Stacey Abrams and Voting-Rights Allies Spurn Biden’s Atlanta Events

(Bloomberg) -- Stacey Abrams, the voting-rights activist and Georgia governor candidate, isn’t joining President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Atlanta for a Tuesday speech and appearances devoted to legislation that would guarantee access to the polls.

Abrams, who led get-out-the-vote efforts that swung the state to Biden and sent two Democrats to the U.S. Senate, has a scheduling conflict, according to spokesperson Seth Bringman. Biden had a “warm conversation” with Abrams and they remain united on the issue, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said. 

Many voting-rights organizers who worked closely with Abrams won’t join the delegation, which includes most of the state’s party leaders. Some issued an open letter, dismissing Tuesday’s visit as “an empty gesture, without concrete action.”

Reliably Republican for two decades, Georgia has become one of the country’s most-watched political battlegrounds. The state’s growing population of minority and young voters helped deliver the victories, a demographic boost that will be put to the test this year, as Abrams runs for governor and one of the two new senators, Rafael Warnock, defends his seat.

The state is also a battleground over voting rights and election-fraud claims. Georgia’s Republican-led legislature was among the first to pass voting restrictions in response to the party’s losses. Republican incumbents who did not sign on to then-President Donald Trump’s push to overturn the results are being punished there as he champions opposing candidates in the Republican primary. They include Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Fallon McClure, an organizing director for the Working Families Party, which was part of the grassroots network mobilized by Abrams last year, said the president owes it to the state not to come.

“Georgia showed up and saved the country,” McClure said. “Promises were made and they haven’t been kept. He doesn’t need to be talking to us. He needs to be talking to the holdouts and getting these things passed.”

Cliff Albright, executive director of Black Voters Matter, said Biden’s appearance is a poor use of critical time, and that anything short of a plan to pass a federal voting-rights law by next week’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is unacceptable. 

“He could have given a speech directly at the Senate,” Albright said. “We’re actually losing a day of potential legislative action.” 

Both Albright and Latosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said they wouldn’t attend the events with the president.

Continuous Struggle

The leaders of another voting-rights organization, the New Georgia Project, which Abrams founded, also shunned today’s visit. Nse Ufot, its chief executive officer, said that she hasn’t heard a realistic plan to pass legislation that will protect voters’ rights. 

She noted that Georgia’s state legislature began its session this week and that Republican legislators are expected to consider additional changes to voting laws. “They are taking a sledgehammer to our voting infrastructure, “ Ufot said.

James Woodall, state president of the NAACP, said people working to protect voting rights are tired of platitudes and that a tweet Biden sent Tuesday referring to the judgment of history was full of them. 

“If that’s what he’ll be sharing in Georgia, that’s unacceptable,” Woodall said. “We don’t need to hear about how this will be seen by history. We need leadership. We need action. We need a timeline.”

The voting-rights leaders say they want Biden to give full support to altering Senate rules that allow a minority to block legislation.

“We need a timeline on exactly how and when he will restore the Senate,” Woodall said. ”We need to get this legislation passed.”

Constricted Access

Woodall said the state is already seeing fallout from a state law governing voting rules that Republican lawmakers passed last year. Trump has falsely claimed the state’s election was rigged, and pressured the Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to let him win.

“We’ve seen six out of seven polling precincts closed in Lincoln County, Georgia,” Woodall said. “We have seen county election officials removed from their posts simply because they are African-American and Democrats. We’ve seen the entire county board being investigated in Fulton County, which is the most populous in the state. We have a Big Lie supporter running for secretary of state.” 

He accused Republicans of using local election statutes to take control of the boards that certify elections, with no real response from Washington. 

The president and vice president are scheduled to stop at some of Atlanta’s most historic sites, including Ebenezer Baptist Church, Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University.

“Georgia will not be used as a two-dimensional backdrop, a chess piece in someone else’s ineffectual political dealings,” the letter from voting rights advocates read. “Georgia voters are more than just convenient props in a political image game.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.