Stacey Abrams
Stacey Abrams is a prominent American lawyer, entrepreneur, author, and politician known for her significant role in Democratic politics, particularly in Georgia. Born on December 9, 1973, in Madison, Wisconsin, she was raised in a family that valued education and public service, eventually moving to Atlanta, Georgia, during her teenage years. Abrams gained national prominence following her candidacies for governor of Georgia in 2018 and 2022, where she made history as the first African American woman to run for governor in any state.
An accomplished writer, Abrams published her first romance novel under the pseudonym Selena Montgomery and has authored several bestsellers, including her memoir "Minority Leader." Beyond her literary contributions, she has a robust legal background and has founded multiple nonprofit organizations aimed at increasing voter registration and advocacy for minority rights, most notably through her initiatives like Fair Fight and Fair Count.
Her political career included serving as the minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, where she was recognized for her collaborative approach and focus on bipartisan issues. Despite losing the gubernatorial race in 2018 and again in 2022, Abrams has remained a powerful advocate for voting rights and social justice, contributing significantly to the Democratic Party's efforts in Georgia, particularly during the 2020 presidential election. Abrams continues to influence national conversations on race, politics, and civic engagement, earning a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, and she currently holds an academic position at Howard University.
Stacey Abrams
Politician and civic leader
- Born: December 9, 1973
- Place of Birth: Madison, Wisconsin
Significance: Stacey Abrams is a lawyer, entrepreneur, author, and Democratic politician. The former leader of the Georgia House, she gained national attention when she ran for governor of Georgia in 2018 and 2022.
Background
The second of six children, Stacey Abrams was born on December 9, 1973, in Madison, Wisconsin, while her mother, Carolyn, was in graduate school. After her mother completed her degree, the family moved to Gulfport, Mississippi. There her mother worked as a college librarian and her father, Robert, as a dockworker. Abrams’s parents emphasized education, faith, and public service, and reinforced those values when they decided to become United Methodist ministers. The family moved again when Abrams was sixteen, this time to Atlanta, Georgia, so her parents could attend divinity school at Emory University.
Abrams graduated as the valedictorian of Avondale High School in DeKalb County, Georgia. She went on to graduate magna cum laude from Spelman College with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies in 1995. In 1998 she received a master’s degree in public affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a Harry S. Truman Scholar. The following year she graduated with a juris doctorate from Yale Law School.
Writing Career
While still at Yale, Abrams begin writing a romance novel. Rules of Engagement was published in 2001 under the pen name of Selena Montgomery. It sold more than 100,000 copies, and was followed by an additional seven romance novels, including Hidden Sins (2006) and Deception (2009).
Abrams also has written essays on taxes, ethics, education, and other topics for publications such as the American Prospect, Christian Science Monitor, and Southern University Law Review. Her memoir, Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change (2018), became a New York Times Best Seller. It was retitled Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change and rereleased the following year. In 2020 Abrams published Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, which also became a New York Times Best Seller. Abrams also released the novel When Justice Sleeps and the children's book Stacey's Extraordinary Words in 2021. Another novel, Rogue Justice: A Thriller, was released in 2023.
Legal, Public Service, and Entrepreneurial Careers
Abrams began her law career as a tax attorney for the law firm Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan in 1999. In 2002 she was appointed the deputy city attorney of Atlanta, a position she held through 2006.
Abrams has founded or cofounded multiple nonprofit organizations and companies. In 1998 she founded Third Sector Development, a nonprofit that provides technical assistance to community organizations in the South. In 2007 she cofounded Nourish, a company that manufactured bottled water for babies. NOWaccount Network Corporation, a financial services company, was founded in 2010. She has been a part-owner and chief executive officer or chief operating officer of several companies, including the consulting firms Sage Works and The Insomnia Group and the technology firm The Family Room.
In 2013 Abrams formed the New Georgia Project, a subsidiary of Third Sector Development, to increase minority voter registration and address health disparities. The group registered more than 200,000 voters of color in Georgia between 2014 and 2016.
Political Career
Abrams successfully ran as the Democratic candidate for District 89 in Georgia’s House of Representatives in 2006. Sworn in on January 8, 2007, she was reelected in every subsequent election through 2016. In 2010 she was elected Georgia’s House minority leader, becoming both the first woman to lead a party in Georgia’s General Assembly and the first African American to lead in its house of representatives. She served on several committees, including those for appropriations, ethics, judiciary non-civil, rules, and ways and means.
Abrams’s tenure was characterized by a willingness to work with both Republicans and Democrats and an ability to understand complex financial issues and bills. She collaborated with Republican governor Nathan Deal on criminal justice reforms and with Republican legislators on public transportation funding programs and to preserve funding for a scholarship program. Other achievements include defeating legislation that would have increased taxes and limited reproductive health care.
In August 2017 Abrams resigned in order to enter Georgia’s gubernatorial race. When she won the 2018 Democratic primary, she became the first African American woman—either Democratic or Republican—to run for governor in any state. She campaigned on a liberal platform, pledging to improve public education, expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, provide more services for those recovering from addiction and leaving incarceration, and provide greater opportunities for small businesses. One of Abrams’s greatest challenges was combating voter suppression. Her Republican opponent, Georgia’s secretary of state Brian Kemp, had purged the voting rolls of more than 1.4 million voters between 2012 and 2017. Days before the 2018 election, Kemp put a hold on an additional 53,000 voters, the majority of whom were African American, claiming their signatures on voter applications did not match the images on file. Nearly 1,000 absentee ballot applications and ballots were similarly voided. Abrams lost the race by 54,723 votes, taking 48.8 percent of the vote to Kemp’s 50.2 percent. She conceded the race ten days later.
