For cspan and public radio audiences please be aware that in the audience today is members of general public, and any applause that you will hear are not necessarily from the working press. Id like to begin by introducing our head table. Please hold your applause until all of the head table guests are introduced. To my far left, i have robert wynner, president of wynner public news opeds and a member of the npc headliners team. Next to robert is miron bellkind and former president of the National Press club. And we have eleanor clift, a Political Columnist with the daily beast. Wesley lowrie, a National Reporter at the washington post. Beside wesley is michael holoman, Deputy Communications director for fair right, and Eric Holloway for news. And to my right, donna who is president of Media Strategies and former president of the club, and cochair of the headliners team. Speaking over the speaker for a moment, and we have, sorry. We have angela garling king Deputy Managing Editor of politico and former president of the National Press club. Besides angela is David Anderson and he is the npc team member who organized todays event. Thank you very much, david. Next to david is chelsea hall, adviser to fair fight. Next to chelsea is t. M. Mitchell and final ly jay gordie, nationl correspondent at bloomberg. Today, we are pleased to welcome stacy abrams to the National Press club. Shed 11 years at the Georgia House of representatives and including seven as the democratic leader. Last year she was the democratic nominee for governor of and tge and the first black woman to be nominated in the history of the United States in that state. And she came close to turning a traditionally republican state blue. She ultimately lost the general election by just over one percentage point to georgias then secretary of state brian kemp. It was a hotly contested outcome, and believed by many including ms. Abrams to be the result of widespread Voter Suppression. After a 10day standoff, ms. Abrams suspended the campaign, but notably did not concede. Abrams has spent the last year on a mission to stop Voter Suppression not only in georgia, but around the country. She created two organizations, fair fight to ensure all who can vote are, all people who can vote do. And fair count to guarantee that the 2020 census is fair, accurate and counts everyone equally. She is hoping to, she is helping to lead a federal lawsuit to overhaul georgias election system, and she and others suing contends that the Current System impaired citizens ability to vote in the 2018 Gubernatorial Election and depriving them of the 1st, 13th, 14th and 15th rights. And so she is a force, and no doubt one to watch in the years ahead. Please join me in welcoming stacey abrams. Thank you. Thank you to president fitzgerald kojak, and thank you to all of the past president s, and very illustrious table. Im going to begin by announcing that i am not the governor of georgia. There are some who believe i am confused. I am not. But, as allison pointed out in 2018, we had a bit of a contested election. In the process of running for governor of georgia, i began a campaign that was grounded in the notion that everyone who was eligible to vote should vote, particularly those communities that had long been left out of the voting process in the state of georgia, but on a larger level, they had been let out of the decisionmaking process for the state. My Campaign Began with the notion that we are going to Center Communities of color, and these are the Fastest Growing populations in the state and lagging behind and having their voices heard in the process. We centered marginalized communities and disadvantaged communities and talked to groups that no candidate had really engaged. I became the first gubernatorial candidate to march in a pride parade and also went to everywhere and talked to everyone. We used a clear and consistent message. I used the message when i was down in albany, georgia, and in north georgia where they filmed deliverance but in the end, i did not become the governor of georgia. When the votes were coming in, and votes being counted, at the same time this was happening, we had received 30,000 phone calls alleging issues of Voter Suppression, and in the next ten days between november 6th through 16th, we received another 50,000 calls. And 50,000 people who had experienced difficulties in casting a ballot in the state of georgia. As result on november 16th, i made a very controversial speech where i acknowledged the legal sufficiency of the election, but i refused to concede the rightness of a system that would let so many peoples voices be silenced. Now, there have been recent days of comparison between me and the former governor of kentucky that he and i share some allegiance in refusing to acknowledge outcomes. Yesterday, he conceded the election. I congratulate him on doing so, because he alleged irregulari irregularities that he could not prove, but we on the other hand, we could prove our concerns. It began by having a secretary of state who refused to step down from that post when he became a contestant in the race. When you are looking at the third world nations being investigated for voter irregularities, and the first thing that you look at is if the strong men leards are controlling the outcome of the election, and in the state of georgia, the secretary of state was the contestant and the scorekeeper and i dont know of any sport where we would let that pass. However n tendin the end, it wa law of the land that he could do so. So i could challenge the election, but in the law, that is not right, because how can you tell people to trust the system when you cannot trust the person running the system. That is the mission im on. In the 10 days between election day and my nonconcession day which is how we refer to it now, i spend a great deal of time trying to think of what i would do next if the election did not produce the result they sought. I grew up in southern mississippi the daughter of two civil rights leaders and my parents were civil rights activists as children, and my dad was arrested as a 16yearold helping to register people to vote in hattiesburg, mississippi, and