Stacey Abrams Is Building a New Kind of Political Machine in the Deep South

In 2018, largely thanks to Abrams, Georgia’s Democratic Party had a full-time voter protection director; there was a hotline to report problems, volunteers to chase down provisional ballots, lawyers ready to go to court to keep polls open. It wasn’t enough, it turned out, against Abrams’ opponent, Georgia’s then-secretary of state, Brian Kemp, who was in charge of overseeing his own election — but it nearly was.

Now, with $21 million raised in 2019 alone, Fair Fight is training similar teams in 18 states. “I don’t have the capacity to sit still and wait for the next term, the next opportunity for me to stand for an office that let’s me do the work,” Abrams says.

Dozens of Democratic heavies descended on the summit that morning, including Michael Bloomberg, who has donated $5 million to Fair Fight. “Voter suppression efforts are happening across the country,” Bloomberg tells Rolling Stone, “and there is no one better to lead the counterattack than Stacey.”

The billionaire former mayor of New York is the latest in a string of high-profile presidential candidates to seek a sit-down with Abrams in the past year. “Those meetings went unremarked upon until I met with the [former] vice president,” Abrams sighs. “And then there was a rumor started.”



https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/stacey-abrams-census-voting-rights-vice-president-953173/