Stacey Abrams, Oprah targeted by racist robocall funded by white supremacist group

Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Oprah Winfrey were targeted in a racist robocall to Georgia voters on Friday.

The robocall was apparently funded by TheRoadToPower.com, a video podcasting site that has been called white supremacist and anti-Semitic by the Anti-Defamation League. The robocall is apparently being funded by the same white supremacist group that targeted Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum earlier this month, the Daily Beast reported. 

{mosads}A voice in the call pretends to be Oprah, the legendary talk-show host who stumped for Abrams in Georgia earlier this week. 

“This is the magical negro, Oprah Winfrey, asking you to make my fellow negress, Stacey Abrams, the governor of Georgia,” the call begins, according to recordings. 

“Years ago, the Jews who own the American media saw something in me – the ability to trick dumb white women into thinking I was like them,” the voice continues. “I see that same potential in Stacey Abrams.”

The robocall compares Abrams to a “poor man’s Aunt Jemimah” who “white women can be tricked into voting for, especially the fat ones.”

Abrams’s opponent, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, in an emailed statement to The Hill, called the robocall “vile,” “racist” and “absolutely disgusting.” 

“I stand against any person or organization that peddles this type of unbridled hate and unapologetic bigotry,” he said.

Abrams’s campaign hit back at Kemp in its statement.

“Brian Kemp has only now suddenly decided to find a conscience as polls are tightening and Georgia voters are making it clear that they reject the kind of hate he and his allies have been spewing around the state,” spokesperson Abigail Collazo said in the statement. “These automated calls are being sent into homes just days before President Trump arrives, reminding voters exactly who is promoting a political climate that celebrates this kind of vile, poisonous thinking.”

Abrams is running a close race against Kemp, whom she has accused of voter suppression. The allegation followed after a report emerged that 53,000 voter registration applications are on hold because they did not meet state law requiring information on the applications to exactly match that held by the government. Seventy percent of those applications were reportedly from black voters.

Similar racist robocalls have dialed up voters in Florida to target Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum this month, featuring a man speaking in minstrel-style dialect as monkeys screeched in the background. 

A spokesman for Gillum’s campaign, Geoff Burgan, at the time called the robocalls “disgusting,” adding, “We would hope that these calls, and the dangerous people who are behind them, are not given any more attention than they already have been.”