THENEWYORKER,AUGUST19, 2019 35
since his Inauguration, and Perdue’s
close ties to the President may make
him vulnerable in the suburbs, where
Abrams fared well. She was less san-
guine about the part that would come
next. The prestige of the Senate does
not, in her estimation, offset its torpid
pace of change. “It is a more indirect
approach than the one I see for myself,”
she said. “When I thought through who
would be the best advocate in the U.S.
Senate for Georgia, under the structure
of the Senate, that was not me.”
Yet Republican control of the Sen-
ate has been key to some of the issues
that most concern her. If it weren’t for
the confirmation of Kavanaugh to the
Supreme Court, an imminent challenge
to Roe v. Wade would be much less likely.
Similarly, the Supreme Court ruling in
Shelby County v. Holder left open
the possibility that Congress could cre-
ate an updated standard for voter pro-
tection. One such effort is the Voting
Rights Advancement Act of 2015, which
was co-sponsored by John Lewis, the
longtime Georgia congressman and
civil-rights leader. The bill, among other
things, calls for any jurisdiction that’s
been found to have committed repeated
voting-rights violations in the past
twenty-five years to be re-subjected to
preclearance for ten years. Abrams has
testified twice this year before Congress
in support of such measures. (The Fair
Fight Action lawsuit calls for Georgia
to be put back under preclearance re-
quirements.) A new voter-protection
standard has almost no chance of pass-
ing the Senate now. It could, though, if
Democrats gain control of the chamber.
Then there is still the question of the
governorship. Abrams could run against
Kemp again, in 2022, though some as-
pects of the past campaign are still being
fought. In April, Kemp signed two
significant bills that addressed some of
the issues raised by Democrats and the
Common Cause lawsuit, such as ex-
tending the “use it or lose it” period and
insuring protections for voters using ab-
sentee and provisional ballots. New vot-
ing machines will be installed by next
year, though there are concerns about
security. And the new secretary of state,
Brad Raffensperger, has opened an in-
vestigation into the forty-seven hun-
dred absentee-ballot applications that
were reported missing.
But, also in April, David Emadi, the
new head of the Georgia Ethics Com-
mission, subpoenaed financial records
and correspondence from Abrams’s cam-
paign, to investigate contributions from
four groups that, according to the sub-
poenas, may have exceeded the limit for
statewide candidates. Groh-Wargo called
the move “insane political posturing,”
and pointed out that Emadi was a donor
to Kemp. (He contributed six hundred
dollars to Kemp’s 2018 bid.) Emadi said
in a statement that audits and investi-
gations of all the campaigns are ongo-
ing and that “all of these candidates
enjoy the presumption of innocence in
these matters unless and until evidence
indicates otherwise.”
There is also the question of whether
Abrams will run for President. Support-
ers have been calling on her to do so
since last year. (In January, she delivered
a well-received response to Trump’s State
of the Union—an honor generally
afforded to a high-ranking officeholder.)
A few months ago, she was mentioned
in the press as a potential running mate
for Biden—a development that caught
her off guard. She had met with him,
but they did not discuss a joint ticket.
When I asked her about that possibil-
ity, she promptly shut it down: “I don’tbelieve you get into a race to run for
second place.”
Abrams defended Biden earlier this
year against allegations of inappropriate
behavior with women, saying, “We can-
not have perfection as the litmus test.
The responsibility of leadership is not to
be perfect but to be accountable.” She
was equally politic when I asked her about
Biden’s dispute with Kamala Harris, par-
ticularly over his history of opposing bus-
ing: “While America must reckon with
its past, my focus is on how the next Pres-
ident will address the persistent issue of
inequity in public education.” Her name
will likely continue to show up on vari-
ous shortlists for the Vice-Presidency.
What is not likely to change, at least
in the short term, is the dynamic of the
contest between two political directions,
one of inclusion, one of resentment.
Abrams told me, “What we did in our
campaign was realize that the funda-
mentals are true for everyone. Everyone
wants economic security. Everyone wants
educational opportunity for their chil-
dren and for themselves.” It’s an opti-
mistic view—a belief that people are mo-
tivated more by their common aspirations
than they are by their tribal fears. Abrams’s
own future, no matter what she does
next, hinges on that being true.“ Yours is a most impressive résumé, and you’ve scented it with beef.”