12 MOTHER JONES |^ MAY JUNE 2018
OUTFRONTMELISSA GOLDENREDUXon a warm Friday evening in late
February, Stacey Abrams held a fund-
raiser at Old Lady Gang, a popular Atlanta
soul food restaurant owned by Kandi
Burruss, the star of The Real Housewives
of Atlanta. Abrams is running for gover-
nor of Georgia. If she wins, she won’t just
be the state’s first black female governor,
but the nation’s. Every detail of this eve-
ning had been strategically planned to
play up Abrams’ appeal to black women.
Nearly all of the hundred or so donors
had just come from Power Rising, a con-
ference about black women in politics.
The celebrity host was Erika Alexander,an actress and producer best known for
her role in the ’90s sitcom Living Single. A
who’s who of black women Democratic
oiceholders had shown up to support
Abrams: Rep. Frederica Wilson, the be-
dazzled-cowboy-hat-wearing Florida
congresswoman who chastised Presi-
dent Donald Trump for allegedly tell-
ing the widow of a dead soldier that
“he knew what he signed up for”; Rep.
Gwen Moore, Wisconsin’s first black
representative; and Rep. Alma Adams, a
veteran lawmaker from North Carolina
known for her collection of more than
1,100 church hats.Abrams is a tall, sturdy woman with a
warm, gap-toothed smile. Taking the
stage in a deep purple dress, the 44-year-
old dived into a story about the time she
was chosen to represent her home state
of Mississippi at the Girl Scouts’ na-
tional conference in the mid-’80s. “But
there were some folks in our Girl Scout
troop who were unhappy with me”—a
black girl—“being selected,” she said.
When she got to the airport, she found
out that someone had changed her res-
ervation. “They thought if they left me
behind, I’d stay gone.” Instead, she got
on her first flight ever and traveled by
herself to Arizona. “There are gonna be
a lot of people who try to stop you from
getting on that plane,” she told the rapt
audience. “There are a lot of people or-
ganizing themselves to make sure I land
at the wrong destination. There are
folks who don’t think it’s time for a
black woman to be governor of any
state, let alone a state in the Deep
South. But there’s no wrong time for a
black woman to be in charge.”
A prolific author who penned
romantic thrillers before she en-
tered politics, Abrams excels at telling
stories—particularly tales in which a
protagonist encounters an evil, resists
the urge to give up, and charges into the
unknown. “Faith is diicult,” she says.
“That’s why the Bible talks about it so
much.” Abrams’ quest to become the
first black woman governor is a leap
of political faith. While she needs her
peers’ support, she also needs to build a
coalition of young people, immigrants,
and whites—including Republicans
who are uncomfortable with Trump’s
flirtation with white nationalism. Some
have dubbed this the “new Southern
strategy.” But to make such an ap-
proach work, Abrams must appeal to
people who usually don’t vote for can-
didates who look like her.
Born in 1973, the second of six chil-
dren, Abrams grew up in Gulfport,
Mississippi. Her mother was a school
librarian and her father was a ship-MAJORITY REPORTGEORGIA ON HER MIND
Stacey Abrams wants to be America’s first black woman governor. First, she has to build a delicate coalition.