Abrams is an author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her nonfiction books, Our Time Is Now and Lead from the Outside, were
New York Times best sellers. Abrams wrote eight fiction books under the
pen name Selena Montgomery before 2021. While Justice Sleeps was released on May 11, 2021, under her real name. Abrams also wrote a children's book, Stacey's Extraordinary Words, released in December 2021.
Early life and education
The second of six siblings, Abrams was born to Robert and Carolyn Abrams in
Madison, Wisconsin, and raised in
Gulfport, Mississippi where her father was employed in a shipyard and her mother was a librarian.[13][14][15] In 1989, the family moved to
Atlanta,
Georgia, where her parents pursued graduate divinity degrees at
Emory University.[16][17] They became
Methodistministers and later returned to Mississippi with their three youngest children while Abrams and two other siblings remained in Atlanta.[16][18][19] She attended
Avondale High School, graduating as valedictorian in 1991.[20] In 1990, she was selected for the
Telluride Association Summer Program.[21] At 17, while still in high school, she was hired as a typist for a congressional campaign and then as a speechwriter based on the improvements she made to a campaign speech.[22]
After graduating from law school, Abrams worked as a tax attorney at the
Sutherland Asbill & Brennan law firm in
Atlanta, with a focus on tax-exempt organizations, health care, and public finance.[2] In 2010, while a member of the
Georgia General Assembly, Abrams co-founded and served as the senior vice president of NOW Corp. (formerly NOWaccount Network Corporation), a financial services firm.[26][27]
Abrams co-founded Nourish, Inc. in 2010.[29] Originally conceived as a beverage company with a focus on infants and toddlers,[30] it was later rebranded as Now and pivoted its business model to an invoicing solution for small businesses. Now raised a $9.5 million
Series A in 2021.[29]
Rewiring America
In mid-March 2023, community electrification advocacy nonprofit group Rewiring America announced it had hired Abrams as senior counsel.[31][32]
Political career
In 2002, at age 29, Abrams was appointed a deputy city attorney for the City of Atlanta.[2][33]
Georgia General Assembly
In 2006, Abrams ran for the 84th District for the
Georgia House of Representatives, following
JoAnn McClinton's announcement that she would not seek reelection. Abrams ran in the
Democratic Partyprimary election against former state legislator George Maddox and political operative Dexter Porter. She outraised her two opponents and won the primary election with 51% of the vote, avoiding a
runoff election.[34]
Abrams represented House District 84 beginning in the 2007 session,[35] and beginning in the 2013 session (following
reapportionment), District 89. Both districts covered portions of the City of Atlanta and unincorporated DeKalb County,[36] covering the communities of Candler Park, Cedar Grove, Columbia, Druid Hills, Edgewood, Highland Park, Kelley Lake, Kirkwood, Lake Claire, South DeKalb, Toney Valley, and Tilson.[37][38] She served on the Appropriations, Ethics, Judiciary Non-Civil, Rules, and Ways & Means committees.[39]
In November 2010, the Democratic caucus elected Abrams to succeed
DuBose Porter as minority leader over
Virgil Fludd.[40] Abrams's first major action as minority leader was to cooperate with Republican governor
Nathan Deal's administration to reform the
HOPE Scholarship program. She co-sponsored the 2011 legislation that preserved the HOPE program by decreasing the scholarship amount paid to Georgia students and funded a 1% low-interest loan program for students.[41]
According to Time magazine, Abrams "can credibly boast of having single-handedly stopped the largest tax increase in Georgia history."[42] 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.[42] 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.[42] The bill subsequently failed.[42]
Abrams also worked with Deal on criminal-justice reforms that reduced prison costs without increasing crime,[42] and with Republicans on the state's biggest-ever public transportation funding package.[42]
On August 25, 2017, Abrams resigned from the General Assembly to focus on her gubernatorial campaign.[43]
Abrams ran for
governor of Georgia in
2018.[44] In the
Democratic primary she ran against
Stacey Evans, another member of the Georgia House of Representatives,[44] in what some called "the battle of the Staceys". Abrams was endorsed by
Bernie Sanders and
Our Revolution.[45][46] On May 22, she won the Democratic nomination, making her the first Black woman in the U.S. to be a major party's nominee for governor.[7] After winning the primary, Abrams secured a number of high-profile endorsements, including one from former president
Barack Obama.[47][48]
Almost a week before election day, the Republican nominee, Georgia secretary of state
Brian Kemp, canceled a debate scheduled seven weeks earlier to attend a
Trump rally. Kemp blamed Abrams for the cancellation, saying she was unwilling to reschedule it. Abrams's campaign manager responded, "We refuse to callously take Georgians for granted and cancel on them. Just because Brian Kemp breaks his promises doesn't mean anyone else should."[49]