Following her loss, Abrams formed four organizations: Fair Fight, a voting rights organization; Fair Count, a nonprofit focused on the accurate counting of minority communities in the 2020 US Census; Fair Fight Action, a fundraising and strategic advisory nonprofit; and the Southern Economic Advancement Project, a research and policy analysis think tank. In late 2019 Fair Fight Action filed a federal lawsuit, Fair Fight Action v. Raffensperger, claiming Georgia’s electoral system violated the constitutional rights of the state’s minority voters. Fair Fight Action lost the suit, with a judge ruling in December 2019 that the group had failed to prove that the purge of voter rolls violated the US Constitution.
In 2021 Abrams announced her intention to run for governor of Georgia in the 2022 general election. After winning the Democratic nomination in the primary election, Abrams went on to face Kemp in the general election in November. However, Abrams was ultimately defeated by Kemp and conceded later that night.
Impact
In interviews, Abrams has stated that her goal as a politician is to improve people’s lives. She continued to work toward that goal by remaining active in politics following her defeat in Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial race. In February 2019 she gave the Democratic rebuttal to Republican President Donald Trump's State of the Union address, which raised her national profile.
During the 2020 US Presidential Election, Abrams was widely considered a possible vice presidential pick for Joseph Biden's campaign and was even shortlisted for the role. However, she was passed over in favor of Senator Kamala Harris of California. Despite being passed over for this role, Abrams continued to play a prominent role in the 2020 election, and her voter registration efforts among Black voters were considered a key factor in Biden's narrow victory over President Trump in Georgia, which had not voted for a Democratic candidate in a presidential election since 1992. This crucial victory helped deliver Biden enough Electoral College votes to win the presidential election. However, Biden's victory, and President Trump's unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in Georgia and other states, helped fuel intense Republican efforts to implement controversial new voting laws in many states. Abrams continued to promote the Democratic party and candidates as the 2024 elections approached, supporting first Biden and then Harris after Biden withdrew from the race. She has also indicated she would consider another run for public offie in the future.
In 2021 Abrams was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her efforts in promoting voter participation. In 2023, she was appointed to the inaugural Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics at Howard University.
Personal Life
Abrams lives on the east side of Atlanta. A voracious reader since childhood, she lives in a home full of books and travel mementos.
Bibliography
Ball, Molly. “Stacey Abrams Could Become America’s First Black Female Governor—If She Can Turn Georgia Blue.” Time, 26 July 2018, time.com/5349541/stacey-abrams-georgia. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024..
Bethea, Charles. “Stacey Abrams, the Candidate for Georgia Governor Who Could Make History.” The New Yorker, April 17, 2018. www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/stacey-abrams-the-candidate-for-georgia-governor-who-could-make-history. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Byng, Rhonesha. “Entrepreneurial Grit: Stacey Abrams Is Not Giving Up in the Race for Governor of Georgia.” Forbes, 5 Nov. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/rhoneshabyng/2018/11/05/how-stacey-abrams-turned-a-failed-company-into-an-opportunity-for-others/#3898953969b7. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Cornelius, Misha. "Howard University Appoints Stacey Abrams, Esq. As Inaugural Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics." The Dig-Howard University, 5 Apr. 2023, thedig.howard.edu/all-stories/howard-university-appoints-stacey-abrams-esq-inaugural-ronald-w-walters-endowed-chair-race-and-black. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Gringlas, Sam. “Republican Gov. Brian Kemp Wins Second Term in Georgia over Democrat Stacey Abrams.” NPR, 9 Nov. 2022. www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1134173355/georgia-midterm-election-governor-results-kemp-abrams. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Krug, Nora. “How Stacey Abrams Turned Heartbreak into a Career Plan—and Romance Novels.” The Washington Post, 22 Oct. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/how-stacey-abrams-turned-heartbreak-into-a-side-hustle-as-a-romance-novelist/2018/10/22/1bc44dfc-bb8a-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d‗story.html. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Merchant, Zach. "Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams Not Ruling Out Another Run for Office, Says 'all options are on the table'." 11 Alive, 25 Aug. 2024, www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/the-georgia-vote/all-options-are-on-the-table-stacey-abrams-not-ruling-out-another-run-for-office/85-82fd1c81-74c0-4b36-a055-ec1febab7e2d. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Nielsen, Euell A. “Stacey Yvonne Abrams.” Black Past, 27 June 2020, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/stacey-yvonne-abrams-1973/. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Solsvik, Terje, and Gwladys Fouche. “U.S. Voting Rights Activist Stacey Abrams Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize.” Reuters, 1 Feb. 2021. www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-prize-peace-usa/u-s-voting-rights-activist-stacey-abrams-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize-idUKKBN2A12HY. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.
Stuart, Tessa. “Stacey Abrams Is Building a New Kind of Political Machine in the Deep South.’” Rolling Stone, 1 Mar. 2020, www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/stacey-abrams-census-voting-rights-vice-president-953173/. Accessed 12 Oct. 2024.