my mom did the same things but she was smart enough not to get caught. But they wanted us to understand from the earliest beginnings that our responsibility is not to fight for outcomes that we want, but to fight even when we get the outcomes that we dont need. The moment we step away and concede that the system has beaten us, then the system has indeed won. Our responsibility is to keep working anyway. And so in the 10day period, i was very angry and sad and i went through the stages of grief and i spent a lot of time in anger, and eventually moved on, but i brought the anger with me. I find it to be a fun companion, and in the end what i wanted to make sure i did is to commit myself to figuring out what work could be done, because the reality is whether or not i got the title of governor, there is work that i wanted to do that still needed to be done and the first bit of work that i needed to do was to focus on the issue of Voter Suppression, and this is not new for me. I registered the voters at Spelman College and involved in Civic Engagement so much so that i was invited to be a speaker here at the 30th anniversary of the march on washington, and i remember standing there on the august stage looking at way too many people talking about the needs of the communities they come from and that i wanted to serve. Id started an organization that registered voteers in georgia and particularly communities of color that had been unregistered to the tune of 800,000 in 2014. But id also started an Organization Called the Voter Access Institute, because i knew it was insufficient to register voters, but we had to engage them, mobilize them and turn them out. In the Voter Access Institute became what i call the fair fight action. Fair fight is borne of the belief that the voter expansion requires that we fight back against the Voter Suppression. And over the last few months as we did this work beginning in november, and now a year later, we have tangible evidence that what we are doing is necessary and right. And in the state of georgia we filed a massive lawsuit, and lawsuit that alleges that the state of georgia is not protecting democracy as it should. And we believe that we are right, and we believe that we will be able to prove it in a court of law. But more than that, it is not enough to simply fight back against what is wrong. You have to promote what is right. That is why we started a group called the democracy warriors, and people across the state of georgia who have discovered that you can indeed go to the board of elections meetings and most of them did not know that there were boards of lek shelections t with, and now because of that, they have met with the boards and we have been able to stop the blocs of precincts. Let me put in context what happened in georgia. On the voting day november 2018, the system had purged over 1 million voters and including a purge of over 75,000 people in one day and the largest single purge in American History. He oversaw the closure of 214 precincts. 214. In a state with only 3,000 precincts. As the secretary of state, he had proceeded that time by arresting women who had the temerity to actually help to register and turn out voters in quitman, georgia, and arrived with a legislator who were following black men home to challenge whether they were indeed valuable electors and saying that too many black people voted and we believe they should be investigated. The New York Times ran an incredible story about this. But he also challenged latino groups and Asian Pacific islander groups when they had the audacity to register communities and so by the time we got the november 2018, my evidence of his bad actions was legion, but what we knew more importantly is that more has to be done, and what fair fight is doing in georgia and fiair figh action in georgia is doing is to build the capacity of the citizens to fight back and not just against the secretary of state, but to fight back against the Voter Suppression. We have to recognize that while Voter Suppression was a singular example of what happened in 2018, it is not solely committed to the state of georgia. We know that across the sun belt, Voter Suppression is alive and well, and in the state of texas, there was a law that was pending that would have criminalized driving people to the polls, and luckily that bill died at the end of the legislative session, but the problem is that it made that far. We know that in the state of tennessee, because 90,000 africanamericans were registered to vote by a group called black voters matter, they passed a state in tennessee that criminalized a thirdparty Voter Registration, and key because the thirdparty Voter Registration is one of the most effective ways to register communities of color. In arizona they have shutdown 85 of the precincts. 85 of the polling places have shutdown since 2005 as arizonas population grew larger. There is an inverse relationship of shutting down access as the population is more diverse, and it is a deleterious effect on the native americans, because they live on reservations, because they have to travel in order to cast the ballot and instead of two or five miles outside of the reservation, they have to travel 10, 20, 50 miles on heavily rutted roads without the access to vote. We know in florida, and texas and New Hampshire, because it is not just the shoouth, students e facing new challenges to vote. Where early voter populations on the College Campuses are told that you wont have precincts where you work, where you go to school. And in New Hampshire, they have created new laws for who gets to register, and who has access directly targeted at students. In wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania, these are the states that have had the Voter Suppression activities in play and in place for a very long time, and indeed, those effected the outcome of the 2016 election. But my responsibility is not to relitigate the past, but to use the past as prologue for what needs to be done in the future. That is why in addition to the fair fight action, we launched fair fight pact and fair fight 2020 is based in 20 states across the country and the three states that