Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, hasn’t been shy about wanting to serve as former Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate since he announced in a presidential debate last month that he would be naming a woman for the role. "I would be an excellent running mate," Abrams told Elle magazine earlier this month. “I have the capacity to attract voters by motivating typically ignored communities.” That candor may be unusual in a politician seeking one of the nation’s top offices, and it even earned her belittling criticism from President Donald Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Savannah Viar. "Stacey, you're embarrassing yourself," Viar said in an email CNN obtained, and she went on to criticize Abrams for what Viar called "her desperate audition to be Joe Biden's Vice President."
Abrams, however, has said repeatedly she is intentionally honest about her political aspirations, which aren’t limited to the second in command but also to one day serving as president. When CNN asked Abrams why she is openly advocating for herself, Abrams said she's always been honest about her willingness to serve. "As a young Black woman growing up in Mississippi, I learned that if you don't raise your hand, people won't see you, and they won't give you attention," Abrams said. She added that she seeks that attention for young Black women and other people of color who wonder “if they too can be seen.”
She also told CNN Thursday: "I don't mince words because I grew up around politicians who wanted to tell you what you want to hear but not tell you the truth, and I was raised to believe that you tell the truth. As a woman of color, as a black woman, as a person of color, I cannot be shy about my response, because any hint that I don't think I'm qualified, that I don't think we can is used as a justification for saying that we can't."
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Abrams, who would have been the nation’s first Black woman to serve as governor, won close to 49 percent of the vote in Georgia's 2018 gubernatorial election, but she came just below 55,000 votes of beating then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who was supervising the election, according to the Secretary of State’s office. Abrams refused to concede. “I’m supposed to say nice things and accept my fate,” Abrams in her New York Times best-seller, Lead From the Outside. “I refused to be gaslighted into throwing away my power, diminishing my voice.”
Kemp went on to lead the state into the deadly coronavirus pandemic repeatedly defying expert advice. “What we’ve been telling people from directives from the CDC for weeks now—that if you start feeling bad stay home—those individuals could’ve been infecting people before they ever felt bad,” Kemp said April 1. “Well, we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours.” He announced an order requiring Georgians to shelter in place unless for essential purposes, making the state one of the last to take the common-sense step toward protecting residents. Kemp also made Georgia one of the first states to effectively end its stay-at-home order, allowing business owners to open everything from restaurants and nail salons to bowling alleys and tattoo parlors.
"The mayors of our largest cities have all expressed deep concern as have our scientists. Georgia is not flattening the curve. We have one of the highest rates of infection and one of the lowest rates of testing," Abrams said on The View Wednesday. "This makes no sense and it doesn't improve our economy. It simply puts more Georgians at risk."
Rev. Al Sharpton listed Abrams as one of several Black women in politics he said Saturday can help Biden win and govern. “I’m excited about Stacey Abrams, who I think brings a lot to this country. I’m excited about Kamala Harris, Val Demings,” Sharpton said on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton. “There are qualified Black women.”
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