Stacey Abrams Pro-Cop Messaging Unconvincing

In a traditionally conservative state like Georgia, candidates for statewide office are unlikely to get very far campaigning on hard-left cultural policies such as defunding the police. Stacey Abrams, who is set to face Republican incumbent Brian Kemp in the race for Georgia governor this November, likely knows this: The Democrat’s tone on policing and criminal-justice issues noticeably moderated as she transitioned from progressive activist and media darling to political candidate whose success depends on winning votes from actual Georgians. Yet her history on the issue, as well as her continued ties to groups that actively support slashing police budgets, should give voters pause.

Today, Fox News reported that Abrams once co-chaired the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund, an activist group “that awarded tens of thousands of dollars to activists who want to defund and abolish the police.” It’s far from Abrams’s only run-in with the most radical edges of the progressive criminal-justice movement. She still sits on the board of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, a left-wing foundation that has called for police defunding and abolition, and whose president — a donor to Abrams’s gubernatorial campaign — has also argued that “prison abolition is the necessary precondition for any just society.” (Despite later efforts to distance herself from the foundation’s radical positions, Abrams for anti-police groups while serving on the organization’s board.) And when pressed by CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota about the concept of defunding the police , Abrams endorsed the idea of “some defunding,” while suggesting these resources fund the “murder” of black people:

In a traditionally conservative state like Georgia, candidates for statewide office are unlikely to get very far campaigning on hard-left cultural policies such as defunding the police. Stacey Abrams, who is set to face Republican incumbent Brian Kemp in the race for Georgia governor this November, likely knows this: The Democrat’s tone on policing and criminal-justice issues noticeably moderated as she transitioned from progressive activist and media darling to political candidate whose success depends on winning votes from actual Georgians. Yet her history on the issue, as well as her continued ties to groups that actively support slashing police budgets, should give voters pause.

Today, Fox News reported that Abrams once co-chaired the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund, an activist group “that awarded tens of thousands of dollars to activists who want to defund and abolish the police.” It’s far from Abrams’s only run-in with the most radical edges of the progressive criminal-justice movement. She still sits on the board of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, a left-wing foundation that has called for police defunding and abolition, and whose president — a donor to Abrams’s gubernatorial campaign — has also argued that “prison abolition is the necessary precondition for any just society.” (Despite later efforts to distance herself from the foundation’s radical positions, Abrams voted to increase funding for anti-police groups while serving on the organization’s board.) And when pressed by CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota about the concept of defunding the police in June 2020, Abrams endorsed the idea of “some defunding,” while suggesting these resources fund the “murder” of black people: