For the first time in her campaign for Georgia’s top office, Stacey Abrams launched a TV ad targeting Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s support for an election overhaul that she’s framed as one of the most restrictive in the nation.
The 30-second spot coincides with a broader effort by Abrams to more assertively emphasize voting rights issues that dominated the 2018 midterm, when she emerged as a national advocate for ballot access while Kemp served as the state’s top election official.
The Democrat’s campaign on Wednesday spotlighted an event in Brooks County with members of “Quitman 10+2.” That’s the name of the group of Black activists in South Georgia who faced charges related to voter fraud after organizing an effort to flip control of the school board.
The charges were later dropped, but community members say they are still scarred from the 2010 saga, when four Black candidates won a majority of seats on a board that had always been controlled by white residents – leading to a state investigation into election law violations that later collapsed.
Dr. Diane Thomas, who won a board seat, slammed Kemp for doing “whatever it took” as secretary of state to pursue a state investigation she said was meant to intimidate voters.
“Brian Kemp used his power, used his position to destroy us. That’s Brian Kemp,” she said. “Brian Kemp was doing that in 2010. Brian Kemp is doing that now. Same Brian Kemp, different year.”
Abrams’ new ad, dubbed “Jim Crow 2.0,” focuses elsewhere. It features a snippet of Kemp’s remark in 2014 warning that Democrats were stepping up efforts to register minority voters. It also includes a partial Kemp quote in 2018 saying he was worried about Abrams’ voter turnout operation.
The spot invokes the law Kemp signed last year that banned mass mailings of absentee ballot applications, imposed ID requirements on mail-in ballots, eliminated paperless online ballot requests, set an earlier ballot request deadline and curtailed drop box availability.
“We have the power to stop Kemp’s voter suppression by voting for Stacey Abrams,” the narrator says in the ad’s closing.
Kemp’s spokesman said Abrams and “her desperate campaign should be ashamed of themselves” for the line of attack.
“The race-baiting lies in this despicable ad are beneath the office Stacey Abrams seeks to hold,” said Cody Hall, a Kemp deputy. “Thankfully, Georgia voters are seeing through this garbage and rejecting Stacey Abrams’ disgusting brand of self-obsessed, gutter politics.”
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