Stacey Abrams' Quotes About The Georgia Governor's Race Say It All

The 2022 midterm elections were packed with contentious races across the country, but one of the most high-stakes contests on Nov. 8 was the battle for governor of Georgia between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp. After losing to Kemp in 2018, Abrams came up short once again, and conceded the race on Tuesday night. With so much on the line, this election hit even harder for the gubernatorial candidate, and these quotes from Stacey Abrams’ concession speech after the Georgia governor’s race say it all.

After trailing behind the incumbent governor on election night, the gubernatorial hopeful officially suspended her 2022 campaign around 11 p.m. ET on Nov. 8, according to Channel 2 Action News in Atlanta. As of Wednesday, Nov. 9, the official vote had Kemp with 53.4% of the vote and Abrams with 45.9% of the vote, with more than 95% of the vote counted, per The New York Times. In a speech to her supporters Tuesday night, Abrams thanked them and held her head high as she accepted defeat.

She began by sharing what inspired her to run again in the first place. “We've seen what's possible when we stand up for our neighbors and protect each other. We've made sacrifices. We've pitched in. We've seen each other's fights as our own. And we've done things we never thought we could. It is in the spirit of that endurance — and that persistence — that I decided again to run for governor.”

Likely filed under “what we never thought we could” was when Georgia went blue two years ago. In 2020, Abrams’ Fair Fight Action along with the New Georgia Project registered more than 800,000 new voters ahead of the presidential election and helped President Joe Biden win Georgia by a margin of 0.23% in a state that hadn’t elected a Democrat for president since 1992.

Even though 2020’s glimmer of hope didn’t pan out, Abrams also let the people of Georgia know she’s not finished fighting for her state, saying, “I may no longer be seeking the office of governor, but I will never stop doing everything in my power to ensure that the people of Georgia have a voice.”

She also pointed out why running for change matters: “And while I may not have crossed the finish line, that does not mean we will ever stop running for a better Georgia. We will never stop running for the truth that we know to be true, for the people we know need to see us. For the ones who don't know they deserve to stand, let alone run.”

In admitting defeat, Abrams remained hopeful. “Tonight, we must be honest,” she said. “Even though my fight — our fight — for the governor's mansion may have come up short. I'm pretty tall.” Looking to the future, she closed her speech on a positive note. “While we may not write the story today, there will always be another chapter,” she said.

You can watch the full speech below:

It’s a tough loss for the voting rights advocate who was inspired to make sure all Georgians made their voice heard after losing the 2018 race, but leading up to Nov. 8, there were signs that Abrams might not be able to give a victory speech on election night. On Oct. 3, Politico’s Chief Election Reporter Steve Shepard reported the race was leaning Republican, due to the fact that Kemp had been consistently leading in the polls. However, Shepard also categorized “America’s continuing political realignment” as favoring Democrats, and if flipping Georgia from a red state to blue state in the 2020 election was any indication, it looked like there was maybe still a chance that Abrams could take it all.

Still, it wasn’t enough for Politico to deem the race a “toss up.” On Nov. 7, Abrams implied she was not deterred by the predictions when she tweeted, “The polls and pundits may have written us off, but Georgia has always been a battleground state, and I will never stop fighting for the people of Georgia.”

Abrams’ resilience extends far beyond this election cycle — after losing to Kemp by 1.4% in 2018, many people took Abrams’ dedication to fighting against voter suppression as a refusal to concede the race. In 2021, she addressed the controversy, telling CNN, “I, on Nov. 16, 2018, acknowledged at the top of my speech that Brian Kemp is the governor of Georgia and I even wished him well at the end of the speech.” She went on to clarify her statements, saying, “In the middle, I talked about the fact we had a system that he managed, that he manipulated, hurt Georgia voters, and the responsibility of leaders is to challenge systems that are not serving the people.”

And challenge them she did. After the 2018 election saw 53,000 voter registrations put on hold by Kemp — who was the Georgia Secretary of State at the time — Abrams founded Fair Fight, a Georgia-based national voting rights organization meant to help secure everyone’s right to vote.

Throughout the 2022 campaign, Abrams and Kemp battled on many hot-button issues, including abortion, voting laws, and the economy, but as people took to the polls, the incumbent came out on top.

The gubernatorial race wasn’t the only one Georgians were keeping an eye on — Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker went head-to-head for a seat in the Senate, and with 95% of the votes in on Nov. 9, the race is currently in favor Warnock, but it looks like the people of Georgia will have to wait a little longer before they find out who their next senator will be.

As for Abrams, it’s not clear what she’ll do following her defeat, but as she said in her speech, “There will always be another chapter.”