Flipped: How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power - Hardcover

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Greg Bluestein is a political reporter who covers state politics for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He also contributes to the Political Insider blog and Jolt newsletter, hosts the Politically Georgia podcast, cohosts shows on WSB and Georgia Public Broadcasting outlets, and is a frequent guest on local and national TV and radio programs. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia with degrees in journalism and political science, and lives with his wife and two daughters in metro Atlanta.

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Chapter 1

WTF Happened?

After President Trump's victory in 2016, Democrats in Georgia were angry-and ready to channel that fury into political energy. Georgia House minority leader Stacey Abrams had spent a lifetime preparing for just this moment.

The daughter of United Methodist ministers, Abrams grew up grounded in activism: she remembers boycotting a local Shell gas station as a child to protest the oil giant's ownership's ties to apartheid South Africa. As a teenager, she started a spreadsheet that meticulously charted each of her career goals, including a run for president as early as 2028. While a student at Spelman College, the famed historically Black institution in Atlanta, she led protests after the Rodney King verdict and challenged Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson, the trailblazing first African American man elected to lead a major southern city, to work harder to help poor people of color. At Yale Law School, she worked at a legal clinic while writing the first of what would be a string of romance novels under a pen name. After a stint working for a prestigious Atlanta law firm and as a deputy city attorney, Abrams won a statehouse legislative seat and dedicated herself to becoming a political force-not by backslapping her way through the halls of Georgia's Gold Dome but by focusing on changing her party's direction from the inside out.

But if there was a defining story of her youthful foray into politics, it was the regretful high school trip to the Governor's Mansion for a reception for valedictorians. It was one she spoke about to friends in quiet moments and, later, on the campaign trail to roaring crowds. Her family's car had broken down before the dinner, and Abrams and her parents had to take a bus to the formal event in Atlanta's most elite neighborhood. While her peers drove up in expensive rides, Abrams and her parents walked the winding driveway to the big black gates surrounding the estate. When they arrived at the guard station, a security officer glanced at Abrams's mom and dad and then back at her. "This is a private event," she remembers him saying. "You don't belong here."

Abrams's incensed parents soon had him regretting his words with a tongue-lashing, and they were eventually allowed into the reception. But that moment from 1991 would be seared in her memory. She didn't recall meeting then governor Zell Miller that day or celebrating with other elite high school students from across Georgia. What she did remember was that an agent of the state attempted to block her entry to the Governor's Mansion by insisting that she didn't "belong" there.

In early 2017, she had that story in mind as she began putting the finishing touches on a soon-to-be-launched campaign to convince voters that she belonged in Georgia's top office. Over the past three years, she'd founded a voting rights group, the New Georgia Project, whose goal was to engage hundreds of thousands of voters of color disconnected from state politics. She built a national fundraising operation to promote her vision of liberal policies in the South. She helped transform her often-warring Democratic colleagues in the Georgia House into a more effective fighting force. And she assembled a team of aides and advisers to help burnish her national profile and not-so-quietly make senior party officials aware that she was running for governor-with or without their support.

To some in Georgia's political class, though, Abrams was known as a behind-the-scenes operator knowledgeable in the nuances of legislation and skilled at picking apart Republican talking points-and not as a fiery orator who could energize the masses. Sure, she had proven that she could impress wealthy donors in closed-door meetings. But many in Georgia were scarcely familiar with Abrams's name, let alone her ability to motivate Democrats.

While Georgia Democrats lacked a clear leader after years of demoralizing defeats, Abrams had been one of Trump's most outspoken critics in Georgia. His surprise White House victory gave her the chance she needed to funnel Democratic outrage into results-and cement her claim as the leader of the party's resurgence.

On a weekday afternoon in January 2017 in downtown Atlanta, not far from the spot where baseball legend Hank Aaron belted his 715th home run, a crowd of five hundred or so activists, politicians, and onlookers gathered at a union hall. A former beauty queen angling to run for office wore a sparkling sash. Haggard parents turned campaign leaflets into makeshift coloring books to keep their little ones occupied. Once and future candidates crammed into rows of plastic folding chairs arrayed under fluorescent lights.

A hush descended over the room as Abrams delivered her vision of how Democrats could win Georgia. Over the course of about fifteen minutes, she spoke of mobilizing liberals by promising expanded access to health care, promoting a more equitable economy, and a push to register, and then engage, overlooked Georgia voters. Above all, she made the case that Democrats could win back Republican-held territory if they embraced authenticity rather than set aside their priorities to try to win over wavering moderates. She wanted to be both a salve and a spark to angry, hurt, and frustrated Democrats; she promised them there was a tangible path to flipping Georgia, that resistance wasn't futile.

Like her or not, many of Abrams's fellow Democratic lawmakers saw her as a no-nonsense leader capable of navigating the messy mash-up of compromise and the shrewd triangulation of power under the Gold Dome. To her most loyal supporters, she was a prophet of voting rights, a visionary intent on building an ascendant political coalition with her promise of being an "unapologetic progressive." To her critics, she was a threatening new force in state politics whose promise to energize liberals could upend decades of a conservative-leaning status quo. But most hadn't seen her like this before: uncompromising, inspirational, and demanding. The audience, eager for a statewide standard-bearer in the Trump era, interrupted her speech frequently with applause and at the end rewarded her with a booming ovation.

The speech heralded some of the challenges that awaited Abrams as she rose in political stardom. An avowed introvert who once happily went to the grocery store and local haunts unrecognized, Abrams wasn't used to so openly wearing her heart on her sleeve. That day, in an aside, she said only half-jokingly that "if I could cry, I would"-a window into a no-nonsense and sometimes brusque style that had Democratic rivals whispering that she was the wrong fit for a party looking for a new champion.

As her message gained traction, it soon became clear that Abrams's political strategy would set Democrats on a course toward a new kind of battleground politics that would bring unprecedented spending, visits from a constellation of political stars, constant attention from national media, and a clash of ideologies between two parties diametrically opposed on most every major policy debate, each eager to use the other to energize their bases. As the audience trickled out of the union hall that day, many left confident that Abrams could awaken a dormant wing of the party.

There was, however, good reason to be skeptical. As 2017 dawned, Republicans controlled every statewide office in Georgia and both US Senate seats and enjoyed commanding majorities in the state legislature. Just a few years earlier, in the 2014 elections, a Republican ticket led by first-term governor Nathan Deal and Senate candidate David Perdue swept every statewide office easily, brushing aside younger, well-financed Democrats who had storied last...