The Deep South — typically defined as Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi — has long been the punchline of jokes. As a result, campaigns and the people they seek to serve have long been underfunded, overlooked and discounted; but we refuse to be written out of democracy. Across the region, our voters soundly rejected the Republicans' authoritarian playbook and chose progress instead.
In Georgia, Democrats won critical statewide elections that flipped two seats on the state’s Public Service Commission. A couple of states over, in Mississippi, Democrats won four high-profile legislative races, and in so doing, flipped a pair of Republican-held state Senate seats to break the Republican supermajority. That’s a consequential shift that opens the door for accountability and balance in a state long written off by national pundits.
As a Gen X kid, I knew that conservative Democrats largely controlled politics in the South, and usually not to the benefit of my family or those like us.
But over the past decade, a critical shift has occurred.
This is a preview of Stacey Abrams's latest column. Read the full column here.
