Study Hall: STACY ABRAMS ON HER ECONOMIC PLAN, POLITICS, & BUSINESS

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a historical moment that we're in right now. From a political side, this is a financial platform, So we have questions about the finance and about you know, the business side of things, because it's important and I think that we have a journalistic responsibility to talk to people that are in position of power or that could potentially be in very high positions of power, and especially a state like Georgia where Atlanta we just did invest fst over

thirteen thousand people. You actually gave a message that we played on the big screen. Thank you for that. But you know, Atlanta and Georgia is our second home and one of our biggest markets, so it's vitally important that you know we have this conversation. So first and foremost, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it, thank you for having me.

and you have a variety of different businesses. So what are some things that you've learned from entrepreneurship that you think you know has helped you or can potentially help you in running a very important state like Georgia in politics.

novelists by big platforms. And so I needed to be the number one selling book that day. So I got all the people i'd ever met to buy from Amazon on the exact same day, and that catapult to me and people started asking about my book.

One of the impediments I faced. And another business was access to capital, and that's something that small businesses face all the time, and in particularly in Georgia because we lost more banks than any other state during the Great Recession, and black owned businesses have the least amount of access because we lost so many banks. Access to capital is the difference between success and failure, because it's not just

about operating capital. It's being able to even know where to go and having someone trust that it's worth risking when you bring that to the governor's office. It's about making sure we're creating programs that actually address these challenges. How do we market our small businesses. We do a great job of championing big companies, but how do we market our small businesses?

suspicious of that number because it's different. It's different to be a person of color than it is to be a woman, and having been both my entire life, I understand the different treatment that exists. But even if you combine both of those, it's less than it's only seven point seven percent of the contracting that we know of. People of color are forty eight percent of the state.

To only have seven percent of the contracts is absurd, and so one thing the governor can do without legislation is use George's purchasing power to support small businesses by directing the Department of Administrative Services to establish and monitor targets to make certain that all the state agencies are actually purchasing intentionally from minority owned small businesses, and also providing the technical assistance of those small businesses cantually secure

and fulfill those state contracts. But the other part of that is what I call my Commercial Investment small Business Capital Investment Fund, which is ten million dollars. That would then allow those same small businesses to do if they have to go and buy initial equipment to take the contract on, let's give you the money and underwrite your loan to get that contract. Because if you get that contract, fifty thousand dollars should not stop you from making five million.

But for a lot of small businesses, that's it's the point of entry that's so expensive. In contrast, my current the current governor is going to establish a study to look at whether or not this is a problem. You don't have to study Georgia to understand that it is a problem when forty eight percent of your population only gets seven percent of your business. And that's the conversation

that's happened every year for the last twenty years. Governor after governor says well, we'll we'll talk about it, we'll study it. They won't move legislation to solve it. Well, as governor, you solve the problem because I don't need legislation. I can do it directly. And there was something you said at the opening, I not only will be the first black governor of Georgia. I'll be the first black women governor in American history.

those groups have to be given primacy. And because in Georgia those groups often overlap, by targeting these communities, we actually hit the broadest swath of possibilities. I also want to make certain that major state contractors have to implement their own programs for supplier diversity. Why should the state contract with someone who is not looking at the wh whole state as viable. And then the last big thing

for me is what I call cluster contracts. So you have these big companies that bid on these major contracts, billion dollar contracts. If you're a small company, if you can, you can't bite off a billion dollars, but you could do about two hundred million right now, you're not permitted to participate. Instead, they give it to the big company, and they tell the big company, oh, give them ten percent.

That ten percent rarely materialize it or it always goes to the same small company they've always given it to. I want to create what I call cluster contracts, letting two or three or four businesses come together to bid on that contract. So you have four companies that instead of all trying to compete for this one billion dollar contract, they instead get one hundred and fifty million, two fifty three fifty of that contract. But they can all grow

at the same time, and they're hiring new people. And when you combine that with the small Business Investment Fund that can underwrite the capital risk, and you're directing technical assistance to make sure they can actually participate in the profit, says because if you've ever tried to bid on a

state contract or even a city contract, procurement's hard. I was the lawyer for one of the lawyers for procurement at the City of Atlanta, and so for me, it's not just about what I know as an entrepreneur, it's also what I know as someone who's been on the delivery side of government, not just running for office, but actually having to do the work of making it happen.

