(CNN) Democrat Stacey Abrams on Friday acknowledged that Republican Brian Kemp will become the next governor of Georgia, ending her bid to become the first African American woman elected to lead a state.

The announcement followed more than a week of post-election legal maneuvering from her campaign and allies as they sought to find enough votes to reduce Kemp's lead and force a December 4 runoff.

Abrams was considering further legal challenges as recently as Friday morning, but ultimately made the decision to end her campaign in a fiery speech to supporters at her headquarters in Atlanta. She did, however, announce plans for a "major federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional actions."

Even in acknowledging defeat, Abrams insisted her speech was not giving a concession and instead delivered a series of sharp criticisms of Kemp.

"So let's be clear -- this is not a speech of concession, because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper," she said. "As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that. But, my assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy. Now, I can certainly bring a new case to keep this one contest alive, but I don't want to hold public office if I need to scheme my way into the post. Because the title of governor isn't nearly as important as our shared title -- voters. And that is why we fight on."

Read More</s>(Reuters) - Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams admitted defeat in her effort to become the first black female U.S. governor on Friday, but said she planned to sue the state over voting problems and “gross mismanagement” of the election.

Abrams’ announcement effectively hands victory to Republican Brian Kemp in a bitter race that has drawn national attention both for her historic campaign and for Kemp’s role as the state’s top election administrator.

Abrams accused Kemp of using his position as Georgia Secretary of State to interfere with the vote - an allegation he has strongly denied.

“To watch an elected official who claims to represent the people in this state baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote has been truly appalling,” Abrams told supporters in Atlanta.

“So let’s be clear: This is not a speech of concession, because concession means to acknowledge an action as right, true or proper,” she said.

State officials were expected to certify Kemp as the winner as soon as Friday night.

“The election is over and hardworking Georgians are ready to move forward,” Kemp said on Twitter. “We can no longer dwell on the divisive politics of the past but must focus on Georgia’s bright and promising future.”

Kemp, 55, resigned his post as Secretary of State after the Nov. 6 election and did not oversee the final ballot review.

Abrams, 44, had considered a court challenge to force a runoff, which is allowed by state law if neither candidate gets a majority of the vote. Initial results showed Kemp just over that threshold.

Instead, she said she would sue the state for what she called “gross mismanagement of this election” and to protect future elections. She said she would start a new organization, Fair Fight Georgia, to advocate for voting rights.

Voters in Georgia reported long lines at polling places as aging technology was swamped by the volume of people seeking to cast ballots. Prior to election day, groups has sued to prevent Kemp from throwing out more than 50,000 voter-registration forms that had been put on hold because personal information did not exactly match state databases. The lawsuit alleged that the “exact match” law disproportionately affected black voters.

Abrams’s announcement comes as several other races across the country remain unresolved.

In neighboring Florida, election officials were slogging through a hand recount of ballots to determine who won a hard-fought U.S. Senate contest.

Outgoing Republican Governor Rick Scott held a narrow lead over incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson after an electronic recount was completed on Thursday. Officials have until noon on Sunday to tally any votes missed by electronic voting machines.

Scott’s campaign has called on Nelson to drop out, saying it was mathematically impossible to make up the difference of about 12,600 votes, 0.15 percent of the more than 8 million ballots cast. Nelson’s lawyer, Marc Elias, has said he expects Scott’s lead to ultimately disappear as the recount continues.

On Friday, a federal judge rejected one of the limited paths to carry Nelson’s chances forward. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee denied an appeal by Nelson’s supporters to allow mail-in ballots that arrived after the state deadline to be counted.

In another tight Florida contest, Republican Ron DeSantis appeared to secure the governor’s seat over Democrat Andrew Gillum after the electronic recount showed DeSantis with a 0.4 percentage point lead, outside the threshold to trigger a hand recount. The state is scheduled to certify results on Tuesday.

Scenes of thousands of people across the state reviewing ballots brought back memories of Florida’s 2000 presidential recount, which ended only after the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in, effectively handing the presidency to Republican George W. Bush.

The result of the Nelson-Scott race will not change the balance of power in the Senate, where Republicans extended their lead in the Nov. 6 midterm vote, while Democrats took a majority in the House of Representatives.

Along with the unresolved Florida senate race, Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi is headed to a Nov. 27 runoff against Democrat Mike Espy after neither candidate secured a majority of the vote in a four-way race.

