WASHINGTON — On the night before she announced her candidacy for governor, Stacey Evans got a telephone call from Emily’s List, the fund-raising juggernaut that has helped elect hundreds of Democratic women who support abortion rights. It was not a happy conversation.

The group, she learned, would not be giving her its coveted endorsement this year. It was backing her primary challenger, Stacey Abrams, a rising Democratic star who, like Ms. Evans, is a former Georgia state legislator. Ms. Evans thinks Emily’s List should have stayed out of the race.

“If I were a donor,” she said, “I would be very upset to know that my dollars were going to fight for one pro-choice woman against another.”

Ms. Evans is not the only woman miffed at Emily’s List, though she is among the few who are open about it. At a time when record numbers of women are running for public office, the battle of the “two Staceys,” as the Georgia race is known, is one of countless crowded Democratic primaries — many involving two or more women — that have forced Emily’s List, one of the nation’s most powerful political action committees, to make difficult choices that have spawned resentment around the nation.