And so those are three big opportunities. I'm talking billions of dollars that can suddenly be in the hands and in the pockets of people of color, of black people in particular, because we're thirty three percent of the population, we're two point one percent of the business revenue in Georgia.

correct me if I'm wrong. The reason why that's such a big issue and the reason why the governor is so important is that the governor really the most powerful person in the state because they control budgets, they control a lot of the state issues, even more so than state representatives or senators, and the president doesn't really have power on a state level. This is why, like COVID is so many different rules depending on which states you're in.

So can you give us an education on why the governor is so important and why people need to pay more attention to who their governor is.

of Florida. That's how standard ground became. But once it happens in a state, it spreads like a contagion. So now you've got standard ground in Georgia and everywhere else. Number Two, mass incarceration did not start with the ninety four crime bill. Three Strikes Are Out was actually done by the governor of California in nineteen ninety four. The federal government decided to follow, but it started with the

governor and Jim Crow. The stripping black people of humanity for one hundred and fifty years never had a single federal law. It was all state laws signed by governors. And so when we think about how our lives are lived, we think about the presidency because it's national, or the mayor because it's hyper local. But all the money that comes from the federal government comes through the state. The

governor decides. All of the things your mayor wants to do in the South, especially in Georgia, has to be approved by If it's a big program, it has to be approved by the governor. One example is that in two thousand and three, I worked for Shirley Franklin. I wrote the first living wage law in the history of the state of Georgia. It would have guaranteed that any company doing business in Georgia had to pay a living wage. It could have transformed the economies of thousands of Georgians.

We got that legislation through the city council, the mayor signed it, and the following January, the governor signed a law making it illegal for any city to pass a law guaranteeing a wage. That's what the state does. If you're worried about housing, the governor has to sign legislation that says that it's that local government has the authority to actually enforce housing rules and make sure that you can afford to live in the home that you live in.

But for business owners. Where the governor is so incredibly important is that most of the decisions we think have to be made by committee and Georgia gets made by the governor. Right now, the governer of Georgia is spending billions of dollars. Every time you hear him announce money that's being that COVID money that's being spent. He doesn't have to ask a single person for permission. He decides by himself, with whoever he decides to bring in the room,

how he wants to spend that money. So the question is whose name do you want to have on the checkbook. Someone who does not believe in investing in communities of color, someone who has never demonstrated any interest until it was election year, or someone who has come up the hard way through our business community and through our city and state, who has the knowledge and experience, but also now the authority to get good done. The shorthand is imagine Maynard

Jackson and what he did for Atlanta. Imagine if he had been governor of Georgia. That's the kind of governor I could be.

people registered. I created Fair Fight, which is the work that we've been doing to make sure that we have fair voting laws, or if their laws are not fair, that we know why they're not fair and we fight back. I created the organization's Fair Count Your account made certain that we had an accurate census for the first time in thirty years, actually counting black and brown folks, and it was the first year in almost thirty years we

did not have a statistical undercount. And that matters to businesses because the money that comes to the state through the SBA and through all of these different grants and loans, it's all based on the accurate count of the people in your state. So when black people get under counted,

we also get under resourced. So those are the groups I've started and part of what all of those groups are doing independent of me, independent of my campaign, but they are embedded in community making sure people understand what the voting laws are, what changed, what stayed the same, and why it matters. Separately, our campaign is doing that same work through our voter protection efforts. That's why we're

urging people to vote early. We get three weeks of voting in joy to starting October seventeenth, because of how difficult these new laws are, because of the hurdles that Brian Kemp and Brad Rasenberger have put in place. Do not get distracted by the fact that they didn't commit treason. The same time they were not committing treason, they were also putting in more voter suppression laws. And because of those new voter suppression laws, we need folks to vote

early to get it out of the way. In Georgia, we have the number one likelihood of having long lines in black communities up to eight hours, and so if we want people to be able to vote, we need to get our votes banked. We need to get it done and get on with our lives. And that means voting as much as possible, as early as possible. And when I say as much as possible, I mean getting as many people as possible.

