Our issue is priorities, and having sat on the Appropriations Committee and the Ways and Means Committee in the Georgia Assembly, I can tell you that we have the resources necessary to meet the needs of the state of Georgia. True to her technocrat tendencies, Abrams’ answer sounded like it was pulled from the executive summary of a think-tank white paper: “You don’t have to raise taxes to do this,” Abrams said, hands in front of her as she doled out statistics about Georgia’s robust budget. “But, I mean, are you talking about raising taxes?” “All that sounds great,” said Jan Brice, chairman of the chamber and executive director of a local senior living facility, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and traveled to Washington, D.C., for his inauguration. The first question was delivered with a polite smile … and a point. And that isn’t just an Atlanta issue, it’s a state issue.” 22 of 25 when it comes to small businesses, to mainstream businesses. For example, being one of the best places in the country to do business is a great thing, but we’re No. “And my mission is to continue to move forward on the good and then make sure we start to pick up where we falter. “The challenge in Georgia is that for every good thing we have, we have so many competing issues, competing needs that, I think, unfortunately, have gone unaddressed for the last 15 years,” Abrams told the 10 chamber members seated around her. Which is how Abrams, 44, came to be sitting at a glossy conference room table at the Valdosta Chamber of Commerce introducing herself as a businesswoman-turned-legislator and making the argument that expanding Medicaid and broadband access, providing quality child care for working parents and education for young children, are not just progressive talking points but pragmatic, pro-growth policies. In short, she has to appeal to voters for whom a black woman with a Yale law degree from the deep-blue island of big-city Atlanta represents a major departure from their ideal candidate for statewide office. By the time she reached her first stop of the day, a diner in the tiny town of Fitzgerald, nearly 200 miles from Atlanta, it had been nearly two hours since she had seen the last yard sign with her name on it.Ībrams is polling in a virtual tie with Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican nominee for governor, but strategists on both sides say if she is going to make history as the first black female governor in the nation, she first has to make inroads in the rural parts of the state, which tend to be whiter and more conservative. It’s a part of the state full of peanut and feed corn farms, and voting blocs that over the past two decades have been more favorable to Republican candidates. Stacey Abrams’ journey into the unknown began in the passenger seat of a Chevy Tahoe bound for south Georgia.
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