Plenty of ambitious politicians dream of running for the White House when they're pursuing other public office. Few speak candidly about them in the middle of a heated election.
That's exactly what Democrat Stacey Abrams did in a lengthy interview with a reporter for Cosmopolitan. That piece opens with this blunt assessment:
If all goes as planned, the earliest Stacey Abrams would run for president is in 2028. Not 2020 — that's too soon. Not 2024 — the Democrat who vanquishes President Trump in 2020 will be up for re-election. No, the first opportunity is 2028. That's her year.
The feature story goes on to explain she charted out her life’s plan in an Excel sheet with goals including eradicating poverty, winning the gubernatorial election and, yes, getting elected president. First, of course, she must win her party's nomination and wage an uphill battle against a Republican in November.
Her campaign had no comment on the White House ambitions, though her supporters say there’s nothing wrong with Abrams highlighting a goal she’s had since she was a young woman.
In the Cosmo piece, Abrams makes clear that her primary goal is to eradicate poverty, which she calls "morally repugnant," and that implementing new economic initiatives aimed at helping struggling citizens as governor is just the start:
"But I think once I've figured it out, once we've tested it, and we've made sure the models work, and once you've been able to work with the other 49 states and the territories to figure out what can make the most sense, I think then it makes sense to think about the next job," she told the magazine. "And that job would be running for president." (Greg Bluestein)
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Atlanta Councilwoman Mary Norwood is set to announce another wave of endorsements. She plans a Tuesday conference to pick up the support of former Fulton County Commission chair John Eaves and the AFSCME Local 1644 labor union. On Monday, former Mayor Shirley Franklin and one-time rival Peter Aman backed her campaign.
Meanwhile, her rival Keisha Lance Bottoms got an unusual show of support: New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife both backed her campaign. She also signed a string of veteran operatives to help her campaign. They include: Jeff DiSantis, a former Democratic Party of Georgia executive director who ran Vincent Fort's mayoral bid; Erica Pines, a former chair of the Fulton County Democratic Party; and Jeff Romig, a consultant whose clients include state Sen. Elena Parent and state Rep. David Dreyer.
Check out our running tally of big-name endorsements here. (GB)
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A woman with possible ties to Atlanta was part of a busted scheme to trick The Washington Post into publishing a fabricated story about Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore. After the newspaper confronted the woman, who identified herself as Jaime Phillips, about a GoFundMe page to raise money to fight the mainstream media, the page was quickly taken offline.
Efforts by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to contact Phillips and to confirm the Post's reporting on the Atlanta ties weren't immediately successful Monday night.
A Jaime Tennille Phillips, also known as Jaime Tennille Kahl, held a mortgage loan originator license in Georgia that was voluntarily surrendered in September 2016, according to state records available online in a public database of national mortgage industry licensure information.
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Gov. Nathan Deal set aside $35 million in funding for an expansion of a cybersecurity training center in Augusta that will serve as an incubator for tech startups, the headquarters of the state's new cybercrime unit and training space for Georgia's high-tech initiatives. The infusion of funding comes after Deal announced earlier this year a $58 million program to create the cyber-security center in Augusta. The construction of the facility will begin immediately and is set to finish late next year. (GB)
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