About 10 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives remain up in the air.</s>ATLANTA — Democrat Stacey Abrams ended her challenge to Republican Brian Kemp in the Georgia governor’s race on Friday, but pledged to fight the former secretary of state’s “gross mismanagement” of the elections with a federal lawsuit.

Speaking defiantly to a news conference, Abrams said her actions did not constitute a concession, but she acknowledged that she had no further recourse under the law and that Kemp would be certified the winner.

"Let's be clear: This is not a speech of concession," she said. "Because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith I cannot concede that."

In accepting Abrams' decision to end her campaign, Kemp said he appreciated "her passion, hard work, and commitment to public service."

"The election is over and hardworking Georgians are ready to move forward," he said. "We can no longer dwell on the divisive politics of the past but must focus on Georgia's bright and promising future."

Kemp, a 55-year-old businessman, had been secretary of state since 2010. He was backed by and had embraced President Donald Trump as he tried to maintain GOP dominance in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the governor's mansion since 1998.

He was heavily criticized for refusing to step down from his post overseeing elections in which he was a candidate. Abrams' campaign accused him of trying to suppress the votes of minorities by purging voter rolls and implementing a state law requiring that the names of voters on their registration forms exactly match those on their government identification. Kemp said he was trying to maintain the integrity of Georgia's voter rolls.

Officials from Abrams' campaign had told The Associated Press on Thursday that the candidate was considering the unprecedented move of invoking a state law that would let her challenge the results based on "misconduct, fraud or irregularities ... sufficient to change or place in doubt the results."

But ultimately she declined to do so.

Instead, Abrams said she would fight to restore integrity to Georgia's election system in a new initiative called "Fair Fight Georgia."

"In the coming days, we will be filing a major federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections," Abrams said. She did not give details.

Abrams also said she would support John Barrow, the Democrat vying to succeed Kemp as secretary of state in a runoff next month.

Kemp stormed to the GOP nomination with ads featuring everything from the candidate cranking a chain saw and jokingly pointing a gun toward a teen male suitor of his daughter, to Kemp's offer to "round up criminal illegals" himself in his pickup truck. He's promised a tax cut and teacher pay raises and pledged to continue Georgia's refusal to expand Medicaid insurance under President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul.

Abrams' campaign sparked huge energy across the state and she became a national Democratic star. Election turnout among both sides' energized bases nearly equaled that of the 2016 presidential vote.

Aides close to Abrams said that since the election she had been wrestling with competing priorities: She wanted to advance her assertions that Georgia's elections process makes it too hard for some citizens to vote. But she also recognized that a protracted legal fight would harm that cause and potentially her political future.

Kemp's victory is an important marker for Republicans ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Kemp's narrow margin already suggests that Georgia, a state Trump won by 5 percentage points in 2016, could be a genuine battleground in 2020. Trump bet big on Kemp, endorsing him ahead of Kemp's Republican primary runoff and campaigning for him the weekend prior to the Nov. 6 election. Now, Trump will be able to return with an incumbent governor as he seeks a second term.

Abrams' political future is less certain. She made believers of old-guard Democrats in Georgia who didn't think a black woman could compete in a general election, and she emerged as the party's clear leader. But the party also has plenty of other ambitious politicians who will want to take advantage of the path that Abrams' has laid out. The next big shot for Democrats is a 2020 Senate race, with Republican Sen. David Perdue making his first re-election attempt.

Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP and Brumback at https://twitter.com/katebrumback.</s>“I certainly appreciate Stacey Abrams’ tenacity, how hard she worked, the campaign she ran,” Kemp told reporters at a state Capitol news conference. “The fact of the matter is the election is now over and I’ve got to focus on governing this state.”

Abrams ended 10 days of post-election drama in Georgia’s closely watched and even more closely contested race Friday evening when she acknowledged that when the state’s final vote gets certified, Kemp will be the next governor.

Still, Abrams defiantly refusing to concede, and instead promised to file a federal lawsuit over the way Georgia elections are run. She accused Kemp of using his office secretary of state’s office to aggressively purge the rolls of inactive voters, enforce an “exact match” policy for checking voters’ identities that left thousands of registrations in limbo, and enact other policies to tilt the outcome in his favor.

Kemp, who stepped down as secretary of state when he declared victory that day after Election Day, defended the outcome of the race.

“Look, we have laws on the books that prevent elections from being stolen from anyone,” Kemp said, insisting those laws “make sure we have secure, accessible, fair elections.”

