Community organizer and 2016 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said Thursday on ABC’s “The View” that Democrats need to consider the upcoming two Senate runoff elections “as the Doug Jones of 2020.”
Co-host Sara Haines said, “All eyes are on the two Georgia runoff elections that now control the entire Senate which hangs in the balance. You’ve already raised more than $10 million for Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock…Given how high the stakes are, Republicans have typically had the edge in Georgia runoffs. How do you plan on pulling out not one, but two Democratic wins?”
Abrams said, “We need to reconsider this election…as the ‘Doug Jones’ of 2020, where we know that the essential nature of this election changes the future of our country, protects health care, protects access to jobs to protects access to justice. We need to remember that Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are the only ways to guarantee Mitch McConnell will pass legislation to renew recovery investment, to help protect jobs for retail workers, for low wage workers that are suffering going into Christmas or New Year’s, not knowing if they can stay in their homes. GASenate.com — that’s the only way we can make certain that the future we need to come to fruition with Joe Biden as our president.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “Well, now both Republican Senate candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, are calling on the secretary of state to resign, despite any reports of election mismanagement. What do you make of their demand? You have previously been critical of the secretary of state’s election management.”
Abrams said, “I have been critical because he has been wrong. In this case, we know that there were main challenges with our election system, but none of those challenges are the ones that Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are levying. They are arguing that they shouldn’t be in runoffs. They are arguing that the numbers should have been in their favor. That’s not how voting works, and in this case, we know that more people were actually able to get their votes counted, and by getting their votes counted, we saw the outcome. It is the Republican Party that has maintained this runoff system that is a vestige of Jim Crow in deciding elections. So if they want to grapple with this issue in 2021, they can remove the runoff system, but until then, this is the law of Georgia, and they’ve got to deal with it.”
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