ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp took the Braves NLCS win as an opportunity to criticize Major League Baseball and Stacey Abrams.
Kemp tweeted congratulations to the Braves while accusing Stacey Abrams and the MLB of “stealing” the All-Star game from Georgia.
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“While Stacey Abrams and the MLB stole the All-Star Game from hardworking Georgians, the Braves earned their trip to the World Series this season and are bringing it home to Georgia,” Kemp wrote on Twitter.
Major League Baseball moved the All-Star game from Truist Park in Cobb County to Denver after Kemp signed a bill that made changes to election procedures in Georgia.
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Kemp blasted the decision at the time, calling it a “kneejerk decision” and an “attack on our state.”
“Major League Baseball has caved to the cancel culture and a bunch of liberal lies, quite honestly,” Kemp said in an exclusive interview with Channel 2 in April. “And it’s because Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams continue to lie about the Election Integrity Act that I just signed.”
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Stacey Abrams actually lobbied against the boycott in an opinion piece for USA Today in April. She also spoke to a senior MLB advisor and urged the league not to pull the event out of Atlanta, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein.
Abrams released a statement in response to Kemp’s latest swing in her direction via a spokesperson.
“As Braves fans across the country were celebrating, Brian Kemp swung and missed again with his bizarre deflection of blame for the harm to Georgians resulting from a bill that he signed.” Seth Bringman, spokesman for Abrams, said.
Georgia’s new election law makes ballot drop boxes an official part of Georgia elections and replaces signature matches on absentee ballots with a voter ID.
Critics, however, contend the new law is more about voter suppression than election integrity, especially the law preventing people from providing food and water to voters within 150 feet of polling places.
Major League Baseball has stood by its decision to move the game.
“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box. In 2020, MLB became the first professional sports league to join the non-partisan Civic Alliance to help build a future in which everyone participates in shaping the United States,” commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr. said in a statement.
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