Stacey Abrams is hitting Georgia’s airwaves with a new ad campaign designed to highlight her experience as a business executive, and to take advantage of possible weaknesses in her potential Republican opponents.
In a new 30-second spot that started airing Monday, Abrams appears with Lara Hodgson, her business partner and the CEO of Now Corp., a 10-year old alternative financing company for small businesses that the two co-founded. The company’s website says it has 23 employees, 1,006 clients for which it has “accelerated payments” in the amount of $702 million.
A second TV spot focuses on “Ms. Teresa” a small restaurant owner in Macon, Ga., who says Abrams helped her diner stay afloat as the pandemic hit many businesses hard.
Total spending on Abrams’ new ad campaign wasn’t released, but it’s just one of several commercial blitzes that targets Black voters or promotes a Black candidate as the summer before a critical election season draws near. Abrams is making her second run for governor of Georgia; she narrowly lost her first campaign in 2018.
This time, she’s the front-runner in the Democratic primary and facing a divided Republican field as Trump-backed challengers try to unseat incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp. Abrams’ campaign is timed to exploit that division.
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution
With Gov. Brian Kemp and former U.S. Sen. David Perdue locked in a bitter Republican primary battle, Abrams has been free to aim for a larger segment of the electorate. Already an icon to many liberals, Abrams has framed her campaign around a pledge to expand Medicaid.
The latest volley follows a minute-long TV spot earlier this year that focused on how she spent her time since her narrow defeat to Kemp in 2018, including paying off the medical debt of 68,000 Georgians through her Fair Fight Action political organization.