Stacey Abrams kicked off her first round of campaign stops with a pledge to expand Medicaid in Georgia. Affordable healthcare is always a hot issue—but not as hot as one of the statements Abrams made on Monday night.
“I did the work and now I want the job,” Abrams said in west Atlanta last night, per AJC.
In December, Abrams announced that she would be facing off against Gov. Brian Kemp.
Kemp won by about 55,000 votes in 2018 amid claims of voter suppression. In response, Abrams launched Fair Fight, a voting rights advocacy group, and sued Georgia election officials, citing gross mismanagement of the process and voter suppression.
Her statement last night is clearly a reference to the allegedly stolen election.
Kemp spokesman Tate Mitchell reacted to Abrams’ remarks, claiming that Georgia through the pandemic, Abrams “spent her time chasing the covers of style magazines and running a shadow campaign for president.”
He added: “Georgians know who’s who.”
Abrams is one of the leading activists credited with flipping the state blue.
To launch her campaign, Abrams released a short campaign video.
“I was raised that when you don’t get what you want, you don’t give up. You try again. You try because it’s how things get better, it’s how the world moves forward,” she says. “I don’t quit because Georgians deserve leadership. And that’s what a leader does. That’s the job of governor.”
Abrams spoke to the audience about her father, who had prostate cancer 15 years ago. More recently, he was on the verge of sepsis.
“You see, I was able to pick up the phone and call. I was able to get him to a world-class hospital,” Abrams said. “He was able to get the care he needed, and when he ended up being back in the hospital for eight days, he had the support he needed. It makes no sense that in the state of Georgia, if he’d been a few miles away or a few counties away, my father would not be with us here today. That is a solvable problem. And by God, as governor of Georgia, I am going to fix it.”
