Stacey Abrams tells Hollywood: don’t boycott Georgia

At a special panel discussion at Moonshine Post Production, Stacey Abrams and Erika Alexander discussed Abrams' favorite TV shows and keeping the Georgia film and TV tax credit strong.

At a special panel discussion at Moonshine Post Production, Stacey Abrams and Erika Alexander discussed Abrams' favorite TV shows and keeping the Georgia film and TV tax credit strong.

Originally posted Sunday, November 18, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog

With several entertainers posting on social media that they plan to boycott Georgia after Brian Kemp won the gubernatorial race, his former rival Stacey Abrams implored them not to do so.

In a Tweet Saturday evening, she wrote, "I appreciate the calls to action, but I ask all of our entertainment industry friends to support #FairFightGA - but please do not #boycottgeorgia. The hard-working Georgians who serve on crews & make a living here are not to blame. I promise: We will fight - and we will win."

She has heavily criticized Kemp as Secretary of State of several actions that she called “voter suppression” tactics, such as regular purging of voter rolls, closing voter precinct sites and rejecting absentee ballots for minor issues such as possible signature mismatches. She lost the race by about 1.5 percentage points, or 55,000 votes out of 3.9 million.

Kemp has stated his support of the generous state production tax credits that has brought hundreds of Hollywood productions into Georgia over the past decade and billions of dollars in direct spending. The state is the most generous in the country in terms of direct tax credit payouts in part because there is no cap.

The most notable Hollywood types who have used the #BoycottGeorgia hashtag on Twitter have been actress Alyssa Milano (who shot Netflix's "Insatiable" here), "West Wing" actor Bradley Whitford, actor Steven Pasquale and actor Ron Perlman.

So far, based on what I could see on Twitter, this has not become a big trending topic but the sentiment was clearly alarming enough for Abrams to post about it Saturday evening.

UPDATE: Producer David Simon ("The Wire," "The Deuce"), who has never worked in Georgia before, doesn't plan to. His Tweet Sunday morning:

And people in the business who work in Georgia have responded. "When you say #boycottgeorgia," wrote actor Jacob York, who writes for "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell" on Atlanta-based Adult Swim, "you boycott me paying rent. You boycott raising kids, paying for braces and trying to make a living. All the artists I know in Georgia are mad as hell. But you saying 'boycott Georgia' primarily hurts people who already agree with you."