Two days before the election, Kemp's office announced that it was investigating the Georgia Democratic Party for unspecified "possible cybercrimes"; the Georgia Democratic Party stated that "Kemp's scurrilous claims are 100 percent false" and described them as a "political stunt".[50] A 2020 investigation by the Georgia attorney general's office concluded that there was no evidence of computer crimes.[51] Later that year, it was revealed that the alleged cybercrime against Kemp's office was in fact a planned security test that one of Kemp's staff members had signed off on three months prior.[52]
As Georgia's secretary of state, Kemp was in charge of elections and voter registration during the election. Kemp was accused of
voter suppression during the election between him and Abrams.[53][54][55]Emory University professor
Carol Anderson has criticized Kemp as an "enemy of democracy" and "an expert in voter suppression" for his actions as secretary of state.[56] Political scientists Michael Bernhard and Daniel O'Neill described Kemp's actions in the 2018 gubernatorial election as the worst case of voter suppression in that election year.[57] Election law expert
Richard L. Hasen called Kemp "perhaps the most incompetent state chief elections officer" in the 2018 elections, pointing to a number of actions that jeopardized Georgia's election security and made it harder for eligible voters to vote.[58] Hasen writes that it was "hard to tell" which of Kemp's "actions were due to incompetence and which were attempted suppression."[58]
Between 2012 and 2018, Kemp's office canceled over 1.4 million voter registrations, with nearly 700,000 cancellations in 2017 alone.[59] On a single night in July 2017, half a million voters had their registrations canceled. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, election-law experts said that this "may represent the largest mass disenfranchisement in US history."[60] Kemp oversaw the removals as secretary of state, and did so eight months after he declared his candidacy for governor.[61] An investigative journalism group run by
Greg Palast found that of the approximately 534,000 Georgians whose voter registrations were purged between 2016 and 2017, more than 334,000 still lived where they were registered.[62] The voters were given no notice that they had been purged.[63] Palast sued Kemp, claiming over 300,000 voters were purged illegally.[64] Kemp's office denied any wrongdoing, saying that by "regularly updating our rolls, we prevent fraud and ensure that all votes are cast by eligible Georgia voters."[65]
By early October 2018, more than 53,000 voter registration applications had been put on hold by Kemp's office, with more than 75% belonging to minorities.[66][59] The voters were eligible to re-register if they still lived in Georgia.[67][59][61][62]
In a ruling against Kemp, district judge
Amy Totenberg found that Kemp's office had violated the
Help America Vote Act and said an attempt by Kemp's office to expedite the certification of results "appears to suggest the secretary's foregoing of its responsibility to confirm the accuracy of the results prior to final certification, including the assessment of whether serious provisional balloting count issues have been consistently and properly handled."[68][69]
On November 6, 2018, Abrams lost the election by 54,723 votes.[70] On November 16, 2018, Abrams announced that she was ending her campaign. She emphasized that her statement was not a concession, because "concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true, or proper", but acknowledged that she could not close the gap with Kemp to force a runoff.[71] In her campaign-ending speech, Abrams announced the creation of
Fair Fight Action, a voting rights nonprofit organization that sued the secretary of state and state election board in federal court for voter suppression.[72] Fair Fight was supported by Jess Moore Matthews and her
Backbone Digital Leaders and others committed to ensuring full representation[73]
Fair Fight's lawsuit was initiated in December 2018; according to Politico, it "started as a sprawling case that included allegations of unreasonably long lines and wait times caused by moving and closing polling places; the impact of voter ID rules on people of color, voters with non-Anglo Saxon names and newly naturalized citizens; improper maintenance of Georgia's voter rolls; inadequate training of poll workers; and even the integrity of voting machines".[74] Six months after the lawsuit began, the Georgia legislature passed a law addressing some of its claims, with measures including the implementation of new voting machines with more advanced technology.[75] Fair Fight dropped the claims about voting machines in December 2020, around the time that Donald Trump made baseless claims about voting machine problems in Georgia affecting the 2020 presidential election.[74] In February 2021, a federal judge ruled that Fair Fight's claims about voting machines, voter list security, and polling place issues were resolved by changes in Georgia's election law, or invalidated due to lack of
standing to sue.[75][76]
