Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D) said on Wednesdayâs episode of ABCâs âThe Viewâ that she never denied losing the 2018 governorâs 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.
âSo 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 didnât 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?â Hostin asked.
Abrams thanked Hostin for the question and said, âI have never denied that I lost. I donât live in the governorâs mansion. I would have noticed,â she said.Â
âAnd there is this clip thatâs 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 â18 in outstanding numbers,â Abrams said.
The gubernatorial candidate then clarified, âBut Iâm not delusional. Just so thatâs clear, but what we know was that the issues that we raised in â18, 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.â
âWe saw as a response, the state legislature the following year, in response to lawsuits that I filed and others, started to fix those problems,â Abrams said, pointing to voter turnout in 2020 when President Biden won the state.
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Abrams said as recently as last December During an interview with CNNâs âNew Dayâ that Kemp âwon under the rules of the game at the time, but the game was rigged against the voters of Georgia,â according to CNN. Several months earlier the New York Times reported on âWhy Stacey Abrams is still saying she won.â
Co-host of âThe Viewâ 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 âadmittingâ she didnât win the election, according to Fox News.
âThatâs such a rare thing,â Griffin said refrencing the politicianâs comments about the election.Â
âI did it on the day I didnât win,â Abrams said. âIâm not the governor, said that. The other is the election wasnât fair to voters. Also said that. In this country, we have the responsibility to challenge broken systemsâŚI donât 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.â
