Stacy Abrams was serving in the Georgia House of Representatives (2007-2017) and as minority leader from 2011-2017. Abrams was the Democratic Party’s nominee in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, becoming the first African American female majority party gubernatorial nominee in the US.
Abrams nostalgically spoke of her life growing up in Gulfport, MS and her family’s transition to Atlanta where her parents pursued graduate degrees at Emory University. Later, they became Methodist ministers. Stacey graduated valedictorian at Avondale HS. While in HS she was hired as a typist for a congressional campaign at age 17. Later, she was hired as a speechwriter based on the edits she made while typing. This explains her ability to move the crowd through her storytelling.
In 1995, Abrams earned a Bachelor of Arts in interdisciplinary studies (political science, economics, and sociology) from Spelman College, magna cum laude. While in college, she worked in the youth services department in the office of Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson. She later interned at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As a freshman in 1992, Abrams took part in a protest on the steps of the Georgia Capitol, during which she joined in burning the state flag. At that time, Georgia’s state flag incorporated the Confederate battle flag, which had been added to the state flag in 1956 as an anti-civil rights movement action. The flag was designed by Southern Democrat John Sammons Bell, an attorney and Chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia who was an outspoken supporter of segregation.
Stacey Abrams Ted Talk, Jan. 2019
As a Harry S. Truman Scholar, Abrams studied public policy at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, where she earned a Master of Public Affairs degree in 1998. In 1999, she earned a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.
Stacey was fortunate to have these opportunities, but her courage should be highlighted and commended. She didn’t walk through doors that opened for her, she busted through them. According to Time magazine, Abrams “can credibly boast of having single-handedly stopped the largest tax increase in Georgia history. In 2011, Abrams argued that a Republican proposal to cut income taxes while increasing a tax on cable service would lead to a net increase in taxes paid by most people. She performed an analysis of the bill that showed that 82% of Georgians would see net tax increases, and left a copy of the analysis on the desk of every house legislator. The bill subsequently failed.
Abrams also worked with former Governor Nathan Deal on criminal-justice reforms that reduced prison costs without increasing crime, and with Republicans on the state’s biggest-ever public transportation funding package. This is huge for Atlanta as the traffic will cause you to think twice about moving here. It’s a crawling hot mess.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Abrams supports criminal justice reform in the form of no cash bail for poor defendants, abolishing the death penalty, and decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana. She also supports community policing to keep communities safe as part of criminal justice reform. Her brother Walter, an ex-offender, fueled her passion. It’s clear many Georgians will not embrace this. Dismantling the prison system and snubbing its investors? Walter is Stacey’s younger brother and suffers from mental health issues that went undiagnosed and untreated because her family lacked health insurance and access to services. As a result, Walter self-medicated and made bad choices to support his drug habit, now serving time in prison. He suffers daily dealing with both his mental illness and drug addiction.
Stacey served on the Special Joint Committee on Criminal Justice Reform, the Sentencing Subcommittee, Probation Reform Task Force and the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform for Georgians. During her tenure, Stacey helped pass changes to reduce sentencing for non-violent offenders, shift Georgia’s policies on private probation, improve parole system, adopt a new juvenile justice code and obtain eligibility for vocational licenses for ex-offenders. All of these moves are laying the groundwork for justice reform in Atlanta.
Under the pen name Selena Montgomery, Abrams is the award-winning author of several romantic suspense novels. According to Abrams, she has sold more than 100,000 copies of her novels. She wrote her first novel during her third year at Yale Law School and published her most recent book in 2009. Montgomery won both the Reviewer’s Choice Award and the Reader’s Favorite Award from Romance In Color for Best New Author, and was featured as a Rising Star.
Abrams has published articles on public policy, taxation, and nonprofit organizations. She is the author of Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change, published by Henry Holt & Co. in April 2018. Abrams is also the author of Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, published by Henry Holt & Co. in June 2020.
Since losing the 2018 gubernatorial election, Abrams has repeatedly claimed that the election was not fairly conducted and that Kemp is not the legitimate governor of Georgia. Her position is that Kemp, who oversaw the election in his role as Secretary of State, had a conflict of interest and suppressed turnout by purging nearly 670,000 voter registrations in 2017, and that about 53,000 voter registrations were pending a month before the election. She has said, “I have no empirical evidence that I would have achieved a higher number of votes. However, I have sufficient and I think legally sufficient doubt about the process to say that it was not a fair election.” If you lived in Georgia during this time, it was evident Kemp rigged the election. Her comeback as a result was a set up for the 2020 election.
The Journey is the Reward 