have elections this year statewide as well as the 17 states that are considered battleground states for the presidency, for the u. S. Senate and down ballot races so we can flip the chambers and make certain that we elect the secretaries of state and the attorneys general who can defend the right to vote in america. Voter suppression has three components, can you get on the rolls, and stay on the rolls . Can you cast the ballot and will your ballot be counted and counted correctly. Those are the issues that plague us all. They are National Federal issues relegated to the states, soinstead of the United States of states with a single democracy, we have 50 different democracies operating every single day in the country. We know that voter fraud is often attributed to the voter fraud, but it is amiss, because 31 people in the last billion votes cast have been accused of actual fraud, and usually, it is voter confusion, because when you are crossing a state border, the laws change and nobody hands you a pamphlet to tell you what is new, but we know that if we have federal legislation, and restoration of the Voting Rights act, we can restore our progress towards true democracy in the country, and that is my mission. That is the work of fair fight action and fair fight 2020. But in addition to those operations, i was a state legislator and i took my job as minority leader in november of 2010, and i took office and began my first legislative session in 2011. And by august, i was embroiled in what is called redistricting. It was the first redistricting that had happened in our state under republican leadership. We watched, i watched in horror as they redrew the lines that packed africanamericans and split the latino communities and scattered the Asian Pacific islander communities and intentionally diluted the right to vote in our state. But it was mitigated in part, because we did not have an accurate census in 2010 in the state of georgia. We had one of the largest undercounts of africanamerican mens and one of the largest undercounts in the country, and georgia is the largest state east of the mississippi, but the reality is that it is a solvable problem. In 2010, the country had the most accurate census, but georgia did not. Part of my responsibility was to ensure that georgia and around the country, the 2020 census tells the true story of america. Ilaunched fair count, because i believe that this work has to be intentional and the Current Administration is underfunding the census count, and the states with the largest growing populations, many of the states are not investing enough to make sure that the communities are counted, communities of color, renters, small children and immigrants, and those are the populations that must be counted to get the fair share of the 800 billion that we will spend every year for the next ten years. Fair count is doing its work by going into the communities, setting up hotspots which sounds like an odd thing to do for the census count, but this is the first time in American History that 80 of the census is going to be performed online. Even though we know that between 20 and 40 of americans dot no have access to the internet. That has not been solved by this administration despite the intentionality to use the internet to count people. We know that we have to step in and step up to help communities that will be left behind, because i refuse to allow our communities to be erased from the narrative of what is america. Our obligations are large. [ applause ] our obligations are large, because our nation is a big place. Not simply in space, but in heart. We began as an experiment that said that if every person was counted, we would be able to achieve our ideals, and yet from the inception of the country, we have struggled with Voter Suppression. It began with a document that said that blacks were only 3 5 human and you could count our bodies, but not our souls. It excluded women from the story of america. And next year, we will celebrate the 20th amendment, but we have to remember that it took sorry, the 19th amendment, and we have to remember that it took until 1920 for women to have a voice. And for black women, brown women, that voice was not manifest until 1960s with the Voting Rights act. And that is why this is so crucial that we remember the gutting of the Voting Rights act in 2013 transformed voting in the United States. With the evisceration of the Voting Rights act, 17 Million People have been purged from the rolls. In that same period, 1,688 precincts have shut down in the states that were once covered by the Voting Rights act. We have to remember that Voter Suppression is not new, and refusing to count the people is not new, but that we are. We are a new generation that has new opportunity, new access and new beliefs. And one of the beliefs is that we are all created equal and that equality has to be made real by the way we treat each other. That our responsibility is not simply to call out the problems, but to work towards solution. I wanted to do that in the role of governor, but failing that, my responsibility remains the same. I am the daughter of civil rights activists, but more importantly, im the granddaughter and the great granddaughter and the greatgreat granddaughter of those who were told from their birth they were not worthy to be part of the nation. In a single generation, my parents went from the fighting for the right to vote to watching their daughter stand on the nominee stage for governor. But what i want next is to win an election. And i want to win that election thank you. [ applause ] but i want to win that election not because of trickery, and not because of the scheming and not because of the whining, but because of working. Working to ensure that every vote is counted, working to ensure that every person eligible to register can do so, and working to make sure that felony disenfranchisement is erased from the face of this nation, and as much as we tried in florida and though they are doing the best to roll it back, and making sure that when the 2020 census is done, and the reapportionment follows, it is an accurate representation of the country, and that our leaders are elected by everyone in the country. I often talk about in the speeches about how i won. I dont say that i won, but i say that we won, because in the state of georgia, we were told that we were deep red. No reason for me to run, and in fact, a lot of stories written about how i was running a futile campaign. That by centering the communities and by lifting up the minority, i was going to isolate ourselves from the majority. But i am going to end with this, in 2018, in the gub ernatorial election, we tripled the latino turnout, and tripled the Asian Pacific turnout, and we increased the Youth Participation rates by democrats by 139 . Africanamerican participation which we were told in georgia had maxed out under the election of president obama, that nobody else was going to vote, and why try, we decided to dig deep, and we turned out 40 more. But i want to put that in context. In 2014, 1. 