In April 2021, a judge allowed some claims in the legal challenge to proceed while rejecting others.[75] In October 2022, a federal judge ruled against Fair Fight on the remaining claims, finding that Georgia's voting regulations did not violate the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act.[77][78][79] According to the judge, the case "resulted in wins and losses for all parties over the course of the litigation and culminated in what is believed to have been the longest voting rights bench trial in the history of the Northern District of Georgia."[74][80][81] Over the course of the lawsuit, Fair Fight raised $61 million and paid millions to Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, Abrams's campaign chair.[74]
Since losing the election, Abrams has repeatedly said that the election was not fairly conducted[9] and has declined to call Kemp the legitimate governor of Georgia.[82] Abrams has since said that she won the election and that the election was "stolen from the voters of Georgia", claims that election law expert
Richard L. Hasen said were unproven, though he argued that "it's clear that Kemp did everything in his power to put in place restrictive voting policies that would help his candidacy and hurt his opponent, all while overseeing his own election."[83] Abrams argued 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.[9][84] 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."[9]
On November 9, 2018, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that its investigation of the 2018 statewide elections in Georgia had found "no evidence ... of systematic malfeasance – or of enough tainted votes to force a runoff election".[85] A USA Today fact check noted that the actions Kemp's office took during the election "can be explained as routine under state and federal law"; political scientist
Charles S. Bullock III said there is "not much empirical evidence supporting the assertion that Kemp either suppressed the vote or 'stole' the election from Abrams."[86]
According to Washington Post fact checker
Glenn Kessler, Abrams has variously claimed that she "won" the election, that the election was "rigged", that it was "stolen", that it was not "free and fair", and that Kemp had "cheated". Kessler said that "Abrams played up claims the election was stolen until such tactics became untenable for anyone who claims to be an advocate for American democratic norms and values".[87]
Role in federal politics
On January 29, 2019,
Senate minority leaderChuck Schumer (D-NY) announced that Abrams would deliver the
response to the State of the Union address on February 5.[88] She was the first African-American woman to give the rebuttal to the address, as well as the first and only non-office-holding person to do so since the State of the Union responses began in 1966.[89] Despite being heavily recruited by Schumer, the
Democratic National Committee, and the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to challenge incumbent senator
David Perdue, on April 30, 2019, Abrams announced that she would not run for the U.S. Senate in 2020.[90] After Senator
Johnny Isakson announced his resignation due to poor health, Abrams declined to run in that election as well, citing a need to focus on ending voter suppression.
On August 17, 2019, Abrams announced the founding of Fair Fight 2020,[91] an organization to assist Democrats financially and technically to build voter protection teams in 20 states.[92] Abrams is
Fair Fight Action 2020's chair.[93] Billionaire and former New York City mayor
Michael Bloomberg contributed $5 million shortly after announcing
his run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.[94][95] On
ABC's The View, Abrams defended Bloomberg's spending, saying: "Every person is allowed to run and should run the race that they think they should run, and Mike Bloomberg has chosen to use his finances. Other people are using their dog, their charisma, their whatever."[96] Abrams declined to endorse Bloomberg personally.[97]
On December 1, 2021, Abrams announced she would run again for governor of Georgia.[103] She ran unopposed in the Democratic primary on May 24, 2022, and faced Georgia governor
Brian Kemp in the November 8 general election.[104] Abrams and Kemp had their first of two scheduled debates on October 17. In the debate, Abrams emphasized her support for gun control and legal access to abortion, while Kemp emphasized Georgia's economy under his governorship and his anti-crime proposals.[105] When asked whether she would accept the results of the election, Abrams declined to directly respond.[106] In the final debate before the election both candidates agreed to accept the results.[107] Abrams lost the November 8, 2022 election to Kemp; she conceded that night.[12]
Political positions
Abrams supports
abortion rights, advocates for expanded
gun control, and opposes proposals for stricter
voter ID laws. She has argued that some implementations of voter ID laws disenfranchise minorities and the poor,[108][109] but does not oppose voter ID laws in principle and supports voters having to verify their identities.[110][111] Abrams pledged to oppose legislation similar to the
religious liberty bill that Governor Deal vetoed in 2016.[112][113]
Criminal justice reform
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.[108][114] She also supports
