{"id":877233,"date":"2022-11-09T22:14:28","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T22:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=413725"},"modified":"2022-11-09T22:14:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T22:14:28","slug":"georgias-turnout-boss-stacey-abrams-had-a-turnout-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/11\/09\/georgias-turnout-boss-stacey-abrams-had-a-turnout-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Georgia’s Turnout Boss, Stacey Abrams, Had a Turnout Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
I ran into<\/u> Ns\u00e9 Ufot this weekend at a low-key campaign event at the Georgia Beer Garden downtown in Atlanta and hung out with her for a while in the courtyard, as she sat contemplating her fate. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., was chilling nearby with Charlie Bailey \u2014 Democrats\u2019 candidate for lieutenant governor \u2014 and the folks in town from “The Daily Show.”<\/p>\n
Ufot is almost as famous in Georgia for running the New Georgia Project, the voter engagement organization founded by Stacey Abrams.\u00a0But she’d\u00a0been fired as NGP\u2019s chief executive officer six weeks earlier for reasons that are still unclear and she declined to elaborate on. A handful of other staffers have also been fired since.<\/p>\n
Breakups are always hard, but when things aren\u2019t working, something has to give. Ufot and groups like NGP would be the first to see if something isn\u2019t working in Abrams\u2019s election logic. When that happens, relationships can get tense.<\/p>\n
The new head of the New Georgia Project did not get back to me.\u00a0New Georgia Project is nominally nonpartisan, but any group focused on getting historically marginalized communities is going to have a greater impact on results for Democrats in Georgia. The margin of Abrams’s Tuesday loss to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp \u2014 by 7.6 percentage points or 300,000 votes \u2014 might be measured in what\u00a0New Georgia Project and similar groups across the state could and could not accomplish running up to Election Day.<\/p>\n\n
Georgia\u2019s election this year was supposed to be a turnout game, just like 2018 and 2020. There\u2019s no point in trying to change anyone\u2019s mind anymore. There are no swing voters. It\u2019s just a matter of getting the right people to the polls, as many as you can, any way you can. Or so we hear.<\/p>\n
Maybe that\u2019s still true. But you wouldn\u2019t know it from the results last night.<\/p>\n