Check out the website: https://lenspoliticalnotes.com Look at the recent Political Notes and Len’s Letters on the website.
Governor: Political Note #402 Katie Hobbs Arizona Governor, Political Note #386 Gavin Newsom California Governor (The Recall), Political Note #432 Stacey Abrams, Georgia, Political Note #358 Laura Kelly Kansas Governor, Political Note #407 Janet Mills Maine Governor, Political Note #381 Gretchen Whitmer Michigan Governor, Political Note # 414 Steve Sisolak Nevada Governor, Political Note #426 Josh Shapiro Pennsylvania Governor, Political Note #431 Beto O’Rourke Texas Governor, Political Note #366 Tony Evers Wisconsin Governor.
Lt. Governor: Political Note #419 Matthew Dowd Texas Lt. Governor
Attorney General: Political Note #425 Chris Mann Kansas Attorney General, Political Note #415 Dana Nessel Michigan Attorney General, Political Note #367, Political Note #360 Aaron Ford Nevada Attorney General, Josh Kaul Wisconsin Attorney General
Secretary of State: Political Note #409 Bee Nguyen Georgia Secretary of State
December 11th, 2021 Political Note #432 Stacey Abrams Governor
2022 General Election
Georgia is the 8th largest state in the country. If Georgia and the other states that make up the 10 largest states (20% of the 50 states) each had Democratic Governors, more than 50% of America’s population would be led by a Democratic governor. The ten state Democratic majority would require:
- Gavin Newsom’s reelection in California (Pop: 39,538,223)
- Beto O’Rourke’s election in Texas (Pop: 29,145,505)
- Charlie Crist or Nikki Fried or Annette Taddeo’s election in Florida (Pop: 25,145,5050)
- Kathy Hochul or one of her competitors to be elected in New York (Pop: 20,201,249
- Josh Shapiro’s election in Pennsylvania (Pop: 13,002,700)
- JB Pritzker’s reelection in Illinois (Pop: 12,812,508)
- John Cranley or Nan Whaley’s election in Ohio (Pop: 11,799.448)
- Stacey Abram’s election in Georgia (Pop: 10,711,908)
- Roy Cooper is not up for reelection until 2024 in North Carolina (Pop: 10,439,388)
- Gretchen Whitmer’s reelection in Michigan (Pop: 10,077,331)
A sweep of those elections would be hard. There are those who look at the Democratic defeat in Virginia and say November 2, 2021 foreshadowed Democrats losing all over the country in November, 2022.
I think not. November, 2021 will be seen as the low point of American confidence in Joe Biden and the Democrats. We can see the shift away from that view already. It began with passage of the Roads, Bridges, Railroads, and Airport bill (called the Infrastructure Bill). It shifts more as Joe Biden demonstrates how to deal with a new Covid-19 problem and as the press is criticized for reporting negatively about him. It will shift more as Congress passes the climate crisis, parents and children, and elderly bill (called the reconciliation budget bill). =
We can and should look at the contests for leadership of these states with restored confidence. The Democrats in the ten largest states are producing formidable and appealing candidates. Not one of them, though, is more formidable or more appealing than Stacey Abrams of Georgia. She has cleared the field. No Democrats are challenging her. That’s not quite the case on the Republican side of the ledger. Governor Brian Kemp is facing five challengers, the most serious is former Senator David Perdue who Donald Trump persuaded to join the race and has now replaced former Democratic State Senator Vernon Jones in Trump’s affections.
Donald Trump is not fond of Governor Brian Kemp. A month and a half ago, Trump claimed that electing Stacey Abrams would be preferable to another term of Brian Kemp. Trump has no truck with Brian Kemp who refused to provide support for finding votes in Georgia and refused to claim that Trump was actually elected President. Perdue, on the other hand…… .
