Abrams Discusses ‘Plotting’ for Days After Georgia Election: ‘Revenge Can Be Very Cathartic’

Defeated Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said Tuesday she spent the 10 days between Election Day and her non-concession speech "plotting," telling an audience "revenge can be very cathartic."

Abrams has claimed for months that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R.) used voter suppression methods as secretary of state to win, and she essentially deemed his victory illegitimate. She refused to concede on election night in hopes of forcing a runoff, and despite eventually losing by more than 50,000 votes, Abrams said the election was an "erosion of our democracy."

Speaking at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, as part of the college's annual lecture series, she talked about her efforts to improve Georgia elections and her defiance of the usual graceful attitude of a defeated politician.

"I upend the tradition of politics where you’re supposed to be genteel, say everything is fine. I didn’t do that," she said Tuesday, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I could fight just to fight, but the minute it becomes about me, it becomes a vanity project. … That can’t be the reason you do things. And I spent that 10-day period plotting. Revenge can be very cathartic."