1 million democrats voted for the governor. In 2018, 1. 2 million black people voted for me. Thehe numbers matter is that we wrote a new playbook, and we wrote a story about how the win elections in georgia and the myth that you can only talk to certain communities and you could not have certain conversation, those myths were wrong. We had an Authentic Campaign that began with me being exactly who i am. You cant miss me. I said the same thing everywhere i went and i talked about the same issues to everyone who would listen. As a result, not only did we increase democratic turnout of the communities of color across the state, but we also increased the white percentage of the democratic voting in the state of georgia for the first time in a generation. We prove that you can talk to everyone and increase everyones participation. We like to call it the abrams playbook, and it is simple, invest in communities early. Have an authentic consistent message and dont try to cherry pick who you think is going to listen, but make certain that everyone hears you and treat georgia and the sun belt as a real place to fight, because if we fight, we win. Thank you so much. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you very much, ms. Abrams. It is hard to know where to start, because we have all of these who want to know about the 2020 election, but i am going to start with a little bit about the actual purging of the voters from the rolls. And several people have asked about news, recent news that georgia is planning to again purge maybe 300,000 people from the voter rolls. Can you talk about what you see happening there . Certainly. So right now, georgia has notified 300,000 people in georgia that they will be purged if they do not respond to a letter within the next 30 days. The challenge is that may be right. The 313,000 people should be purged, but given past precedents, we dont believe they are accurate. Our job is to ensure of the accuracy of those purged, but one challenge is not contested in front of the supreme court, and one of the issues that we argue is that people are losing the right to vote under what is called the use it or lose it, meaning that because they have not voted in a certain number of elections, that a flag to say that you should investigate, but they are using it as a result to remove from the name from the rolls. I dont lose my right, because i dont shoot a gun every thursday. So we are challenging that constitutionally of use it or lose it and you have the right to vote or not to vote and that is not to be used as a right to strip someone of their right to vote in the United States. Can you talk about what are the legitimate reasons to knock somebody off of the voter rolls. The two i agree with. If you are dead, you should not vote. I will stand on that, and i will believe that to the day i die. And i think that if no way you will change your mind . I will see. I also agree that if you do not live in the jurisdiction, you should not be able to cast a vote in that jurisdiction. Those are two legitimate reasons. I fundamentally disagree with the tellny disenfranchisement, a practice used by 22 states and borne of the black codes which is the response of reconstruction, and it is designed to strip black people and namely black men of the right to vote, and they did not exist simply in the south. The black codes existed across the country. I do not believe that felony disenfranchisement should strip people of the right to vote. You can clap for that. [ applause ] and i do not believe that your failure to cast a ballot in a certain number of elections is an excuse to remove you from the rolls there. Are other ways to determine where people live and if they are eligible, but it should not be that you lose your right to vote simply because you do not exercise it. And so the question, of why you did not go to court on behalf of the 80,000 people who called you. We have. We have filed a 64count indictment, sorry, we dont get to indict, but we have filed a 64count complaint which includes the complaints and the affidavits that we have collected. Contrary to some who suggest that we do not have evidence, we have volumes of evidence and more than 300 applicants who are being deposed by the council and the state, and we have a lovely 84page motion or order from the judge who refused our motion to dismiss and we have adequate information to demonstrate that what we are doing is to serve the 80,000. What is the remedy that you are asking for . The remedy is one to strike down anything that is unconstitutional, and we want georgia to be bailed in. And that would mean they are subject to preclearance under the Voting Rights act. The gutting of section 5 did not eliminate the purview of the Voting Rights act, but it says that you have to go through an asid siduous process in the cou and have oversight from the Justice Department and no state has been successful in being bailed in yet, but whoep te hop make georgia the first. And in your you dont have to use that word. I am teasing. The oofficial talfficial tal you lost by less than two percentage point, and would the purges in georgia impact your decision to running for any future seat . No, my responsibility to run for office is because i believe i am the best person to be in that