On Thursday, while hosting former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who has complained that she was cheated out of victory in 2018 against Georgia governor Brian Kemp because of voter suppression and is now heading a PAC titled Fairfight2020, CNN host Alysin Camerota eschewed any attempt at non-partisanship and helped Abrams sell the PAC by telling voters where they could find it online.
Camerota started by asking why Abrams decided not to run for president. Abrams answered that she was an “expert on fighting back against voter suppression”:
We ran the scenarios and there certainly is a pathway, but my responsibility is to run for office when I think I’m the person who can do the best job and also when it’s the right time. And what I really wanted to access what was the best value that I could add to this primary season. We have an extraordinary crop of candidates who are running, but what we’re missing is a plan for the general election. We cannot wait until the general happens to take action.
And when I thought about the work that I’ve been doing since 2018, I know that I’m an expert on fighting back against voter suppression, that I have lessons learned from 2018, but also new information that we’ve gathered. And my best value, my best contribution is using this primary to make sure we can win the general election and take back the House, White House, and take back the Senate.
Camerota asked if Abrams worried the 2020 election would be “marred by voter suppression.”
Abrams replied, “Every election that we’ve had in the last twenty years has faced some vestige of voter suppression,” arguing that it “accelerated in the wake of the Shelby decision, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.” She added, “We’ve seen stricter and stricter laws that make it harder to vote.”
Asked whether she would be interested in a vice-presidential slot in 2020, Abrams answered, “I would certainly be open to that.” When Camerota asked if any candidate had asked her, Abrams said they had not, then segued to saying, “What I do know is that voter suppression is real, that we saw just this year in Texas, Tennessee, in Arizona and Florida steps taken by Republicans to further restrict the vote. And if you go to FairFight 2020.org, you can find out more about our initiative.”
After Abrams repeated her intentions with her PAC, Camerota wanted to make sure viewers knew exactly where to go to help Abrams, saying, “And one more time, people who want to know more should go to fairfight2020.org?”
Abrams repeated, “So, yes. Fairfight2020.org, that’s our 20-state strategy. We launched it in Nevada just yesterday, and we’re going to have a launch in Georgia coming up this Saturday because Georgia is a battleground state …”
Camerota interjected, “Yeah.”
Abrams concluded, “We’re the state that has the largest percentage of African-American voters of any battleground in the presidential and we want people to know that Georgia is not just a place where voter suppression happens, it’s a place where we’re going to fight it back and we’re going to win.”
Video below:
H/T Grabien