community policing to keep communities safe as part of criminal justice reform.[115]
Education
Abrams would like to increase spending on public education.[42] She opposes private school vouchers, instead advocating improvements to the public education system. She supports smaller class sizes, more school counselors, protected pensions, better pay for teachers, and expanded early childhood education.[116]
Health care
In her campaign for governor, Abrams said her top priority was
Medicaid expansion.[42][117] She cited research showing that Medicaid expansion improved health care access for low-income residents and made hospitals in rural locations financially viable.[117] She also created a plan to address Georgia's high maternal mortality rate.[118]
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Abrams is a strong supporter of
Israel and rejects "the demonization and delegitimization of Israel represented" by the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which she has called "anti-Semitic".[119][120] However, she voted against
Georgia's anti-BDS legislation that punishes companies that choose to boycott Israel or
Israeli-occupied territories.[121] Abrams wrote, "Boycotts have been a critical part of social justice in American history, particularly for African-Americans. As the
Anti-Defamation League notes, the origin of BDS is based in the anti-apartheid movement."[119]
Writing career
Outside of politics, Abrams has found success as a fiction writer. Until 2021, she published her works under the
pen name Selena Montgomery. She claims to have sold more than 100,000 copies of her novels.[39] She wrote her first novel during her third year at Yale Law School and published her most recent book in 2009.[122] Her legal thriller While Justice Sleeps was published (under her own name) in May 2021.[123] That novel is being produced as a television series by
Working Title Films, a
subsidiary of
Universal Pictures.[124][125] Her writing career and her political career connect through the fundraising event that she inspired,
Romancing the Runoff, where romance authors raised funds for voting rights in Georgia.[126]
Abrams has published articles on
public policy, taxation, and
nonprofit organizations.[128] 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),[129] and Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America (published by
Henry Holt & Co. in June 2020).[130]
Honors and awards
In 2012, Abrams received the
John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award from the
Kennedy Library and
Harvard University's Institute of Politics, which honors an elected official under 40 whose work demonstrates the impact of elective public service as a way to address public challenges.[131] In 2014 Governing Magazine named her a Public Official of the Year, an award that recognizes state and local official for outstanding accomplishments.[132] Abrams was recognized as one of "12 Rising Legislators to Watch" by the same publication in 2012[133] and one of the "100 Most Influential Georgians" by Georgia Trend for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.[134]
EMILY's List recognized Abrams as the inaugural recipient of the Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award in 2014.[135] She was selected as an Aspen Rodel Fellow[136] and a Hunt-Kean Fellow.[137] In 2014, Abrams was named 11th most influential African American aged 25 to 45 by The Root, rising to first place in 2019.[138][139] Abrams was named Legislator of the Year by the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals, Public Servant of the Year by the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Outstanding Public Service by the Latin American Association, Champion for Georgia Cities by the Georgia Municipal Association, and Legislator of the Year by the DeKalb County Chamber of Commerce.[140]
Abrams received the Georgia Legislative Service Award from the Association County Commissioners Georgia, the Democratic Legislator of the Year from the Young Democrats of Georgia and Red Clay Democrats, and an Environmental Leader Award from the Georgia Conservation Voters.[140] She is a lifetime member of the
Council on Foreign Relations,[141] a Next Generation Fellow of the American Assembly,[142] an American Marshall Memorial Fellow,[142] a Salzburg Seminar–Freeman Fellow on U.S.-East Asian Relations,[143] and a Yukos Fellow for U.S.–Russian Relations.[143]
Abrams received the Stevens Award for Outstanding Legal Contributions and the Elmer Staats Award for Public Service, both national honors presented by the Harry S. Truman Foundation.[144][145] She was also a 1994
Harry S. Truman Scholar.[146]
In 2001, Ebony magazine named Abrams one of "30 Leaders of the Future".[147] In 2004 she was named to
Georgia Trend's "40 Under 40" list,[148] and the Atlanta Business Chronicle named Abrams to its "Top 50 Under 40" list. In 2006 she was named a Georgia Rising Star by Atlanta Magazine and by Law & Politics Magazine.[149]
In 2019, Abrams received the Distinguished Public Service Award from the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs, where she obtained her Master's of Public Affairs in 1998. The award is the highest honor bestowed upon alumni of the school, with recipients selected by their fellow alumni. The award reflects her "remarkable leadership on behalf of her constituents as well as citizens all over this country", according to Dean Angela Evans.[151]
