December 28, 2020

How does Trump finally signing the pandemic relief bill affect the GA Senate runoff? CNN's Jim Sciutto interviews Stacey Abrams.

"Not only is this a belated investment, it is also a very poor investment. Six hundred dollars will not help most families survive, and we need two U.S. senators who are willing to go to Washington and be in partnership with the new president, to deliver real covid relief to the state of Georgia," Abrams said.

"We have to have supports for those 161,000 families that were facing eviction whose lives aren't suddenly going to get better because of the extended moratorium. We have 4.1 million job loss claims in the state, a quarter of small businesses in operation in 2019 have shut down permanently in 2020 and Mitch McConnell has declared that he intends not to do more. He has shown his obstructionism many times before and unfortunately, both Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue have been his strongest supporters, making sure no progress happens or relief comes to Georgia."

Sciutto brought up Trump's plan for a Jan. 4th "victory rally" in Georgia. "I wonder if you think that President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have invested enough time down there to help turn the races. Do you want to see more of Biden and Harris before January 6th?" he asked.

"We're always excited to have the president-elect and vice president-elect in Georgia. The numbers tell their own story, 2 million cast their ballots, 65,000 voters disproportionately under the age of 29 and people of color. We are seeing active engagement across the state, including in rural parts of the state, among black and brown voters, turnout rates that are incredible for the state of Georgia. While we are always excited to see our leaders on the ground here in Georgia, Raphael Warnock and Jon Osoff engaged voters, increasing participation and leading the turnout to win the election January 5th," she said.

Abrams explained that Georgia is a unique state.

"We have the single highest population of African-American voters for any battleground state. We have burgeoning population of Asian-American and Latino voters. Asian population participation increased by 91% over 2016, Latino population participation increased 72% and young people, black people and white voters, all of that requires investment and that's what what we're seeing in Georgia."

She said the campaign cash is being spent "organizing, immobilizing and engaging. Sixty-five thousand voters who did not vote in November are engaged in this election.

"That is a testament to the thoughtfulness that we have seen coming from these candidates, raising money not simply to talk about who they are but to talk about what they will do and we know that Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock invested in communities in ways we've never seen from previous senator candidates -- and certainly doing more than David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler have as candidates or senators," she said.

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