After almost two weeks of uncertainty and legal challenges, Stacey Abrams has acknowledged that her opponent in the Georgia’s governor race, Republican Brian Kemp, has won. But, she said in a speech Friday, she wouldn’t call this a “concession.”
“I acknowledge that Brian Kemp will be certified as the victor,” Abrams said, according to BuzzFeed News. Since last Tuesday’s election, the Abrams campaign has questioned Kemp’s conduct as Georgia secretary of state, which enabled him to oversee an election that he was running in. Kemp ultimately got a little over 50 percent of the vote, which meant he would win without having to go to a run-off.
“Concession means an action is right, true, or proper,” Abrams said. “As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that. But my assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy.”
Had Abrams won, she would have been the first African American woman to win a gubernatorial election in the U.S.
The Abrams campaign and progressive groups pointed to a variety of irregularities before and during last Tuesday’s vote, including “holding” voter registrations, a bizarre accusation that the state Democratic Party had hacked Georgia’s voter registration infrastructure, and long lines due to few voting machines being provided in dense, urban, and heavily Democratic areas of the state.
But the Abrams campaign ran out of legal challenges and could not refute the fact that the majority of people who did vote chose Kemp.
