SAVANNAH, Ga. — A wholesale overhaul of how to confront systemic poverty in Georgia. A multipronged plan to combat the scourge of climate change. A set of policy changes to address the state’s growing affordable housing crisis.
Stacey Abrams has unveiled dozens of proposals to tackle stubborn policy dilemmas if she breaks a 20-year GOP hold on the state’s highest office and is elected the first Black governor in Georgia history. So many that she even jokes about it.
“For anything we don’t get to, I’ve probably thought about,” she quipped to an audience crammed into a Savannah church, shortly after she plugged her plan to legalize casino gambling and sports betting to finance new higher education scholarships.
While she hopes the depth and breadth of the proposals helps energize supporters for her rematch against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, the surge of ideas also reinforce the challenges she faces in the final weeks of the race.
Comfortably ahead in most public polls, Kemp has only issued a limited number of promises for a second term, confident he can rely on his record from his first four years in the Governor’s Mansion.
The array of Abrams’ pledges, which include “generational” vows to ease college debt, expand Medicaid, roll back abortion restrictions and repeal pro-gun laws, also forces the Democrat to confront another daunting obstacle if she prevails in November.
How does she win approval for these programs from a Legislature that’s expected to remain firmly in Republican control?
Checks and balances
Abrams has faced that question many times during her two bids for governor, including at the recent Atlanta Press Club debate. Her answer is generally the same: Her experience as the top Democrat in the Georgia House grounded her in the art of the give-and-take.
“I served in the Legislature for 11 years, and every day during my tenure I worked across the aisle to get good done,” she said at the Monday debate. “They put it in my title — I was minority leader, meaning I couldn’t win unless I could work with others.”
Indeed, Abrams has legislative victories under her belt, including work to kill a GOP tax overhaul and a rewrite of the state’s outdated kinship care laws.
And the state vests the governor with a lot of power, including authority to implement changes to the executive branch, the ability to appoint allies to influential boards and agencies, the bright red ink of a veto pen, and the first and last say on the state’s budget.
To implement Medicaid expansion, for instance, she could threaten to withhold support for all but the most essential Republican-backed proposals until she wins the required crossover votes from GOP legislators.
But even with a small number of Republicans supportive of expanding the program, many others hold to Kemp’s barb at the debate that Medicaid is a “broken government program” that would be too costly in the long run.
And she’d face resistance from Republican lawmakers on even minor stances — let alone sweeping promises such as pledging to wipe away the state’s permissive gun policies.
Not surprisingly in an election year, Republican legislative leaders haven’t endorsed any of Abrams’ policy platforms, including her calls for a $1 billion tax refund and a hike in the salaries of teachers and local law enforcement officials. Kemp has called for an even bigger refund, an idea quickly seconded by key GOP leaders.
And some GOP legislators have already raised the possibility of a vote to strip Abrams of some of her powers should she win in November.
“The only thing I can tell you that would happen if she somehow pulls it off,” said state Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, “is the Legislature would fight to take more power away from the executive branch to bring true balance to the system of government.”
‘Track record’
Some of Abrams’ allies worry the scope of her proposals distract attention from the paramount issues many left-leaning voters highlight in polls: the decades-high inflation and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
The Democrat attempts to tie the two threads together, saying that Kemp’s policies damage Georgia’s economy. She made that connection in an MSNBC interview, leading Republicans to accuse her of casting abortion as a solution to economic woes.
Others, though, welcome her in-depth stances on issues that often get overlooked in statewide races, such as equitable housing, comparing her favorably to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s flood of proposals during her 2020 presidential bid.
“In this day and age, everything is confusing and politicians change their minds depending on the day,” said Holly Kurtz, a Brookhaven Democrat. “I’ve got whiplash. But I’m glad Abrams has a clear-cut stance on so many issues, and she has stuck to them.”
Republicans acknowledge Abrams strikes a sharp contrast from Kemp’s more limited second-term agenda, which includes a modest set of education initiatives, new crackdowns on violent offenders and, most prominently, a pledge to spend about $2 billion from the state’s bulging coffers on a refund to taxpayers.
The governor would prefer to run on his first-term record, keen to remind voters of his decision during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic to reopen sectors of the state’s economy and his push to return to in-person schooling.
He’s less likely to emphasize the base-pleasing policies that helped power him past former U.S. Sen. David Perdue in the May primary, such as loosening gun laws and banning most abortions as early as six weeks, a Republican initiative that became law this summer.
On the campaign trail, Kemp talks about “doing what I said I’d do” in 2018 — a mark that he mostly hit, with the notable exception of not getting a state spending cap. Georgia’s budget has reached record heights, fueled by a gusher of cash amid the pandemic, much of it rooted in federal aid.
The Republican’s allies say he should stay the course and avoid making promises that could complicate a second term, even if it triggers attacks from Abrams over what she calls the “poverty of imagination” plaguing the state’s GOP leaders.
“A leader’s track record is more important than their website,” Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said, “especially over the last four years.”