You've never had anyone like me running for office. What I like to describe is not what I did before I ran. But when I didn't win, I still made sure that I helped pay off the medical debt of sixty eight thousand Georgians, especially people who want to start their own businesses, because we know that medical debt often stops you from being able to do anything. I made sure that people got access to the COVID vaccine. I started at a company that was moving millions of dollars

to small businesses. I made sure that if you were on EBT, when you weren't getting the stimulus checks, that we got a thousand dollars check written to a bunch of families across Georgia who weren't getting the money they needed. That's what I do when I don't have the job. Imagine what I would do if I had the job. So I'm not asking people to forget what they know.

I'm asking them to believe what they see. Yes, the current governor reopened the state, but he also passed a law making it illegal for anyone who got harmed any essential worker to sue their boss for not having protection. We have one of the highest rates of death from COVID in the nation, and so yes, some people benefited, but most of our businesses didn't get a dime of PPP. He got money. He gave a six hundred and ninety four million dollar contract to his friends for giving him

money in his campaign. My mission has been and always will be, how do you invest in people to make sure they thrive? Because I've been at the bottom and I don't want to be there, and I don't think anyone else needs to be there. If you're willing to work for it, my mission is to work with you. But I've got to get the job first, and that's why I need folks to show up.

in January of twenty nineteen. I know the relief I felt, but I also know the burden I carried for years when I indeed had to make choices between paying my student loans and taking care of my family. And so I don't begrudge a person getting access to those resources. It, of course, is not enough, because we have a broken system in this country. When my parents were going through college even though they weren't able to fully leverage it because they were they grew up during Jim Crow, those.

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But what we have to layer on top of it is the fact that for many black and a lot of black folks, that money's going to matter because we are more likely to finish, to be in debt but not have the degree to go with it. And so while it is not enough, it is more than we have, and it is substantial because we're also more likely to qualify for the twenty thousand than the ten thousand, because more of our people are in that bracket where we were also relying on pelgrams. And I say week as

I was. But what I want to do for Georgia is layer on top of that by making sure we're not creating a deeper hole. And that's why I want to restore free technical college in the state of Georgia once the Hope Scholarship was created. Between the creation of the Hope Scholarship and twenty eleven, technical college was free.

Georgia is one of only two states in the country that does not provide need based aid, the only one in the South, which means if you want to see your way to college, you better not have a C average. That should not be the choice. And for black students in Georgia, black students are the least likely to get hope and the most likely to lose hope. But if we had need based aid, we could fill in the gap that when you tie that to what's happening on

the federal level, creates new opportunity. But the way to pay for it is critical, and that is that I want to use that unrestricted money that we already have. But I also want to expand gaming in Georgia, sports betting and casinos. That would generate three hundred and fifty million dollars a year upwards in order to invest in

that education. And since it is our people who are spending money in the lottery, but we are the least likely to see the benefit, let's make certain that if we're going to have gaming, that our people benefit from that process. And that's my plan is the next cup.

so the purchasing power of that do dollars less. I want to write size their salaries by making sure that the starting salary in Georgia by the end of my term is fifty thousand dollars. And at the same time, I want to increase pay for all educators by an average of eleven thousand dollars. That means that we really truly create a meaningful change in their wages that is sustainable.

I also want to make certain we're giving that same We're giving similar pay raises, although it's got to be done a little differently because they're paid by the school district and not by the state. But we need to increase pay for para professionals, for school bus drivers, for cafeteria workers. You shouldn't work to educate our children and still be in poverty. That doesn't make any sense, and

it is a solvable problem. At the same time, we know the other biggest driver of economic need in economic paucity in Georgia, and the best way to financial freedom is having insurance. Right now, health insurance is being denied to people who are making nine dollars an hour or less, and when you are starting your own small business, you probably can't afford health insurance for yourself, let alone for

