Abel Announces Run for Georgia Senate

A large group of supporters crowded into the Sandy Springs home of Kevin Abel last month to hear the IT consultant announce his early candidacy for the Georgia State Senate. Abel, who previously ran in 2018 for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives, told the group he’s committed to restoring fundamental values to political life.

“I intend to work hard to restore our country back onto the tracks of democracy, of truth and of decency. So, with your help, I’ll be elected to the State Senate with these bedrock values, and we can move our state closer towards these ideals.”

Abel is campaigning for the State Senate seat in District 14, which stretches north from the Atlanta city limits in a long slice of Fulton County that takes in portions of Sandy Springs, Roswell, Alpharetta, and Johns Creek.

McLaurin won reelection in last year’s election by 10 percentage points. But while the district leans Democratic, much of it lies in the 7th U.S. Congressional District, which President Trump won with 60 percent of the vote last year.

Mindful of that, Abel describes himself as a moderate Democrat who says he believes passionately that moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans should work together to create legislative progress. Something that, for the moment, with Congress at a standstill, seems an elusive goal.

“Things have only gotten worse since 2018,” Abel says, “in terms of the fractional nature of our politics. People have swung further to the left and further to the right, and this idea of a center just gets tougher and tougher to believe in. But, you know, I still believe that. I still believe in this country, still love this country.”

Abel is a native of South Africa who came to this country as a teenager. He was part of the exodus of South African Jews, many of whom left the country after the racial upheaval of the 1980s and 1990s. Despite his many years here, he still retains the precisely clipped accent of his South African upbringing. In recent years, he’s also renewed his interest in the immigrant experience, serving as the vice-chair of New American Pathways, that helped to resettle newly admitted immigrants to America.

For four years, he was on the Georgia State Transportation Board which governs the operations of the state’s Department of Transportation and was briefly its chairman. He admits that all of his experience has made him someone who has a deep interest in how to improve government.

“I’m a policy wonk. I have always been fascinated by policy and how can we be better? How can we solve problems that really shouldn’t be so intractable, like health care and immigration and climate and debt, you know, fiscal issues, and I’m talking, now in the federal context, but all of it applies at a state level as well, in some regard.”

He’s also served on the boards of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and Davis Academy. President Joe Biden appointed him to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, which works to support the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The council is currently co-chaired by Stuart Eizenstat, the prominent Atlanta-born Washington lawyer and diplomat.

He’s also been active in the American Jewish Committee here and chairs its Antisemitism Task Force. If elected next year to the Georgia Senate, he could become the only Jewish member of that body. Last month, Deborah Shigley, a lawyer from Milton, mounted a strong campaign in a special State Senate election that drew national attention before losing in a strongly Republican district. Currently the only Jewish member of the Georgia legislature is Esther Panich from Dunwoody, a Democrat, who is a member of the George House.

With his wife, Cindy, Kevin Abel built his Abel Solutions into one of the Southeast’s leading providers of Microsoft software solutions before selling it nearly 10 years ago. His current IT project provides software solutions to the real estate industry. His wife is currently developing a web platform that aims to transform the social media experience, particularly for teenage girls and young women to empower and support them.

Abel has been encouraged by the support he’s received in the early stages of his campaign, particularly in the financial contributions he’s received in the last two months.

“This early success,” Abel believes, “is because I can call on people from a variety of segments or circles in the Atlanta community. The Jewish community has been very supportive, and I’ve even had encouragement from my Republicans friends because of my support for Israel and my history of fighting antisemitism here.”