An OZY analysis of nearly 400 House candidates shows that many follow in Stacey Abrams’ footsteps. In her historic campaign to become the first female African-American governor in the United States, Stacey Abrams has captured the hearts of progressives who have long dreamed of turning the red clay of Georgia a liberal blue. But this spring, the Yale Law grad and entrepreneur had to confront what could be her Achilles’ heel: debt. Her financial disclosures showed more than $170,000 in credit card and student loan debt, and over $50,000 in deferred tax payments to the IRS, which she said she accrued while helping to support her parents and niece, when her father was undergoing cancer treatments. “Debt is a millstone that weighs down more than three-quarters of Americans,” she wrote in an editorial for Fortune magazine, arguing that the debt she took on to help support her family humanized her and was, in part, emblematic of the disproportional debt African-American students carry. “It should not — and cannot — be a disqualification for ambition.” | 