office and i will run because i want to do that job. My obligation in between is to ensure that whoever runs for office that the right to vote in georgia is fair and sacrosanct, and everybody has the right to go to the polls. And that is one more question that i want to ask, because everybody is waiting, the Trump Administration fought hard for a Citizenship Question on the census, and they lost the battle, but what impact is that is going to have on the census next year . That is why we have organizations like fair count. For instance, we are working for the black alliance of just immigrants, because black immigrants are left out of the conversation writ large. Those populations need to understand that the Citizenship Question is not on the form, and they need to fill it out, because their ability for their children to go to school is directly tied whether or not their kids are counted in the census, and their perks matter. And so for them to do the work, and especially the trusted partners to explain that the information is not there and that the information is private, and in fact, anybody who divu e divulges that information subject for 72 years in prison and a fine of 50,000, and i dont know very many people who want to defy that with that cost. So we will turn to the 2020 election. We have questions on the subject of what is your take on the current field of the democratic candidates, and who do you support . I support the winner. I think that we have a strong field of candidates, and i know that we have had new additions, because that why we have the primaries. We have become a very, we are paying very close attention, some of us, to every machination of the election, but we have to remember that in 92, there were 18 people running for the presidency, and in recent years, we have sort of changed our short term memory to remember 2008 and 2012, or 2016, but we forget also in 2016 there was a long protracted primary on the other side for republicans. My issue is this. You have primaries so people can speak. Lets wait and see what they say. No one clapped for that, but that is okay. We are not for free speech around here, i guess. That is not a jeb bush please clap, okay. Have any of the candidates reached out to you to try to get your endorsement . Yes. Which ones . The ones who called. How many . I know that you are a reporter, and im a politician, and i can resist. But you are really good, and real nice to slide that in. I i am not sure about this, but which candidate has the best chance of beating donald trump . The one who wins. Many people want know what you think of the late entrants to the race, donald trump, i mean, Michael Bloomberg and deval patrick, and so the late entrants and using their words. Yes, we have both protracted and the accelerated process now. We have primaries for a reason. Every state is going to have a different vantage point, and every citizen is going to think differently about the candidates based on what they haget to see right now we have a iowa primary and New Hampshire primary and South Carolina and nevada and those are the only people seeing the candidates with any degree of repetition and depth, and they still, and we still dont have the elections until february of 2020. We have not had thanksgiving yet. So i am not, i am not worried about people jumping in now if they have the ability to mount the campaigns and have the willingness to put themselves before the people, the people will say whether they want them or not, and so i dont worry about the timing right now. What advice would you give to the president ial candidates who are specifically seeking africanamerican votes . Number one, talk about the Voter Suppression, because it targets multiple communities, but the africanamericans have been long the central target of Voter Suppression, and it is often a key reason for lack of participation, and it is not simply that the people did not turn out in 16, but it is that the waves of Voter Suppression hit a crest to challenge the ways that people vote across the country. Number two, recognize that you can talk to africanamerican voters about things other than criminal justice. That is a critical and key issue, but we also care about the economy, education, health care. [ applause ] and by the same token the conversation of criminal justice should be had with every community, because it is not solely endemic to the black community, and we have the most visible concerns, but we are not the only ones, and that is why i urge not the cherry pick the conversations with people. We need to run the campaigns for everyone. You want to be able to isolate issues that may have specific resonance, but it needs to be a subset of the larger conversation and the larger context. The minute that people say that you are telling one group one thing, and another Group Another thing, they have learned something, but it is not the lesson that you want. And a couple of people have asked whether medicare for all is a winner in the africanamerican community. I do not speak on behalf of the africanamerican community, and i have not gotten that notice yet. But, here is what i would say, and i spoke for a lot of us, and that is just advice based on my experience as an africanamerican for my entire life. What i would say is this we care about health care and Americans Care about health care. I, part of my campaign was about health care in part because i believe in it, and i believe we need it, but i also got hit because of my personal debt. My personal debt was created in part because my father has cancer. It is expensive to help take care of an elderly gentleman with cancer. So i believe that the answer on health care is not a question of which plan, but it is do you have a plan and are you willing to make certain the answer and the solution is real. I am neutral right now. I am neutral on who wins, but i am dogged on the fact that whoever wins has to have a solution for making sure that everyone has access to health care and that no one loses a life, loses a job or loses opportunity because they get sick. Do you think that democratic voters are uninspired or wroird about the slate of candidates . No, i think that