How Georgia Got Organized
Long before Stacey Abrams became a nationally known go-to voice for Georgia politics, she was a relatively obscure representative from Atlanta in the Georgia state legislature. First elected in 2010, she quickly became a state party leader and strong opponent to Georgia’s GOP, which had a stronghold on every powerful post in the Peach State since 2004.
People who knew her at the time say that, when Abrams took office a decade ago, she decided that Georgia could be a blue state. All of her decisions since have been calculated to achieve that goal, and they came to fruition with Joe Biden winning Georgia by a little less than 12,000 votes on his path to the White House. Now this project is being put to the test again, in runoff elections that will determine control of the U.S. Senate.
The story of how this happened reflects the value of long-term planning and coalition building. As the cliché goes, it takes years of work—and in this case, a little luck—to become an overnight success.