Stacey Abrams’ push to be Joe Biden’s VP choice has raised her profile – but she is an underdog
One of Abrams’ selling points, according to Nadia Brown, associate professor of political science and African American Studies at Purdue University, is her record on voting rights, particularly her work to increase voter turnout among black people.
“Her appeal for black women and black voters is that she has done a tremendous amount of grassroots mobilization and has galvanized a crowd of supporters that would ordinarily sit outside of American politics,” Brown said. “So she shows that she can draw people into the process and hopefully expand the electorate in 2020.”
Abrams’ gubernatorial candidacy drew out record numbers of black, Latino and Asian voters, she said following her loss. Top tier celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Will Ferrell supported her campaign.
“We tripled Latino turnout, we tripled Asian Pacific Islander turnout, we increased youth participation rates by 139%, we increased black turnout by 40%,” Abrams said in an interview with The Nation last year. “To put that in context: in 2014, a total of 1.1 million Democrats voted. In 2018, 1.2 million black people voted — for me.”
And yet, Abrams suffered a narrow loss to now-Gov. Kemp, who at the time was also the state official overseeing election rules. She blames the loss on his efforts to suppress black turnout.
On the campaign trail, Kemp repeatedly denied allegations of voter suppression. But the House Oversight and Reform Committee announced in March 2019 that it was investigating the claims.
After his victory, Kemp suggested to news outlets that the investigation was a distraction. “They need to quit playing politics up there,” Kemp said at a news conference. Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney released a memo in February confirming that “officials in multiple states,” including Georgia, “took steps to suppress the vote.” The statement noted that the Senate has blocked efforts on legislation to combat the alleged abuses.
Just days after her loss, Abrams founded Fair Action Fight, an organization meant to address and eliminate voter suppression.
During Georgia’s primary on Tuesday, voters in areas with a strong minority populations encountered multiple problems voting, including long lines, delayed start times at polling locations and technical issues with new voting machines, as activists again accused Republican state officials of trying to suppress the vote.
“If anything, this moment speaks to why the Democrats need her on the presidential ticket,” said Niambi Carter, assistant professor of political science at Howard University. “Voter suppression is one reason why Democrats continue to lose elections and Abrams, with good reason, is one of the key figures in the fight for voting rights.”
Biden’s likelihood of winning Georgia would go up if he selects Abrams to be his running mate, said Charles Bullock, political science professor at the University of Georgia. Abrams, a native of Mississippi, could help Biden win what Bullock calls “the Southern path” of Georgia, North Carolina and Florida.
President Donald Trump won all of those states in 2016, but some of them are in play this cycle. Trump and Biden are essentially tied in North Carolina, according to RealClearPolitics, while Biden leads in Florida by about 3 points. Data from Georgia has been scant, but Real Clear Politics polling averages have Trump up on Biden in the state. They also show, however, that the president’s approval rating in the state is underwater.
Abrams could also help Biden among white women who voted for Trump in 2016, Brown said.
“I think George Floyd’s murder on the viral video is likely going to push white women to say that there should be a black woman vice president even at the expense of someone like [Sen. Amy] Klobuchar,” Brown said. The Minnesota senator, who ran for president and is white, was reportedly under consideration to be Biden’s running mate.
Floyd, an unarmed black man, was killed by law enforcement on Memorial Day in Minneapolis. Research shows that white women respond emotionally to “humanitarian causes” like the Black Lives Matter movement, Purdue’s Brown said, and are likelier to support a black woman candidate in this moment because of it.
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/14/biden-running-mate-stacey-abrams-underdog-push-for-vp.html