The speech Abrams delivered at her campaign headquarters Friday evening marked the close of the 44-year-old attorney and former lawmaker’s unsuccessful attempt to make history as America’s first black woman governor. Since Election Day her campaign fought on, insisting efforts to suppress turnout had left thousands of ballots uncounted that otherwise could erode Kemp’s lead and force a runoff election.

“Let’s be clear: This is not a speech of concession,” Abrams said. “Because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.”

Kemp, the 55-year-old businessman who oversaw the election as Georgia’s secretary of state, will keep the governor’s office in GOP hands as the state’s third Republican governor since Reconstruction.

The race grabbed the attention of the nation, with Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey campaigning for Abrams in the final days and President Donald Trump holding a rally for Kemp.

Unofficial returns showed Kemp ahead by roughly 60,000 votes out of nearly 4 million cast on Nov. 6. Kemp declared himself governor-elect the next day and stepped down as Georgia’s secretary of state, though thousands of absentee and provisional ballots remained uncounted.

Abrams, meanwhile, sent volunteers across the state in search of voters whose ballots were rejected. She filed suit in federal court to force county elections boards to count absentee ballots with incorrect birthdates. Her campaign even planned for possible litigation to challenge the election’s certified outcome.

Abrams didn’t take that route. She said she had concluded “the law currently allows no further viable remedy.” Instead, she said she would fight to restore integrity to Georgia’s election system in a new initiative called Fair Fight Georgia.

“In the coming days, we will be filing a major federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional actions,” Abrams said, though she gave no details.

Kemp had been secretary of state since 2010. He was backed by and had embraced Trump as he tried to maintain GOP dominance in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the governor’s mansion since 1998.

Trump praised the Democrat in lauding Kemp’s victory, tweeting: “Congratulations to Brian Kemp on becoming the new Governor of Georgia. Stacey Abrams fought brilliantly and hard — she will have a terrific political future! Brian was unrelenting and will become a great Governor for the truly Wonderful People of Georgia!”

Kemp stormed to the GOP nomination with ads featuring everything from the candidate cranking a chain saw and jokingly pointing a gun toward a teen male suitor of his daughter, to Kemp’s offer to “round up criminal illegals” himself in his pickup truck. He’s promised a tax cut and teacher pay raises and pledged to continue Georgia’s refusal to expand Medicaid insurance under President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care overhaul.

Abrams’ campaign sparked huge energy across the state and she became a national Democratic star. Election turnout among both sides’ energized bases nearly equaled that of the 2016 presidential vote.

Aides close to Abrams said that since the election she had been wrestling with competing priorities: She wanted to advance her assertions that Georgia’s elections process — which Kemp managed as secretary of state — makes it too hard for some citizens to vote. But she also recognized that a protracted legal fight would harm that cause and potentially her political future.

Kemp’s victory is an important marker for Republicans ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Kemp’s narrow margin already suggests that Georgia, a state Trump won by 5 percentage points in 2016, could be a genuine battleground in two years. Trump bet big on Kemp, endorsing him ahead of Kemp’s Republican primary runoff and campaigning for him the weekend prior to the Nov. 6 election. Now, Trump will be able to return with an incumbent governor as he seeks a second term.

Abrams’ political future is less certain. She made believers of old-guard Democrats in Georgia who didn’t think a black woman could compete in a general election, and she emerged as the party’s clear leader.

But the party also has plenty of other ambitious politicians who will want to take advantage of the path that Abrams’ has charted. The next big shot for Democrats is a 2020 Senate race, with Republican Sen. David Perdue making his first re-election attempt.

Associated Press writer Kate Brumback also contributed from Atlanta.</s>ATLANTA — Democrat Stacey Abrams says she can’t win the Georgia governor’s race, effectively ending her challenge to Republican Brian Kemp.

Her speech Friday effectively puts a stop to the contest. The final result had been in doubt for 10 days after the election.

Abrams made her announcement just after 5 p.m. That was the earliest state officials could certify the results after a court-ordered review of absentee, provisional and other uncounted ballots. Abrams’ campaign had contended there were potentially enough uncounted votes to force a runoff.

Abrams had hoped to become the first black governor of the Deep South state and the first black female governor of any state.

Kemp is Georgia’s former secretary of state. He was backed by President Donald Trump.

Abrams stressed as she spoke: “This is not a speech of concession.”

