As decision day approaches for picking Georgia’s next governor, a new ad for Democrat Stacey Abrams claims she’s the only qualified candidate in the race.
The Democratic Party of Georgia is paying for the ad, which began airing Wednesday in the Atlanta television market.
It comes on the heels of a Georgia Republican Party ad launched Tuesday attacking Abrams on issues including gun control and unauthorized immigrant workers.
Abrams, the former Democratic leader in the Georgia House, and Brian Kemp, a former lawmaker and Georgia’s secretary of state, square off Tuesday in a too-close-to-call race to succeed GOP Gov. Nathan Deal.
With a Libertarian also on the ballot, a runoff between Kemp and Abrams is possible.
The plot
The ad opens with pictures of Abrams with her family and her degrees from Spelman College and Yale Law School.
“Having nothing, her mother said, was not an excuse for doing nothing, and so Stacey Abrams got to work, rose to leadership in the House,” the narrator says. “And so Stacey Abrams got to work.”
The ad shows Abrams speaking in the Georgia House and shaking hands with Deal.
Four unidentified individuals appear in the ad, giving Abrams credit for blocking a $150 million tax hike on working families, displaying a willingness to work with both parties, standing up for public education and helping create jobs.
The narrator says Abrams created a successful business and is “the only candidate qualified to be governor.”
The ad closes with Abrams, speaking to the camera and saying, “If you trust me with your vote, I’ll work hard every day to make Georgia proud.”
The context
In her tenure in the General Assembly, Abrams was known to work with Republicans on some issues, most notably with Deal on efforts to preserve the lottery-funded HOPE scholarship program, arguably the most popular state program.
The claim that she blocked a $150 million tax increase is based on her work in 2011 on a commission to study the state's tax system. News accounts show she made a case that a Republican proposal to cut income taxes while raising a sales tax on cable service would increase the amount most people paid. Abrams took home the data and came back with a report showing 82 percent of Georgia families would see their taxes go up. The tax overhaul failed, and Abrams boasts on the campaign trail that she single-handedly stopped the largest tax increase in Georgia history.
The response
Ryan Mahoney, the spokesman for Kemp’s campaign, said the ad left out parts of Abrams’ agenda, and he called her “too extreme for Georgia.”
Watch the ad
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