It is a long time between now and May or June 2022 when Georgia’s primary and run off are scheduled. According to recent polls, Stacey Abrams https://staceyabrams.com would defeat Jones next November (Perdue’s entrance is too recent for any public polls), but slightly trails Kemp. Only an amazing amount of voter suppression would keep Stacey Abrams’ voters from going to the polls. She is an icon around the nation and an icon at home in Georgia.
While it is not the same as money raised for her campaign, the PAC she created will spend on campaigns nationally and can and will spend money on the Georgia gubernatorial campaign. As of July, it had raised more than $100 million. Kemp is not a slouch as fund raising. He has already raised just under $12 million for his campaign. Can he keep up with Stacey Abrams? In 2018, Stacey Abrams outraised Kemp in 2018 $27 million to $22 million. David Perdue, on the other hand, raised over $100 million in his losing Senate campaign in 2020. The 2024 election will be more expensive. Stacey Abrams will raise a lot of money and needs to. (Consider that a clue to how much you should increase your giving to Stacey Abrams and to other Democrats).=
In 2022, Stacey Abrams, will not be running alone in Georgia. She will be accompanied by Incumbent US Senator Raphael Warnock, the former senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church where Martin Luther King Jr and Sr were once senior pastors. She helped Raphael Warnock get elected in 2020 to complete the final two years of a US Senate six-year term by registering voters. In 2020, Georgia had a million more voters registered than in 2016. Georgia Republicans are trying to get rid of these voters and others and to prevent anything like that increase for 2022. Together, Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock will be powerful together. Alone, Stacey Abrams is one of a kind.
Stacey Abrams has an extraordinary story. Begin with an event from her childhood and one from her youth.
- She spent her childhood in Mississippi. Chosen as one of MIssissippi’s representatives to a Girl Scout convention, her mother left her at the airport gate. The white girl scouts, (she was the only Black) left without her. Nevertheless, she persisted. Bad weather required her to stay overnight alone. She flew to the convention a day late and hung out with kids from states that were not Mississippi.
- She moved with her parents to Georgia, who were studying at Emory to become pastors. Invited to the Georgia governor’s mansion along with other class valedictorians, a guard would not let Abrams and her family in. She remembers how hard her father had to work to explain and persuade so that they could go in. She remembers nothing else about the event, but she did participate. She remembers what she was thinking. She focused on a goal — become Governor of Georgia so she could not be turned away.
Stacey Abrams continued her career, looking brilliant, but conventional, fooling most people about the conventional part. She graduated magna cum laude in 1995 from Spelman College and was awarded a Truman Scholarship. With that scholarship she studied law at Yale and public policy at the University of Texas, earning an MPA from Texas in 1998 and a JD from Yale in 1999. She joined an Atlanta law firm specializing in, among other things, tax law. She was all set to become prosperous or more than prosperous.
Stacey Abrams took a different turn. In 2002 she became a Deputy City Attorney in Atlanta and in 2006 was elected to the Georgia General Assembly. She became the House Minority Leader in 2010 – the role she had when she announced her run for Governor in 2018. She lost that race by a little over one percentage point.
Had this been the only thing that she did, it would have been enough to make her a strong and interesting candidate to run again for Governor in 2012. She has done more.
- While at Yale, she wrote a novel under the name of Selena Montgomery. This was the first of her eight romance novels. She has sold a lot of books. Her last romance novel was published in 2009.
- In 2010, while she was Minority Leader, she co-founded a financial services company. They helped small businesses get their invoices paid. They are still operating.
- Beginning in 2012 she wrote the occasional article for what is now Huff Post
- In 2018, she published a book about leadership
- In the run up for 2020, she rejected efforts to run for the US Senate, saying her focus was on preventing voter suppression. She did encourage Joe Biden to consider her for Vice President, though.
- In 2020, she published an inspirational political book, Our Time is Now
- In 2021, she published a mystery, While Justice Sleeps
Stacey Abrams has announced her goals. As Governor of Georgia, she would expand Medicaid access under the Affordable Care Act, increase spending on education, reduce reliance on cash bail for those arrested, decriminalize possession of marijuana, and abolish the death penalty. She is not a radical, not a gubernatorial version of the squad. As the first African American Governor of Georgia and the first woman to be Georgia’s governor, she would transform the political conversation in her home state and nationally.
