Jason Hopkins on April 16, 2019
Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams cited “immature” media and their “incompetence” as reasons for her loss when discussing what happened during her bid for the governor’s mansion.
“I would attribute it less to racism and more to a very narrow and immature ability to navigate the story of my campaign,” Abrams said during an interview with The Root, an Afrocentric news outlet, when asked how the media handled her gubernatorial campaign.
While Abrams accused her opponents of using racist overtones during the election, she did not ascribe this same label to the press, but instead claimed they were inept at covering her correctly.
“I was doing a number of things that were new and different and discomforting to some,” she continued. “But what was worse was that, for a lot of those folks, they could not comprehend how all of these things could be true at the exact same moment. I wouldn’t necessarily ascribe any racial animus as much as I would a lack of—there was some incompetence in the coverage that was problematic.”
Later on in the interview, Abrams repeated her long-held claims that she was victim of an unfair election against then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, saying that “we don’t know” what the actual outcome would have been.
“I received more votes than any candidate in Georgia history, including Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton,” she told The Root. Abrams presumably meant to say any “Democratic” candidate in Georgia history. Republican Brian Kemp beat her by over 54,700 votes during the 2018 election.
Abrams also said African-Americans and Native Americans are entitled to reparations, calling them the two groups illegally disenfranchised by the U.S. government throughout history. However, when asked if she would be able to put forward a specific implementation plan for reparations during her next run for office, she said she didn’t “know enough” to have the answer.
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