your employees. Well, in Georgia, we are forfeiting three point five billion dollars every year that we've already paid for, but that the governor refuses to bring to the state if we expand Medicaid, working people who make too much money to qualify for regular Medicaid because for regular Medicaid you got to be not only completely broke, but you also have to have a dependent or be disabled, or be a senior, or you have to be able to buy into the affordable care I buy into obamacareing and

you have to make a not a lot, but a lot more money than those making nine dollars an hour. Do I want to get that population? Those are our students who are finishing college, but they aren't on their parents' insurance, and they need insurance. And if we ever thought that you didn't need insurance if you were young, Let's think

about COVID, let's think about monkey pocks. But I also want those folks who are starting their business, who want to quit their job but can't afford to leave because they can't afford to lose their health insurance, and so their dreams die because they can't afford to go. If we expand medicaid, we can do all of that, and we can pay for both of these things. Medicaid is two ninety seven two hundred ninety seven million a year, and to overall do the salary increases is four hundred

million dollars. We have a five billion dollars surplus in Georgia. Once we paid every bill, once we have put money into our savings account fifteen percent, once we've accounted for growth in population, we have five to six billion dollars just sitting there. My opponent says that he wants to do tax cuts. What he means is he wants to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Georgians. Because the average Georgian will see one hundred and ninety three dollars, the

wealthiest Georgans will see ten thousand dollars or more. I want to instead pay our teachers, pay for health care, save the Atlanta Medical Center, keep doctors in our state, invest in small businesses, all of the things I'm talking about. He wants to give the money to the wealthy. I want to spend the money on the people. And we can do every single thing I'm talking about without raising a dime in taxes. And if you don't trust me,

go to my website. I'm a big old nerd. We have a spreadsheet on my website that walks you through how the math works. We can absolutely do this.

pick your pockets instead of putting money in your pockets. Now, he likes to talk broadly about who he benefits, but if you look at the numbers, the people who were falling are still falling. The people who are holding on are holding on by their fingernails, and he refuses to invest in their success. Let's look at housing. Georgia has an affordable housing crisis. We're only the eighth largest state, but we are number three in eviction filings and number

four in actual evictions. And this isn't just Atlanta, this is across the state. I was down in Thomasville and they wanted to talk about the eviction rate down there.

fine print. And if we have a recession, if we have taken that five billion dollars and just given it to the wealthy, then everybody else is going to pay for it, because that's what.

could be used for. I want to do a balloon payment for Georgia so that if we get hit by a recession our natural resources, the money we're going to make, no matter what, will be enough to cover everything I'm talking about without raising taxes. But Also, we won't dip so low because we're suddenly seeing catastrophic effects on the poorest people because all of us pay the bill. Poverty

isn't free. All of us pay for it. And I'm the only person with a plan to make sure we do enough upfront that when it hits, we're ready for it and we can all get through it.

sure they're buying from people who look like Georgia. When the Department of Behavioral Health has to hire, let's make certain when they are buying and purchasing, no matter which agency it is, they need to be looking at the diversity of their supply chain, especially dot dot is going to get billions of dollars every year now because of the bipartisan Infrastructure Plan that those billions of dollars right now are going ninety percent to majority owned firms, not

to minority owned firms. These are billions of dollars that we help bring here because we participated in these elections and we are half of the state. The same thing is true with the Infrastructure Reduction Act, the Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act is going to send billions to the State of Georgia. But right now there's nothing to say that businesses of color, that black businesses get any

of those contracts. And the response from the governors, he'll look at it, well, they've been looking at this for forty years. They've never managed to do anything. I say, hire somebody who's actually proven shall do the work.

