee, Thursday around noon.

"Booooo!" Said the crowd. (Oprah Booing? That can be done, and the MAGA crowd will show us how.)

"I heard that Will Ferrell was going door to door the other day," Pence continued. "Well, I would like to remind Stacey and Oprah and Will Ferrell -"

"LOSERS!" Shouted a man.

"I'm a bit fat, too," said Pence. Q – Has our first vice president borrowed a slogan from Ferrell's ferocious comedy "Anchorman?" An investigation sent to Pence's office remains unanswered at the time of the press.)


Republican Gov. candidate for Georgia Brian Kemp, accompanied by Vice President Pence, right, greeting the crowd at a rally organized by Kemp in Savannah on Thursday. "This is not Hollywood," said Pence at a previous rally. "It's Georgia." (Will Peebles / Savannah Morning News via AP)

Is the vice president a bigger problem than Oprah? Does it matter if it is not? With his support for Obama in 2007, Oprah awarded him 1 million "instrumental" voices during the 2008 primary season, according to a study by Northwestern University. But, again, a flamboyant reality TV star might not have joined the Oval Office without the insurance policy of a stoic Mike Pence, who would have felt like he was walking out of the chain. assembly of the President Factory.

These celebrity events "win free media for campaigns [but] At this point, in such a polarized climate, these events are not persuasive events, "says Andra Gillespie, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Emory University. "That's why I do not think the use of Oprah's role in the 2008 Democratic primaries is analogous here. Voters have already made their decision. The task of the next five days is to have all voters vote ".

The people who showed up at Pence and Kemp on Thursday were as you expected: whites with red hats, convinced that America is besieged by both socialism and a horde of illegal immigrants and that George Soros is behind both. There is no red meat at a meeting of Mike Pence. Instead, it serves as the equivalent of chicken nuggets.

"I've received a message for all Liberal Hollywood friends of Stacey Abrams," said Pence at Dalton, the first of his three rallies for Kemp. "It's not Hollywood. It is Georgia. "

Such a line goes well in a place like Dalton, the southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This is the country of carpets. According to Senator Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), About 85% of the country's carpets come from manufacturers around Dalton. So remember Georgia the next time you remove your socks in the winter.

In the absence of the president, the spectators were polite with the journalists but nonetheless filled with testosterone.

"Lock him up!" Says someone from Soros.

"Lock it up!" Says someone to Abrams. "Traitor!"

"We are going to build a red wall around this state to stop this so-called blue wave," Kemp said before introducing Pence. Walls, walls, walls. Attached is the candidate's message: The economy is booming, so do not give your party the means to raise taxes and reduce funds.

"I like that [Pence] is a Christian and is not ashamed to speak up and say that [and] I think Mr. Kemp is a morally right man, "said Brenda Farris, a retired teacher from Chatsworth, who was nearby, standing by buttons for sale that said" Trump 2020: F — Your Feelings ".


Oprah Winfrey at the Stacey Abrams rally in Marietta. "When you stay at home and your friends do not stay outside to vote, you denude your elders," she said. (Christopher Aluka Berry / Reuters)

Georgia, like the country as a whole, is big enough to represent a lot of things – Vinyl and Tiles, Home Depot and Coca-Cola, Soy and Cotton, Jimmy Carter and Newt Gingrich and Tyler Perry – but you have to be governed by one person. The two people who come to this position have nothing in common, according to their surrogates and their fans, and they fight for our souls.

Jobs are not crowds, say Republicans.

Angry the mothers not angry crowds, say the Democrats.

Turn Dalton's knob to Decatur and you'll hear everything.

An interlocutor of "The Mike Brooks Show" on 106.7 FM: "All these celebrities who go through here and have no skin in the game. . "

Bruce Dixon on Black Radio Diary: The "Magic of Black Girls" around Abrams is it only another version of the classy cocoon that has prevented Obama from helping African-Americans poorer?

Robin Young of "Here & Now," transmitting to Boston's Public Radio Public: "Democrats need someone who, you know, is Donald Trump's flamethrower. Does not the party have the person it needs?

The party has Oprah, at least. On Thursday, CNN's eyes turned to her with lust as she looked like a presidential candidate again, though she dismissed the idea since her January electrifying speech at the Golden Globes sparked off the machine. to speculation. At a Decatur Performing Arts Center, people queued for hours under constant rain to breathe air. The people who came forward were as you expected: mostly Blacks and mostly women, retired activists and teachers, and graduate student volunteers ready to be trapped in Her Majesty's trap. There was a feeling that something was happening – maybe not in the South as a whole, but certainly in the Southeast and certainly in the increasingly blue suburbs of Atlanta. These Georgians had phoned Senate candidate Doug Jones last year, even though he was in Alabama. These Georgians were mobilized for congressional candidate Jon Ossoff, the Democrat who had lost a special election but left behind an organizational infrastructure and a dynamic.

"I have this to tell you, black people with ancestors who have never had a chance," said Oprah when she took the stage, her voice rising in strength. "When you stay at home and your friends stay at home and do not go out to vote, you denude your elders."

One of those elders, the icon of civil rights, the representative John Lewis (D-Ga.), Was sitting in the front row, tears in his eyes, 53 years after being broken the skull at Selma's.

"Oprah, darling," he said at one point. "It means everything to me. All. You make me cry. To see a talented, charming, intelligent young black woman who is running for governorship in the state of Georgia – "

"Georgia!" Oprah said, echoing her astonishment.

"Georgia!" Lewis repeated.

Georgia. Why is there an interest in getting out of poverty in Mississippi – and becoming a beloved billionaire – if you do not try to push a black woman into a governorship for the first time in American history? Oprah, to her credit, gave way when she called Abrams on the stage, equipped with a mini-version of a set of talk shows. Two armchairs, a coffee table with a white flora, and Oprah very pensive and deep, the chin placed between his thumb and his index finger, asking a very oprah question:

"If you were to make the dream you have for Georgia to the higher power we call God, what is the dream for Georgia that you want to surrender?"

"I think poverty is immoral," Abrams replied with loud applause. "It's a waste of human capital. . . I want poverty eradicated in Georgia. Because if we can solve it in Georgia, we can solve it in America. "

On the coast in Savannah, Pence was closing a full day of state policy, in a totally different state of mind.

"Georgia, I send you greetings from the 45th President of the United States of America," he said from the podium, beginning to smile and shake his head in front of what he was going to say. "Is not it something?"

The crowd laughed knowingly because the president is certainly something.

"I'll tell you," Pence said, chuckling at a joke in class that has no punch. "I will tell you."

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