those of us who watch and read every piece of im in a room full of reporters, so i have to say this well. I think that there is an attention of detail that exists among the primary community that is not necessarily reflective of the broader american populous. And we respond to every gyration, every notice, every tweet, and sometimes that makes sense. And so we seen as not inspired because of a focus on a certain campaign and in a state with limited resource, and that is going to change how things happen, but we have to remember that being inspired is a plus. It is not a necessity. The only inspiration that you need is the inspiration to vote, and that is coming from any new candidate is successful, because there is a wonderful counter balance of the good bad and we are seeing how it can be lived out in real life. This person asks where you stand on the mandatory assault weapon buybacks . I support it in the state of georgia, the banning of assault weapons. How we accomplish that is going to take more conversation in part because when we allowed the assault weapons ban to fail, it changed the marketplace and changed the relationship. I applaud the work done by former congressman beto orourke to raise the conversation and the complexity of the issue. And i am not dodging the question, but one of the reasons that we have failed to find the answer is that we look at it the same as yesterday, and sometimes the answer is because we have broader and more complex conversations, and i have not had those conversations yet. Ly i will followup on that, because you come from georgia and your sister is with the cdc and there are other gun violence and lack of support for that kind of research. Do you think that if there were such research there would be any potential answers . Absolutely. Right now, all of the decisionmaking is based on anecdote. Anecdote is compelling, anecdote is moving and it is not data. And that is the challenge, and so i do believe it is necessary for us to have Empirical Data that allows us to make decisions that are based on actual information. Now, anecdote is important, because it often inspires to us look for the data that lies beneath, but it is insufficient to convince those who are not intractable, but those who are hard to move. But my job as a democratic leader and it is in the title minority leader. I could not win anything unless i got people from the other side to listen. I often found that finding information that was not my information or a story i saw or something they saw, but it was based in either the science or in data, that it actually did help to move the needle. We did get people to help us. For example, we had something called the green tea party. I got the tea party to help me with the environmental legislation and it is not that i convinced thaem clima ed them t change is real, but it is because i had the data to have the commitment to make change and i found that we were successful together. So, this person asks for the politics in georgia and is that in a battleground state now . I am standing here, and so, yes, it is a battleground state. This is what i mean. If you are looking at the 2018 election, i received the highest number of votes for any democrat in georgia history. I spent a fraction of what is spent in a president ial campaign. And so, if i could get here based on what i had, a president ial nominee can win the state of georgia if they are a democrat and willing to make the investment, and so, yes, we are a battleground state, and two, we are 16 electoral votes and have not one but two senate seats up for grabs and we were able to take the ancestral seat of Newt Gingrich and get it to lucy mcbath, a gun antigun activist. And so if you in georgia, you can win, but a battleground state is a state that you have to compete to win. The Trump Campaign has put georgia on the top tier of places to fight. They are not fighting because they think that they have it sewn up, and if they have to fight there, we are a battleground state, and we have to get my side, and both sides to fight. And so, who do you see with Bernie Sanders or the joe biden end or someone else . I push back against those ideological characteristics for this reason. We all contain multitude. On certain issues i am concerned left. Others center, and im a christian from the deep south who is a outspoken advocate for abortion rights, and the reality is that people are complex, and so are the people in the democratic party, and when we try to be so reductive as to figure out exactly where we sit, we end up losing people, because they know that they sit everywhere. Depending on the issue, they move. We are fighting the wrong battle, because we are all on the blue end of the spectrum, but the red end is different and our responsibility is not to determine exactly and precisely where we all have to sit, but it is to have a leader who can help us to continue to move the country forward and this is my rubric and not which wing of the party you ascribe to, but what future do you see for the country, because as long as we are litigating who we are, we are not litigating for the people we need to serve, and my responsibility and any leaders responsibility is to look forward and how to win the country and move forward, but the arcane arguments of how we get to the solutions that we need, i think that too often ignore the broader responsibility that the other side doesnt care and doesnt want us to move anywhere and in fact, backwards and this is the part of the party that im in, the part of the party that wins. That is my goal. A couple of people asked if you plan to attend the democratic debate in georgia next week, and this questioner asks what is the importance of this event happening in atlanta, and particularly at the venue chosen, the Oprah Winfrey stage at Tyler Perry Studios . Michael, did you write this question . He is our Deputy Communications director and perfect question. I wanted to give him credit if it is. Was that a plant . Looking at the stricken look on his face, no. It came in by email i believe. So i think that it, number one, yes, i will be there. I dont believe that i am legally allowed to be anywhere else. And