A spokesman for the Kemp campaign didn’t answer his phone and didn’t immediately respond to a text message seeking comment after Abrams’ speech.</s>After almost two weeks of uncertainty and legal challenges, Stacey Abrams has acknowledged that her opponent in the Georgia’s governor race, Republican Brian Kemp, has won. But, she said in a speech Friday, she wouldn’t call this a “concession.”

“I acknowledge that Brian Kemp will be certified as the victor,” Abrams said, according to BuzzFeed News. Since last Tuesday’s election, the Abrams campaign has questioned Kemp’s conduct as Georgia secretary of state, which enabled him to oversee an election that he was running in. Kemp ultimately got a little over 50 percent of the vote, which meant he would win without having to go to a run-off.

“Concession means an action is right, true, or proper,” Abrams said. “As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that. But my assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy.”

Had Abrams won, she would have been the first African American woman to win a gubernatorial election in the U.S.

The Abrams campaign and progressive groups pointed to a variety of irregularities before and during last Tuesday’s vote, including “holding” voter registrations, a bizarre accusation that the state Democratic Party had hacked Georgia’s voter registration infrastructure, and long lines due to few voting machines being provided in dense, urban, and heavily Democratic areas of the state.

But the Abrams campaign ran out of legal challenges and could not refute the fact that the majority of people who did vote chose Kemp.</s>After a tumultuous race, Democrat Stacey Abrams has ended her gubernatorial run in Georgia, saying that she recognizes she cannot beat Republican Brian Kemp.

Their state’s battle for governor attracted national attention for several reasons. Had she won, Abrams would have been the first black woman elected governor in the U.S. But the election was marred by charges of voter suppression allegedly instigated by her opponent, Georgia’s Secretary of State—who did not recuse himself from overseeing a race in which he himself was running. The day before the state’s voter registration deadline, 53,000 registrations were put on hold because the names on record didn’t match their applications. 70 percent of those voters were black. 8 percent of Georgia’s registered voters were cut from voter rolls in late July 2017. During the election, counties threw out thousands of absentee ballots due to a variety of reasons, including signatures that didn’t match up with voter registration files.

“Under the watch of the now former secretary of state, democracy failed Georgia,” Abrams charged in her stirring announcement, which she insisted was not, technically, a concession.

“Let’s be clear—this is not a speech of concession, because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper,” she said. “As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that. But, my assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy. Now, I can certainly bring a new case to keep this one contest alive, but I don’t want to hold public office if I need to scheme my way into the post. Because the title of governor isn’t nearly as important as our shared title—voters. And that is why we fight on.”

“Make no mistake, the former secretary of state was deliberate and intentional in his actions,” Abrams continued. “I know that eight years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment and incompetence had its desired affect on the electoral process in Georgia.”

Her speech came at the end of her campaign’s effort to find enough votes to force a runoff election on December 4th.

While her fight for governor may be over, Abrams said that she is just beginning her battle against the erosion of voting rights in Georgia. She’ll be launching a new voting rights group, Fair Fight Georgia; her campaign also launched a commercial asking voters to tell their stories about trouble at the polls. Abrams is also planning to submit a major federal lawsuit against Georgia for the “gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional actions,” she said. Kemp, meanwhile, issued his own statement about Abrams saying, “Moments ago, Stacey Abrams conceded the race and officially ended her campaign for governor. I appreciate her passion, hard work, and commitment to public service.”</s>ATLANTA (AP) — Democrat Stacey Abrams ended 10 days of post-election drama in Georgia's closely watched and even more closely contested race for governor Friday, acknowledging Republican Brian Kemp as the victor while defiantly refusing to concede to the man she blamed for "gross mismanagement" of a bitterly fought election.

The speech Abrams delivered at her campaign headquarters Friday evening marked the close of the 44-year-old attorney and former lawmaker's unsuccessful attempt to make history as America's first black woman governor. Since Election Day her campaign fought on, insisting efforts to suppress turnout had left thousands of ballots uncounted that otherwise could erode Kemp's lead and force a runoff election.

Kemp, the 55-year-old businessman who oversaw the election as Georgia's secretary of state, will keep the governor's office in GOP hands as the state's third Republican governor since Reconstruction. He responded to Abrams ending her campaign by calling for unity and praising his opponent's "passion, hard work, and commitment to public service."

The kind words came just days after Kemp's campaign spokesman derided Abrams' efforts to have contested ballots counted as a "disgrace to democracy."

