She and Lauren Groh-Wargo reveal how they did it.
When Stacey Abrams came to talk to the Opinion section in March 2019, four months removed from her loss in the 2018 Georgia governor's race, I asked her whether she thought the Democratic Party could make the churchgoing left a vital force not only in Southern politics but also nationally. I also asked what role her own faith played in the way she approached politics. |
She began her answer by talking about her parents, who were deeply involved in the local community in Gulfport, Miss., when Abrams was growing up there. She said that they had ministered to the homeless, to the poor and to the incarcerated. That was what their faith had led them to do. |
I think about that exchange every so often because Abrams went on to say that her parents were the model for everything she had done since. It popped into my mind when Georgia was called for President Biden and then again with more force when the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were declared the winners of the Senate runoffs in January. |
When Lauren Groh-Wargo came to talk to the Opinion section in March 2020, the world was already a vastly different place than it had been when we spoke with Abrams. Groh-Wargo wanted to tell us about the strategy Fair Fight Action, an organization that she ran and Abrams founded, was going to pursue to prevent voter suppression and expand the electorate, not only in Georgia but also throughout the United States. |
It was a very intense presentation, but the whole time Groh-Wargo was unspooling her plans, I was wondering how on earth they were going to do all that organizing — how would they knock on the doors and connect the people they wanted to in the cities, the suburbs and the rural regions of the state? — when it looked like the United States would have to lock down. Our office closed a week later. |
I mention all this because Abrams and Groh-Wargo were somehow able to bring their organizing skills to bear on the general election in November and the Senate runoffs in January despite the coronavirus pandemic. Now they are sharing their advice on "How to Turn Your Red State Blue." It's not hard to see Abrams's community-minded faith or Groh-Wargo's strategic tenacity in the piece they have written together. |
I can't describe all their advice here, but I did want to convey the bold flavor of their analysis. "Democrats," Abrams and Groh-Wargo write, "kept waiting for voters to be so disillusioned that they would come back into the fold. But we knew that this wasn't going to happen on its own." |
Instead, "State Democrats need a politics that people can vote for, embedded in what each particular state is facing. It should be grounded in truth and enhanced by national narratives, but not driven by them." |
It took Abrams and Groh-Wargo — and thousands of other strategists and activists — 10 years to win Georgia. That work is never fully done. But the next people who try to flip a red state now have a blueprint. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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