In 2018 and again in this run, Republicans may make general comments about Stacey Abrams’ views – arguing that she is a socialist, say. They rarely criticize her role in the Georgia state legislature where, among other things, she prevented the imposition of what would have been the largest tax increase in the state to date.
Republicans criticize her personally because there was a point when she was more than $200,000 in debt – to the IRS, for student loans, and for credit cards.
Stacey Abrams explained her financial situation in an article in Fortune magazine. She described her reliance on student loans and credit cards through college, law school, and graduate school. She described her salary as an attorney in a big firm and the financial obligation she took on when her parents took in her drug addicted brother’s infant child. She put this all in the context of the financial obstacles the poor, women, and Blacks face, said our obligations are to overcome or circumvent those obstacles. She described how she has welcomed the opportunity to pay down her debts, which she is in the process of doing.
Let’s get Stacey Abrams https://staceyabrams.com elected. Let’s put her in a position to minimize the obstacles faced by the poor and to help them overcome those obstacles where they cannot be minimized. Expanding the availability of Medicaid is an example of that. Make a difference for Georgia and the nation. While you are donating to her campaign, consider a donation to Fair Fight https://fairfight.com . You will be on your way to creating a better country.
Help elect Democratic Governors in 2021
Incumbent Governors and a candidate for an Open Democratic Seat to Support
Kansas Laura Kelly (Toss up) https://www.laurakellyforkansas.com
Maine Janet Mills (Likely D) https://www.janetmills.com/
Michigan Gretchen Whitmer (Lean D) https://www.gretchenwhitmer.com
Minnesota Tim Walz (Likely D) https://walzflanagan.org
Nevada Steve Sisolak (Likely D) https://stevesisolak.com
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (Toss Up) https://joshshapiro.org to keep Tom Wolf’s seat Democratic
Wisconsin Tony Evers (Lean D) https://tonyevers.com
Candidates to flip Republican Governors.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs https://www.katiehobbs.org will be the nominee against any of 5 Rs now running (Toss up)
Texas Ex Congressman Beto O’Rourke https://betoorourke.com has announced and will be the nominee (Likely R)
Arkansas Chris Jones https://chrisforgovernor.com is an interesting opponent for Sara Huckabee Sanders for this open Republican seat (Safe R)
Georgia Ex State House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams https://staceyabrams.comwill be the nominee (Lean R) against Inc Brian Kemp or one of his challengers
In some states, we don’t know who the Democratic nominee will be
Florida Ex Gov and Rep Charlie Crist and Ag Commissioner Nikki Fried are the principal competitors for the Democratic nomination (Lean R)
Ohio Mayors John Cranley and Nan Whaley have announced for this seat where the Republican governor is facing a primary challenge (Likely R)
Maryland I count eight candidates so far for this formerly Republican open seat (Lean D)
Organizations to support
The Democratic National Committee (DNC). https://democrats.org
The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) https://www.dscc.org
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) https://dccc.org
The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) https://democraticgovernors.org
The Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) https://dems.ag
The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) https://demsofstate.org
The Democratic (State) Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) https://dlcc.org
Fair Fight https://fairfight.com Stacey Abrams organization to support fair elections
National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NRDC) https://democraticredistricting.com Led by Eric Holder
The Lincoln Project https://lincolnproject.us. Ex Republicans with tough messaging.
Three Cautions while donating through Act Blue (most Democratic candidates use Act Blue for online donations)
- Take care to hit the donate button only once. If you hit it a second time, you could be charged for two donations instead of one.
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- Watch for your receipt. If the receipt indicates a donation different from your intention, reply to Act Blue via the receipt right away. They will fix your donation. They want you to donate only what you intend to donate.
Support Stacey Abrams. She is an icon nationally and at home for her opposition to voter suppression and for her focus on being Governor of Georgia