Abrams made no such retreat from her criticisms of Kemp, saying she refused "to say nice things and accept my fate." Instead, she announced plans to file a federal lawsuit to challenge the way Georgia's elections are run. She accused Kemp of using the secretary of state's office to aggressively purge the rolls of inactive voters, enforce an "exact match" policy for checking voters' identities that left thousands of registrations in limbo and other measures to tile the outcome in his favor.

"Let's be clear: This is not a speech of concession," Abrams said. "Because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that."

The race grabbed the attention of the nation, with Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey campaigning for Abrams in the final days and President Donald Trump holding a rally for Kemp.

Unofficial returns showed Kemp ahead by roughly 60,000 votes out of nearly 4 million cast on Nov. 6. Kemp declared himself governor-elect the next day and stepped down as Georgia's secretary of state, though thousands of absentee and provisional ballots remained uncounted.

Abrams, meanwhile, sent volunteers across the state in search of voters whose ballots were rejected. She filed suit in federal court to force county elections boards to count absentee ballots with incorrect birthdates. Her campaign even planned for possible litigation to challenge the election's certified outcome.

Abrams didn't take that route. She said she had concluded "the law currently allows no further viable remedy." Instead, she said she would fight to restore integrity to Georgia's election system in a new initiative called Fair Fight Georgia.

"In the coming days, we will be filing a major federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional actions," Abrams said, though she gave no details.

Kemp tried to move past the contentious campaign even if his opponent wasn't willing.

"The election is over and hardworking Georgians are ready to move forward," he said. "We can no longer dwell on the divisive politics of the past but must focus on Georgia's bright and promising future."

Kemp had been secretary of state since 2010. He was backed by and had embraced Trump as he tried to maintain GOP dominance in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the governor's mansion since 1998.

Trump praised the Democrat in lauding Kemp's victory, tweeting: "Congratulations to Brian Kemp on becoming the new Governor of Georgia. Stacey Abrams fought brilliantly and hard -- she will have a terrific political future! Brian was unrelenting and will become a great Governor for the truly Wonderful People of Georgia!"

Kemp stormed to the GOP nomination with ads featuring everything from the candidate cranking a chain saw and jokingly pointing a gun toward a teen male suitor of his daughter, to Kemp's offer to "round up criminal illegals" himself in his pickup truck. He's promised a tax cut and teacher pay raises and pledged to continue Georgia's refusal to expand Medicaid insurance under President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul.

Abrams' campaign sparked huge energy across the state and she became a national Democratic star. Election turnout among both sides' energized bases nearly equaled that of the 2016 presidential vote.

Aides close to Abrams said that since the election she had been wrestling with competing priorities: She wanted to advance her assertions that Georgia's elections process — which Kemp managed as secretary of state — makes it too hard for some citizens to vote. But she also recognized that a protracted legal fight would harm that cause and potentially her political future.

Kemp's victory is an important marker for Republicans ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Kemp's narrow margin already suggests that Georgia, a state Trump won by 5 percentage points in 2016, could be a genuine battleground in two years. Trump bet big on Kemp, endorsing him ahead of Kemp's Republican primary runoff and campaigning for him the weekend prior to the Nov. 6 election. Now, Trump will be able to return with an incumbent governor as he seeks a second term.

Abrams' political future is less certain. She made believers of old-guard Democrats in Georgia who didn't think a black woman could compete in a general election, and she emerged as the party's clear leader. But the party also has plenty of other ambitious politicians who will want to take advantage of the path that Abrams' has charted. The next big shot for Democrats is a 2020 Senate race, with Republican Sen. David Perdue making his first re-election attempt.

Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP and Brumback at https://twitter.com/katebrumback.</s>Democrat Stacey Abrams says she can't win Georgia governor race, effectively ends challenge to Republican Brian Kemp

ATLANTA (AP) — Democrat Stacey Abrams says she can't win Georgia governor race, effectively ends challenge to Republican Brian Kemp.</s>ATLANTA (AP) — Democrat Stacey Abrams says she can't win Georgia governor race, effectively ends challenge to Republican Brian Kemp.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams ends her campaign, acknowledging that Brian Kemp will be the next Governor of Georgia. In a speech at her election headquarters in Atlanta, Abrams emphasized that her statement was not a concession, and announced her intention to file a federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia for alleged mismanagement during the election.