i think that what it signals is that three things about georgia. One, we are a battleground state, and there are a lot of states that vied for being the location for debate, and they are in georgia, because they know that georgia is in play and 16 electoral votes that can be delivered to a democrat. Number two, the Tyler Perry Studios, i think it is symbolic in part because they used to be a confederate emembattlement, a the Confederate Army used that place to protect slavery and now it is one of the largest movie studios in the world. And the stage that is going to be used the Oprah Winfrey stage is the one we could afford as a democratic party. But, it signals the changing economy of the state of georgia. We are the location of the single largest productions outside of l. A. , and last year we beat l. A. Movies are coming to georgia and 195 billion in economic impact. They are coming to georgia, because hollywood is already there. What makes them want to come to georgia . In 2008, i worked with the republicans and a bipartisan bill that created a tax credit in georgia, and there are tax credits in other state, but this is during the wave when states like michigan and North Carolina were rescinding the tax credits and georgia offered it, but more importantly, we built into the tax credit process an ability to build the infrastructure, and so it is not that we were bringing the movies there, but training communities to be hospital and get the studios and also we have a full pipeline of opportunity that you can do everything from preproduction to post production in the state of georgia right now. This is a question from the high school student, and could you speak about the Third Party Candidates and their role in politics . So, as a state legislator, i cosponsored the legislation that would expand opportunities for thirdparty candidates. Georgia does not permit it. And the bar is set so high that very few can make it outside of the ballot outside of the libertarian party. Robust competition is important. It holds the two major parties accountable. I do not believe that we will ever become a nation that has 15 other parties, and the routine of competing with the other guy, and to compete with those who may challenge your own even if you are on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum, and sharpens the way we talk about who we are and what we are accountable for. So i believe we should access the third parties. So we have several versions of this question. On august 15th, the New York Times reported that you were quote open to being considered for the number two spot for any nominee. Which would be your favorite other name . Nice try. Look, im in an awkward place that i had nothing to do with. When i met with the president ial nominees, i started to talk to them about Voter Suppression, and georgia as battleground state, and that it is. I had a lunch with a guy in d. C. Named joe, and suddenly, there were these rumors which i then had to dispel when i was on a show called the view and people heard me say that i never wanted to do this. That is not what i said. I said, you do not run for second in a primary. That is all i said. So once i said that and then i said that i am not sure what i am going to do and once i announced that i was not going to run, then the question came again from a lot of you in this room, and so i have been in the awkward position for the last few months of answering a question that people dont usually have to answer until they are announced, would i like, or would i be honored to serve as the second to a person who is trying to fix our nation . Absolutely. Would i be open to doing so with any of the top nominees . Absolutely. I am a democrat. I believe that i can serve. I am also a person who believes that particularly women of color, that people who come from disadvantaged communities and come from the marginalized communities, we cannot be coy about the ambition. We are expected to diminish ourselves and also, number one, i am fairly straight forward. If i am going to answer, i am going to answer, but if i am not, i am not. And on this one, it is a critical thing for me, because this is the first time i can remember in modern history where a young black woman, and i consider myself young because i am only 46 has been talked about openly as a potential Vice President ial nominee, and i will never diminish that and i will not say no, because the answer is yes. So this many people would like to know if you have reconsidered your decision to stay out of georgias two senate races . No. Next question. No, look. As i said earlier, i think you run for the job you want. And you need to want to do the job when you have it. I am proud of my service in the state legislature and the work i was able to do as leader. I do not want to do that work again. My highest and best use, i believe, based on what ive been able to do for most of my life, im good at trying to fix things. Often that means creating organizational structures, whether thats companies or organizations ive started. I enjoy and am best at the executive side of my job. There are people who want to go to the senate. Theyre smart, thoughtful, capable people running in the race in georgia. They can win if we invest in the state and fight Voter Suppression. Thats the work ill do, and i look forward to supporting both Democratic Senators when we elect them in 2020. And we have a theme here. Have you at all reconsidered your decision to stay out of the president ial race . No. And has anybody urged you to reconsider . Yes. I have been urged to consider. Im not going to. No. I mean no. No. Can you tell us more about the roll out of your National Fair fight initiative, and specifically which states you are targeting . Okay. I can give you almost all of them, but theres 17 of them. So the three initial states here. The macro. Fair fight 2020 was designed to think about the fact that Voter Suppression exists today. But often campaigns and parties dont think about it until september of the general election. And by then its too late. By then the voter purges have happened, the closures of polling places have happened. All of the insidious and