Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abrams is an American politician, lawyer, voting rights advocate, and author who became a nationally prominent figure in the Democratic Party. She served in the Georgia House of Representatives, including as minority leader, and was the party's nominee for governor of Georgia in 2018 and 2022. She is widely known for her work to expand voter access and registration, particularly in Georgia.

Early life

Stacey Yvonne Abrams was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1973 and grew up in Mississippi before her family relocated to Georgia. She has described her upbringing in a family that emphasized education, faith, and service. She graduated from Spelman College, earned a master's degree in public affairs from the University of Texas, and received a law degree from Yale Law School. She later worked as a tax attorney and began engaging in civic and community work in Atlanta.

Career

Abrams was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 2006, representing a district in the Atlanta area. She rose to become the House minority leader in 2011, the first woman and first African American to lead a party in the Georgia General Assembly. During her legislative tenure she worked on issues including the state budget, education, and voter access, and she founded organizations aimed at registering voters.

In 2018 she won the Democratic nomination for governor of Georgia, becoming the first Black woman to be a major party's nominee for governor in the United States. She lost a closely contested race to Republican Brian Kemp, the contest drawing national attention and disputes over voter access and election administration. In its aftermath she increased her national focus on voting rights, founding the organization Fair Fight to combat what she described as voter suppression and to support voter education and registration efforts. Her work was widely credited with helping boost voter turnout and registration in Georgia, and she became a sought-after surrogate and speaker for the Democratic Party nationally.

Recent work

Abrams ran again for governor of Georgia in 2022 and was again defeated by Brian Kemp. Alongside her political career she has built a substantial profile as an author, writing both nonfiction works on leadership and politics and, under her own name and the pen name Selena Montgomery, fiction including legal thrillers and romance novels. She has remained active in public life as a speaker, advocate, and commentator on democracy and voting access, and she is frequently cited as an influential organizer within the Democratic Party.