four thousand jobs across the state. And here's the way to think about it. The jobs are going where the people who don't have insurance are. So it's going to absolutely get to every part of the state, and it's going to get to the communities in the state that have not had access, because those are the folks who suddenly are going to have the health insurance. They need to get mental health care, to get physical health care. And when those new doctors come in, they're gonna need

to go eat somewhere. So somebody who started their small restaurant, they're going to suddenly have customers. We're going to need pharmacists. We're gonna need construction. Medicaid expansion is number one. Number two, I am going to repeal criminal carry. We know that that law has made Georgia less safe, and particularly for black men. I want you to all think about what

that law means. By removing that permit, that means if you get pulled over, you don't get the presumption that you have the right to carry that concealed weapon, and you can't pull out your permit to show them that it's yours. You are presumed guilty by and large if that happens. That's the worry I have. But it's also true that we've got stories right now of people wandering down the street by our schools open carrying weapons. We have removed the background checks that used to happen with

private sales and gun sales. That's with that constitutional carry, which is a lie. What criminal carry did was strip away a background check that protected us from eleven thousand people who shouldn't have had those weapons. Number Three, I'm going to repeal the ban on abortion after six weeks. And this should mattered to every person, whether you whether you're a woman or not, because in the state of Georgia women are now told you have to decide about

your pregnancy before you know you're pregnant. And this has economic effects across the board, and in particular, Black women are most likely to die from maternal mortality issues than any other race, and it is worse in Georgia than it is in any other state. And Brian Kemp is refusing to act. In fact, he said he's going he

doesn't believe there's the exemptions for rape or incest. We have to understand that when a woman is forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, the likelihood of her going into poverty increases, I think by by forty percent. The likelihood of her being on food stamps within four years or within five years goes up dramatically. This has real economic effect, but it also is costing us jobs.

The gun law costs US fifty million dollars because music Midtown is not here in george We I know Antoine Fuqua pulled a movie out of Georgia with the when the voting rights law came through.

they got Republicans. Y'all may not be old enough to remember Dawson's Creek, but I remember when everything we saw on TV was filmed in North Carolina.

I lose if y'all haven't made a plan. So make a plan to vote. And then number three, go to our website and sign up be a volunteer if we can use all the help we can get, because part of it is reaching the people who don't know that they should be listening to this amazing podcast, who don't know that they have a chance to start their own business, who don't understand what their real opportunities could look like if there was a governor who saw them as opportunity

and not as a burden. My mission is for every Georgian to thrive. And that's not a slogan, that's a mission statement. Everything I have done in my life is geared towards lifting our communities up. And so if you will sign up to work with our campaign, if you're an influencer, if you're a creative, if you are someone who has four minutes off and you want to make a few phone calls for us, or knock some doors in your neighborhood, whatever it is, if you go to

Stacyabrams dot com slash volunteer, we can use you. We need your help because we can win this race. And this is the last thing I'll say about it. You're going to see a lot in the polls. The polls are based on the last election. They look at the model from what happened before. The way we win, the way I've won three different races, Biden's race, Warnocks race, Assos race is by thinking about what's possible. If business owners only ever did what was already done, we'd never

have entrepreneurship. My mission is to think about what we can create, and we can create an electorate that is so electrified and so engaged that the numbers can't see them until we show up.

world leader, I said, the governor. Governors have a lot of power, but especially a state like Georgia, which is has the largest airport in America, thriving economy, Atlanta, a variety of different things. So if you're if you're the governor of the state of Georgia, you're one of the most powerful people in America. And if you're one of the most powerful people in America, you're one of the most powerful people in the world. So that's that's that's impressive.

So yeah, you know, I just strongly encourage everybody to just be more politically active because it comes down to business. And this is a business show, investing show, but it all it's all related. So you know, you talk about politics, especially on the local levels. So your governor, your town supervisor, your mayor, your town work, all of that stuff is important. So you should, you know, you should, you should participate in the political process. I'm not going to tell you

who to vote for. I'm not going to tell you which party to vote for, but I think that you should be engaged, and I think that you should participate because if you don't, there's still going to be elections. Somebody's still gonna win, and they're still going to have a say over you know, you and your family's life on a certain level as far as you know different policies and different things of that nature. So it's important to be aware and to participate.

the political process. Even for me, when I moved to Texas, there was like no state income tax and I was living in Colorado. I'm like, I need to make an adjustment because I can project future earnings.

for you to be aware of this political process. Even though you may not think it has an effect on your business, it definitely does.

five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer, speed up your hiring right now with Indeed, and listeners of this show will get a seventy five dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen. Just go to Indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need