New GOP group raises money to smear Stacey Abrams — and she's not running for anything

A group of Republican operatives in Georgia has launched a new political action committee through which to make racist attacks against Stacey Abrams. The former Democratic nominee for governor of the state is not even currently a candidate for anything, but the group says it has already raised more than $100,000 to oppose her.

Stop Stacey, Inc., reportedly run by former operatives for embattled Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and former Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, launched a website this week attacking the Black woman Kemp narrowly defeated in the 2018 election. The site claims Abrams is “aiming for total control” after having backed successful Democratic candidates in 2020, including President Joe Biden, Sen. Raphael Warnock, and Sen. Jon Ossoff.

Jeremy Bland, a former Loeffler campaign strategist now helping to run the anti-Abrams group, claimed in a statement that “grassroots Republicans across Georgia and America are standing together to stop radical Stacey Abrams.” He vowed to do “whatever it takes to expose Stacey Abrams’ radical network, highlight her dangerous agenda, and ultimately defeat her—and her left-wing candidates—at the ballot box.”

A review of the group’s website reveals much of the same racist language that Loeffler’s team used in her unsuccessful Senate campaign against Warnock, framing Abrams as not a real American.

Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, won a runoff election on Jan. 5 to become the state’s first Black U.S. senator.

The group accuses Abrams of being a “champion” of a “Socialist, anti-American Agenda” and of being behind a “Shady Voter Registration Network.”

Loeffler used similar attacks against Warnock, calling him “anti-American” and a “rubber stamp” for socialism and attacking him for relying on the New Georgia Project, Abrams’ voter registration group. Abrams and other grassroots activists helped register more than 800,000 new voters, including many Black Georgians, before the 2020 election.

“Funded by Hollywood and billionaire socialists like George Soros, radical leftist Stacey Abrams is on a mission to destroy our country,” the new site claims. In November, Loeffler had tweeted, “George Soros has funneled MILLIONS into @staceyabrams & Georgia Democrats. Now he’s dumping more money into Georgia to defeat @Perduesenate & me, so Democrats can transform America into a socialist country.”

The site also argues that stopping Abrams is essential to stopping “attacks on free speech,” a popular right-wing talking point against efforts to curb systemic racism. Loeffler spent much of her short Senate career attacking Black Lives Matter and civil rights advocates as threats to her “free speech” and said they aimed to “cancel” her when they pointed out her racist statements and actions. Warnock, Loeffler said, was “playing the victim.”

Lauren Groh-Wargo, the CEO of Abrams’ voting rights organization, Fair Fight, tweeted on Monday that the former Georgia state House minority leader “has made no decision about her political future.” She noted, “Here’s what I do know: GA Republicans failed on 11/3 & 1/5, with weak leaders, a disastrous COVID response, and families are suffering. Rather than a desperate distraction, perhaps they can #StartServingGeorgians.”

If Abrams decided to run for governor again, she would face Kemp, who has been criticized for his botched response to the COVID-19 epidemic, while Donald Trump and his backers have slammed him for not rigging the 2020 election for Republicans.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.