DALTON, Ga. — Northwest Georgia may have gone strongly Republican in the last four gubernatorial races, but Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams isn’t conceding it this year.

Abrams spent the day on Wednesday campaigning in both Whitfield and Murray counties and stopped by the Daily Citizen-News for a discussion with members of the newspaper’s editorial board.

“As a small business owner, a political leader, a writer and as an activist, I have been very proud of the work that I have done to help move Georgia forward,” she said.

Abrams, a former Georgia House minority leader, faces Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, write-in candidate Rod Mack, Libertarian Ted Metz and independent Larry E. Odom in the Nov. 6 general election.

Abrams told the editorial board she favors expansion of Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that provides health insurance for low-income individuals.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — often referred to as Obamacare — provides money to states to expand coverage to those earning up to 138 percent of the poverty level, which differs by state. Georgia officials have so far declined to expand Medicaid, citing concerns about the long-term funding of the expansion.

Abrams said that failure to expand the program is costing the state $8 million a day and making it more likely that hospitals will close, and local communities can lose 5.6 jobs per hospital bed.

Abrams said, however, that she opposes tying Medicaid expansion to requirements that able-boded adults receiving Medicaid work or be in job training.

“I believe that linking someone’s access to health care to anything other than our responsibility is wrongheaded,” she said.

Abrams said she believes immigration is a federal issue.

“We need strong, comprehensive, bipartisan legislation,” she said. “We cannot have 50 states with 50 different immigration laws.”

She said that Georgia employers, especially in manufacturing and agriculture, have come to rely on immigrant workers and that she doesn’t believe demonizing them is helpful.

She said she doesn’t believe that state and local law enforcement should participate in the 287(g) program, which the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office utilizes through a partnership with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), because it can make people afraid to report crimes that they have witnessed or been victims of. The program allows the sheriff’s office to check the immigration status of individuals who have been taken into custody.

Abrams said she supports the legalization of medical marijuana.

“I believe the state of Georgia should take the lead on cultivation and distribution,” she said. “Georgia could be a leader on this issue. We should cease the setting of allowable usage. It should not be in our legislation. It should be in the hands of doctors. We should legalize it. It should be cultivated and distributed by the state and we should allow doctors to determine their prescriptions based on the medical needs of patients.”

Georgia has been strongly Republican for decades, choosing the GOP nominee in the last five presidential elections and in eight of the last nine. Abrams said she does not believe the state is as conservative as it once was, noting that Republican margins of victory have been declining.

President Donald Trump carried Georgia in 2016 with just 51.1 percent of the vote, the smallest margin by a Republican presidential candidate since 1996 when Bob Dole carried the state with 47.01 percent of the vote in an election in which Ross Perot took 6.27 percent of Georgia’s vote.

Republican Nathan Deal won re-election as governor in 2014 with 52.75 percent of the vote, down from 53.02 percent from his first victory in 2010 and from the 57.95 percent that Republican Sonny Perdue gained when he won re-election as governor in 2006.

“It is not that this is a Republican state,” Abrams said. “It is that those who share Democratic values have not lifted their voice sufficiently in recent years.”

While Trump’s statewide margin of victory was slim, he carried northwest Georgia by strong margins in 2016, gaining 70 percent of the vote in Whitfield County and 83 percent of the vote in Murray County.

Whitfield County Republican Party Chairman Dianne Putnam said she thinks Trump’s endorsement of Kemp will help him prevail in this area despite the effort being put into it by Abrams.

“I think most of the people in this area are going to vote for Kemp anyway,” Putnam said. “But the endorsement might give some of them an extra incentive to get out and vote.”