How Stacey Abrams Made Georgia the Center of the Political Universe

For the next two months, the whole country will be watching us

Will Leitch
GEN
Published in
4 min readNov 6, 2020

--

Photo illustration. Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

I moved to Athens, Georgia from New York City in June 2013, but over the last 48 hours, most of my old friends finally seem to have realized where I live. The text messages have been blowing up. “ALL EYES ON GEORGIA!” “MAKE IT HAPPEN, LEITCH.” “DAWGS GONNA DO IT!” A presidential election with nothing less than democracy on the line might not be the ideal way for my NYC friends to finally learn to identify Georgia on the map, but I suppose I will take it.

Early Friday morning — or very late on endless Thursday, depending on how much you tried to Kornacki your way through it — Democratic nominee Joe Biden finally passed President Donald Trump in the vote count in this great state. This led to a whole new round of text messages and a global understanding that Georgia — specifically Rep. John Lewis’ old district of Clayton County, the peach of the old South—may have just kicked Trump out of office. Now the rest of the country is staring directly at us.

With both of its senatorial races likely going to runoffs on January 5, 2021, control of the U.S. Senate and the potential success of the Biden administration will ride entirely on Georgia. Every urgent issue of our time—climate…

--

--

Will Leitch
GEN
Writer for

Author seven books, including “How Lucky” "The Time Has Come" and "Lloyd McNeil's Last Ride." NYMag/MLB. Founder Deadspin. https://williamfleitch.substack.com