Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D) said on Wednesday’s episode of ABC’s “The View” that she never denied losing the 2018 governor’s race.
The question was brought up by co-host Sunny Hostin who noted that since this is her second run against current Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and with polling being so tight, questioned how things might go differently this time around.
“So this is your second run against incumbent Brian Kemp for governor, and polls show a tight race, especially the poll this morning. When you lost in 2018, you didn’t traditionally concede which I appreciated because you cited voter suppression. Are you confident that this will be a free and fair election, and not a repeat performance of what happened before?” Hostin asked.
Abrams thanked Hostin for the question and said, “I have never denied that I lost. I don’t live in the governor’s mansion. I would have noticed,” she said.
“And there is this clip that’s going around, and it shows me saying that we won, and what I was referring to was that we won in terms of communities that were long left out of the electoral process finally participating in ’18 in outstanding numbers,” Abrams said.
The gubernatorial candidate then clarified, “But I’m not delusional. Just so that’s clear, but what we know was that the issues that we raised in ’18, the fact that 214 precincts were shut down, that 53,000 people had their voter registrations held hostage, that 1.4 million people were purged, including half a million who simply had chosen not to vote, that we were able to tackle that because we raised the issues, because I refused to say that that was a good thing.”
“We saw as a response, the state legislature the following year, in response to lawsuits that I filed and others, started to fix those problems,” Abrams said, pointing to voter turnout in 2020 when President Biden won the state.
Watch the video below:
Sunny Hostin to Stacey Abrams: “When you lost in 2018, you didn't traditionally concede the election, which I appreciated, because you cited voter suppression…"
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 14, 2022
Stacey Abrams: "I have never denied that I lost… I’m not delusional, just so that's clear."pic.twitter.com/7ImDh7GuzH
Abrams said as recently as last December During an interview with CNN’s “New Day” that Kemp “won under the rules of the game at the time, but the game was rigged against the voters of Georgia,” according to CNN. Several months earlier the New York Times reported on “Why Stacey Abrams is still saying she won.”
Co-host of “The View” Alyssa Farah Griffin who served as the White House Director of Strategic Communications and an assistant to former President Donald Trump in 2020, thanked Abrams for “admitting” she didn’t win the election, according to Fox News.
“That’s such a rare thing,” Griffin said refrencing the politician’s comments about the election.
“I did it on the day I didn’t win,” Abrams said. “I’m not the governor, said that. The other is the election wasn’t fair to voters. Also said that. In this country, we have the responsibility to challenge broken systems…I don’t say things without evidence, and that I think is the distinction that is being lost in this attempt to conflate who I am and what I have done for the last four years with others.”
