Stacey Abrams Announces She’s Running for Georgia Governor (Again)

Voting rights champion Stacey Abrams announced Wednesday that she’s entering Georgia’s gubernatorial race for a second time.

In 2018, Abrams won the state’s Democratic primary in a landslide but very narrowly “lost” to Brian Kemp in the general election. That “loss” comes with a huge asterisk, as the election was mired in accusations of voter suppression, in an election that Kemp himself, as the Secretary of State, was charged with overseeing. At the time, she acknowledged that the election was over but refused to officially concede because “Concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper.”

If you missed it at the time, her non-concession speech was incandescent:

After spending the last few years helping transform the voting landscape in Georgia and stumping for Democrats nationwide, Abrams has announced that she’s challenging Kemp for the governor’s seat once again.

In her campaign announcement video, Abrams says she’s running “because opportunity and success in Georgia shouldn’t be determined by your ZIP code, background, or access to power.”

After touting some of her accomplishments over the last few years, Abrams says in the video, “Regardless of the pandemic or the storms, the obstacles in our way or the forces determined to divide us, my job has been to just put my head down and keep working toward one Georgia.”

Since 2018, Georgia has swung much farther blue, having elected two Democratic senators, thanks massively to the work Abrams and other voting rights activists have done.

(image: Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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