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I
t’s an intoxicatingly hot June af-
ternoon in Atlanta, and scores
of attendees at the African Amer-
ican Leadership Council Summit
are watching Stacey Abrams, in
a simple black-and-white shift
dress, take the stage. The air, un-
der twinkling hotel chandeliers,
is crackling: Congresswoman Maxine Wa-
ters has just declared to the crowd that she is
ready to impeach President Trump (to wild
applause). Now it’s Abrams’s turn.
“I have an announcement to make,” she
says, and the room is hushed, expectant. “We
won.” The audience erupts into cheers, and
Abrams takes a moment before adding, “I
realize I’m not the governor of Georgia.”
“Yes, you are!” several people shout back.
“I’m not taking the oath of office. I’m not
moving into the mansion.”
“OK, OK,” says a woman in the audience.
“They’re saying that because I didn’t get all
the numbers I needed, that somehow we failed
in our mission. We didn’t fail. In the state of
Georgia, we transformed our electorate.”
There is more cheering, and an air of rever-
ence in the room. Abrams’s run for governor
in 2018 ended in a loss of just 54,723 votes—a
stunning, public blow. And yet she emerged
from it as a kind of bellwether Democrat, a
vision of her party’s future. She tripled Lati-
no, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander
voter turnout and doubled youth partici-
pation in her state. She inspired 1.2 million
black Democrats in Georgia to vote for her
(more than the total number of Democrat-
ic gubernatorial voters in 2014). And she
gained the highest percentage of the state’s
white Democratic voters in a generation. All
of this despite widespread reports of voter
suppression and a Republican opponent,
Brian Kemp—Georgia’s then secretary of
state—who oversaw the purging of about
670,000 registered voters in 2017 alone. Some
53,000 voter registrations were still pending
a month ahead of the election.
Abrams refused to concede at first. “I
sat shiva for 10 days,” she tells me. “Then
I started plotting.” Many thought her next
move would be a run for the Senate (there
was the idea that Joe Biden was courting her
as a vice presidential pick, rumors she has
dismissed). But Abrams says her attention
shifted to something more vitally important:
saving American democracy itself. To this
end, Abrams set up two nonprofits: Fair
Count, devoted to making sure minority and
poor communities are counted in Georgia
during the census, and Fair Fight Action, an
organization that aims to register new voters
in her state and ensure that their votes areincluded. Fair Fight Action sued the Georgia
board of elections and secretary of state over
charges of voter suppression in Abrams’s
2018 race. The state has unsuccessfully filed
a motion to dismiss. Since then, Abrams has
been traveling around the country to give
speeches on her new life’s cause.
Abrams’s plain talk on voting rights has
become so popular these days that it shows
up in the stump speeches of many of the
Democratic presidential candidates, in-
cluding Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren,
and Beto O’Rourke. (Warren has called for
a constitutional amendment protecting the
right to vote.) Abrams’s fans also include
celebrities. Oprah Winfrey, Will Ferrell, and
John Legend were among those who came to
Georgia to help get out the vote in 2018, and
as the leadership summit in Atlanta winds
down, I see Alyssa Milano outside the hotel,
nearly unrecognizable in a backpack and
glasses as she checks her phone. Abrams’s
body woman, Chelsey Hall, greets and hugs
her, and then tells her boss in the car that she
saw the actress. “Oh, I was supposed to text
her,” Abrams says.
We’re headed to Krog Street Market, an
upscale food hall in a renovated warehouse.
Hall is ostensibly taking Abrams to one of
her favorite places for dumplings, but it is also
a chance for Abrams to show off her appeal.
As soon as she enters the market, people of
all ages and races begin approaching her with
grins and their phones.
At a soul-food stall, cashiers and cooks
surround her. “Are you a fan of chicken? Are
you vegan?” one asks. Abrams stops. “Are you
asking if I like chicken? I’m a black woman
from Mississippi; it’s like my religion,” she
says. The group laughs.
As Abrams makes her way to the exit, a
pair of women block her way. One is so excit-
ed, her hands are shaking. “You gonna run for
president?” she asks after they take a photo.
Abrams smiles. “I’m gonna run for
something.”Abrams, 45, grew up with five brothers and
sisters in Gulfport, Mississippi, a small lick of
a city on the Gulf Coast. Her mother was a li-
brarian at William Carey University, a private
Christian college, and her father worked in a
shipyard; they were also preachers and ran a
restaurant for Abrams’s great-aunt. She calls
her family “working poor”—they supported
themselves but were also not strangers to hav-
ing the power cut off. When Abrams was 10 or
11, the family attended a church across town,
passing a more wealthy neighborhood on the
way, and she and her siblings liked to imagine
which house theyPhotographed by Ethan James GreenON HER TERMS
After losing the
contested Georgia
gubernatorial race
in 2018, “I sat shiva
for 10 days,” Abrams
says. “Then I started
plotting.” Hair, Edward
Lampley; makeup,
Fara Homidi. Details,
see In This Issue.
Sittings Editor:
Carlos Nazario.