For her nonviolent campaign to get out the vote, Abrams has been nominated for a
Nobel Peace Prize.[152] In 2021, she was included in the
Time 100, Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.[153]
Abrams has completed seven international fellowships and traveled to "more than a dozen foreign countries" for policy work.[159][160] She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations[161] and spoke at CFR's Conference on Diversity in International Affairs in 2019.[162] She has also spoken at London's
Chatham House,[163] the National Security Action Forum,[164] and a conference hosted by the
Yale Kerry Initiative and Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.[165][166] In 2019, Abrams contributed an essay to Foreign Affairs magazine on how identity politics strengthens liberal democracy.[167][168]
Abrams was featured in All In: The Fight For Democracy, a documentary by
Lisa Cortés and
Liz Garbus about voter suppression in the United States. In it, she talks about her family's voting struggles in Mississippi and voter suppression during her 2018 Georgia gubernatorial campaign.[169]
On April 5, 2023
Howard University announced the appointment of Abrams to the inaugural Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics. The chair is housed in the Ronald W. Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center at Howard University.[171]
Personal life
Abrams is the second of six children born to Reverend Carolyn and Reverend Robert Abrams, originally of
Mississippi.[18] Her siblings include Andrea Abrams, U.S. district judge
Leslie Abrams Gardner, Richard Abrams, Walter Abrams, and Jeanine Abrams McLean.[172][173]
In April 2018, Abrams wrote an
op-ed for Fortune revealing that she owed $54,000 in federal back taxes and held $174,000 in credit card and student loan debt.[174] She was repaying the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) incrementally on a payment plan after deferring her 2015 and 2016 taxes, which she stated was necessary to help with her family's medical bills. During the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, she donated $50,000 to her own campaign.[175][176] In 2019, she completed payment of her back taxes to the IRS in addition to other outstanding credit card and student loan debt reported during the gubernatorial campaign.[177]
Abrams, Stacey (April 24, 2018). Minority Leader: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN978-1250191298.
OCLC1003252451.
Abrams, Stacey (June 9, 2020). Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN978-1250257703.
OCLC1145087492.
^Megía, Elena; Samuels, Alex (September 26, 2022).
"How Black Americans Reshaped Politics In Georgia". FiveThirtyEight.
Archived from the original on October 31, 2022. Retrieved October 31, 2022. [T]he wheels for a Democratic takeover were already set in motion when the party's gubernatorial nominee, Stacey Abrams, pioneered a new playbook focused on Black voters in 2018, something that nearly won her the governorship that year and motivated more Georgians to vote blue in 2020 and 2021...Abrams's close election in 2018, [Perry added], also might encourage Black Democrats to go out and vote, even in a midterm year.
^
abHakim, Danny; Saul, Stephanie; Thrush, Glenn (November 7, 2020).
"As Biden Inches Ahead in Georgia, Stacey Abrams Draws Recognition and Praise". The New York Times.
ISSN0362-4331.
Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved January 15, 2021. Celebrities, activists and voters across Georgia credited Ms. Abrams with moving past her loss — she came within 55,000 votes of the governor's mansion — and building a well-funded network of organizations that highlighted voter suppression in the state and inspired an estimated 800,000 residents to register to vote.
^Hasen, Richard L. (2020). Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy. Yale University Press. p. 116.
ISBN978-0300248197. As Ari Berman put it, 'We don't know – and may never know – how many people were disenfranchised or dissuaded from voting in the state. But it's clear that Kemp did everything in his power to put in place restrictive voting policies that would help his candidacy and hurt his opponent, all while overseeing his own election.'
^Jackson, Edwin L. (June 14, 2020).
"State Flags of Georgia". New Georgia Encyclopedia.
Archived from the original on August 2, 2018. Retrieved November 11, 2020.
^"Stacey Abrams 2012". www.jfklibrary.org. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.
Archived from the original on November 1, 2014. Retrieved December 6, 2014.
^"Stacey Abrams, Georgia". Governing. November 10, 2014.
Archived from the original on November 21, 2014. Retrieved December 6, 2014.
^Kennedy, Karen; Simo, Christy (December 31, 2014).
"100 Most Influential Georgians". Georgia Trend.
Archived from the original on January 6, 2015. Retrieved January 26, 2015.
^"30 Leaders of the Future". Ebony Magazine. Johnson Publishing Company. December 2001.
Archived from the original on November 24, 2020. Retrieved May 9, 2017.