Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on campaign ads: I'll fight you, but I won't lie

Jul. 16—ALBANY — Democrat Stacey Abrams likens Gov. Brian Kemp, her Republican opponent in the Georgia gubernatorial race, to a slick used car salesman.

"He'll show you a nice, shiny vehicle with a polished grill and new tires," Abrams said during a conversation with The Albany Herald Friday on a campaign swing through southwest Georgia. "But he's just hoping no one will look under the hood. See, it's the engine that matters most. And Brian Kemp's not telling the people of Georgia the whole story. He's not talking about the engine."

Abrams, who lost to Kemp by a handful of votes in a contentious 2018 governor's race in which the Republican actually attempted, in his role as the sitting secretary of state, to trim the voting rolls by hundreds of thousands even as he campaigned, a move that was overturned by a federal judge, got a bit of good news/bad news as she set out for south Georgia Friday. Her latest campaign financial report showed that she had raised $22 million over two months to Kemp's $6.8 million, but the latest poll commissioned by AARP showed the Republican incumbent with a 7-point lead.

Asked about the differences in the current campaign and the 2018 campaign, Abrams quickly offered up a single word: COVID.

"COVID revealed the weakness of our health care infrastructure as it relates to the political divide," she said. "I think that because of COVID, now more than ever Georgians want to be seen and heard, and not just a certain group of Georgians. People of the state want to know that there's someone who understands their pain more acutely. And that's the whole state, not pockets here and there.

"For much of Georgia, the people believe they've fallen behind and have been left behind. That's why 'One Georgia' has become a mission statement for my campaign."

Abrams said COVID revealed how deeply health care has become the state's No. 1 priority, and she said — just as she did in '18 — that expansion of Medicaid would go a long way in solving health care issues among the state's poorest citizens.

"A half-million Georgians would receive health care with the expansion of Medicaid," she said. "And, let's face it, there aren't that many good-paying jobs in southwest Georgia and other rural areas of the state that offer adequate health insurance. You'd think that our leaders would want a healthier population.

"The expansion also would give access to mental health care and take that problem out of the hands of law enforcement. Right now, law enforcement is the No. 1 provider of mental health care in our state."

Abrams acknowledges that she's seen the political ads that appear to have her saying she favors "defunding the police," but she scoffs at the legitimacy of the ad.

"What Brian Kemp's campaign does is they take snippets of what's said and edit them to appear that something was said that fits their narrative," she said, bristling at the mention of the ad. "I won't do that kind of thing. Yeah, I'll fight you. But I'm not going to lie about your position to try and confuse voters. I've been told all my life that a lie of omission will send you to hell just as quickly as a lie of commission. And that's what this is.

"Look, in 2020 we were in the middle of a litany of racial violence perpetrated against black people by law enforcement. The community that was most harmed was saying, 'Stop hurting us.' They used a slogan ('Defund the Police') to reflect their anger, and I wasn't going to try to sanitize their slogan."

The Democrat said she has always supported law enforcement.

"I know how important law enforcement is," she said. "I'm not an activist; I'm running to be governor of this state. And I understand the concerns on both sides of this issue.

"I don't believe in defunding public safety, I believe in paying them a fair wage — and not just state troopers, but all law enforcement — and holding them accountable for their actions. This even impacts our prison system where prisoners are being abused and their families extorted. We need a plan in place. Gov. (Nathan) Deal saw that, and he improved the state prison system over his eight years with reforms that worked. Then Brian Kemp came in and eviscerated the system."

Abrams said the $5,000 raises that Kemp gave teachers over his four years in office "amounts to nothing when you consider inflation." She said she has a plan to increase teachers' starting salaries from $39,000 to $50,000, a plan that she said the state can afford.

"Go to my website; we've done the math," she said. "The state can afford it. The problem is the current governor doesn't want to use the capital that the state has amassed to help the people who need help most.

"Teachers are facing oversized classes, and they're leaving the profession in large numbers. We have to stop the drain, pay these professionals a living salary."

Abrams said before heading to her next event that the state must do more to take care of its veterans, many of whom are homeless, and the next governor must be willing to tackle the state's top issues: education, health care, public safety and economic development.

"Economic development underpins everything," she said. "While people like Brian Kemp were making money off PPP, there were black, Latino and other small business owners who did not get a dollar.

"We need a governor who looks out for all Georgians, not just a select few."