CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-Stacey Abrams, the Black Democrat who lost a close race for governor of Georgia last year and was selected by Democrats to deliver the Democratic response to President Donald Trump's January 2019 State of the Union address, spoke in Cleveland Saturday afternoon at the union hall of Service Employees International Union Local 1199 and later in the day at a voting rights and women's rights forum spearheaded by Ohio Congresswoman Marcia Fudge.
At both events Abrams talked about being an ambitious Black woman breaking political barriers in the near south, and nationwide, and she gave a lesson in voter strategies, using examples of how last year in Georgia's gubernatorial race her campaign galvanized Blacks and White Democrats
and tripled the Latino vote.
The core of her speeches was her close race for governor and how her campaign and her supporters rallied Georgia voters, a model, she says, that can be used by Democrats seeking high offices across the country.
At the union gathering, which was political and also sponsored by the Ohio Democratic Party, ODP Chairman David Pepper and Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chairwoman Shontel Brown were also among the speakers, the venue drawing elected officials excited about the upcoming 2020 election, including state Rep Juanita Brent, state Sens Nickie Antonio and Vernon Sykes of Akron, Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Charles Patton, Maple Heights Mayor Annette Blackwell, Highland Hills Mayor Michael Booker, and County Councilwoman Yvonne Conwell.
Before rallying the crowd Pepper told the crowd that he and Abrams, 45, went to law school together, both of them Yale Law School graduates.
Speaking relative to the Fairfight 2020, which she chairs and launched in August to help Democrats financially and technically in 20 states, Abrams said the Democrats can win back the White House in 2020, with Ohio's help.
"We can win," said Abrams to the motivated union hall crowd. "We're sending a lot of money here to make sure Ohio wins in 2020."
Abrams' visit comes not only as the November 2020 election nears, but just four days after the Fourth Democratic Primary Debate held Oct. 15 in suburban Columbus, Columbus the state capital and the largest city in Ohio, in front of Cleveland, the second largest city and a majority Black major American city of some 385,000 people.
Cleveland is a Democratic stronghold, as is Cuyahoga County where Cleveland sits, the second largest of 88 counties statewide, and behind Franklin County, which includes Columbus.
Both events on Saturday were high spirited and indicative of the Dems gearing up their base to take on the Republicans in 2020, the congresswoman's women's rights forum more Black, and centered more on Black women.
Fudge is chair of the subcommittee on voting rights in the House, which has toured several states this year, including in Arizona, North Dakota, Georgia, and the pivotal states of Florida and Ohio, the congresswoman chairing hearings and taking testimony on voting irregularities and the purging of voter rolls, and on discrimination and disenfranchisement in voting against migrants, Black people, and others.
The congresswoman told the participants at her event Saturday, also a packed house like at the union sponsored gathering earlier in the day, that Abrams reminds her of the strong group of African women dubbed Dora Milaje in the Oscar-nominated 2017 superhero film 'Black Panther," the Black movie breaking box office records and grossing some $1.3 billion worldwide.
"Stacey is a member of the Dora Milaje," said the congresswoman.
Also a voting rights activist, Abrams is the first Black female major party gubernatorial nominee in U.S. history and the first Black woman to deliver a major party response to a State of the Union address.
She lost to Georgia's 2018 gubernatorial election to Brian Kemp, then the Republican gubernatorial nominee, by some 54,000 votes, and amid claims of voter irregularities and fraud, and ballot manipulation, claims leveled mainly by Democrats, the controversy sparking a national outcry coupled with calls for a state and federal investigation.
Abrams said Fudge, one of two Black in Congress from Ohio and a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, believed in her when she sought the Democratic nomination for governor of Georgia.
"She reached out and said what can I do"? said Abrams of Fudge. "All I did was say help and she was there."
She said that the congresswoman's role as chair of the subcommittee on voting rights is a powerful role, Fudge appointed to the position after the Dems regained control of the House during the November midterm elections and Nancy Pelosi stepped up again as House speaker.
She called her former gubernatorial opponent, Gov Kemp," a "cartoon villain, Kemp a Georgia secretary of state turned governor, a contentious gubernatorial race he narrowly won over Abrams.
She also talked about racism and sexism, and said Blacks and women have been subordinated over time, both women and Blacks considered key voting blocs for the 2020 election.
And she spoke on what she says is the arbitrary purging of voter rolls by Republicans, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announcing that he was poised to purge some 235,000 voters from Ohio's voter rolls after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati that found that Ohio's process of purging voters from the rolls violated federal law.
The Black vote fell seven percentage points from 2012 to 2016, and some 4 million Black voters who championed Barack Obama for president in 2008 and reelection in 2012 stayed home in 2016 when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton lost a close general election to current president Donald Trump, a Republican.
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Pictured are voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, who lost a close race for Georgia governor in 2018, and Ohio 11th Congressional District Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat and chair of the House subcommittee on voting rights