interstitial changes that are made to the rules to knock people out and prevent people from voting all occurred typically before you get to the general election. And so one thing we learned in georgia, we actually did a lot of work to prevent Voter Suppression. Thats one of the reasons we had a high turnout. The problem is the person we were running against had even more power. So the imbalance remained. But that imbalance once you know more, you can do more. We want to use the experience and the lessons we have from georgia fwa to help other states. We launched early in mississippi, louisiana, and kentucky. For example yerks we were working with the Kentucky Democratic party because the way we do this is we hire staff for state parties. We fully fund the staff. We train them. And we make certain that we stay in contact with them as they do their work. The reason we use state waters is because state parties are the only entities in most states permitted to be inside the polling place behind the desk monitoring whats happening on election day. We need to be there from the start of registration all the way through that part. And so we are in we started in those three states. An example is that matt bevan and Republican Party in kentucky changed the construction of the state elections board, and a few months ago purged it was discovered they purnled rough purged roughly 175,000 people. Because we were on the ground working with the state party, we helped the state party file a lawsuit that a federal judge said was valid and they basically invalidated the purge of 175,000 people. Those people were all permitted to vote this november. That may have had something to do with the outcome of the election. And so what we do is we make sure that state parties are able to actually fight back. We are in in addition to the three states we are in im going to miss some states. If you go to the website, youll see them. Were definitely in georgia, North Carolina. Were in florida, texas, arizona, wisconsin, ohio, michigan, nevada, maine, New Hampshire, a bunch of states in the middle there. There are 17 states. Go to fairfight2020. Org and you can learn more. Should election day be a federal holiday . Yes. Election day should be a federal holiday and it should be a federal holiday where employers are not permitted to threaten their workers if they try to use that time. Or penalize them for using that time. Because what happens if youre a shift worker, you are often in a state that says yes, you have this right, but if you dont show up within 30 minutes of the time weve given you, you lose your job. If its a federal job, there need to be penalties for anyone not permitted to exercise their right to vote if they try to cruise that holiday. Is the time for the Electoral College passed . Yes. Its racist and classist. We have to remember the Electoral College was not designed because people werent worried about idaho not having enough votes. We didnt know about idaho. We didnt. But we knew that in the south the populations in the south had equal or roughly equal populations to the north. However, because black people were not considered human or citizens, they wanted their bodies to count for the purposes of the population count but not their humanity. And the Electoral College was designed to give Southern States the ability to count the bodies of slaves but not have to allow them to cast votes. And thus the Electoral College was born as a compromise. The other challenge was in the north, a lot of them didnt want immigrants making decisions and didnt believe immigrants and those not considered well educated should be making decisions about who the executive of our nation should be. Its racism and classism. Both of those things should be flung to the far reaches of history and the Electoral College needs to go. Im going to change tune just a little. This question or ask coyou know jimmy carter and can you share any story about him . So probably the most fun story was president carter helped me campaign. We were down in his neck of the woods in summiter county where hes helped create a microclinic. Georgia is one of the 14 states that refused to expand medicaid even though were on the bottom tenth of every metric of health care, including one of the highest Maternal Death rate. One of the reasons is georgia has lost seven hospitals since 2010. We have a state thats largely rural, and that access to health care is critical. So he helped fund a program that created a microclinic that finally provided services for around a 50 square mile area. We were there, and we were launching the talking about the clinic and my campaign. We were sitting side by side and his wife was sitting behind. And he got up to start answering questions. And he kept answering questions. And she leaned forward and said jimmy, youre not running again. Sit down. And he turns to her and looks and says, are you sure . He is a man who at 92 was willing to stand in the heat of a georgia sun to help me stand for an office. Because he believed so deeply in the democracy of our nation, and hes so willing every day that hes able to serve us all, and i will always see him as one of the greatest president s ever. So were almost out of time before i ask the last question, i want to mention a couple of upcoming events. On december 4th we have a news maker with Sheldon White house and on december 9th a headliners coffee and conversation with lonnie bunch. And i would like to present miss abrams with down of the most highly coveted items in washington d. C. , a National Press club coffee mug. And finally, before your race, one of the things you were known for was writing romance novels. Is there another novel in the works . Oh im glad you asked. I technically still have to write the third novel in the trilogy that i stopped writing when i became democratic leader. Im going to get that one done, because i dont want to hear from my mom or sister again about this. Im working on a new legal thriller, and that should be coming out sometime in the near future. But its going to be under stacey abrams, because the other name is kind of known. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me. And we are