Democrats Are Urging Stacey Abrams to Run for Senate. She's Listening.

23:20 - 04 February 2019

Stacey Abrams’ defeat in the Georgia governor’s race was only a few weeks old when she arrived in New York in December to meet with campaign donors and political allies. At a reception in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, a supporter asked her what she would do next.

Abrams, attendees recalled, said she was undecided, except on one point: She was determined to seek high office again.

Since that meeting, Abrams’ next political moment has arrived with startling speed. She is slated to give the Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday, a task of extraordinary prominence.

But Abrams’ planned rebuttal to Trump is only one element of the role she is positioned to play in national politics: Democratic Party leaders are already imploring her to put her name back on the ballot, this time as a challenger to Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who is loyally aligned with Trump. Democrats believe that by challenging Perdue in 2020, Abrams could help break the Republican Party’s near-monopoly on Southern power in the Senate, and perhaps help make Georgia competitive in the presidential race.

Abrams remains undecided about running for the Senate, according to multiple people who have spoken with her directly. Her long-standing aspiration has been to serve as Georgia’s governor. But her allies acknowledge that Abrams is listening to her party’s entreaties, and that she has grown more open to the idea of opposing Perdue.

The party’s establishment has lined up strongly behind the idea, with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, and multiple Democratic presidential candidates lobbying her to enter the race. Charles Myers, an investor and Democratic political donor who raised money for Abrams in 2018, said he and other contributors were eager to back her in a new campaign.

“I hope she runs,” Myers said, adding of the governor’s race: “That election was stolen from her.”

In her campaign, Abrams, 45, seemed at times to preview the balancing act Democrats may seek to execute in the presidential race, mixing a progressive message on issues like health care with a vision of bipartisan government and economic growth that attracted moderate suburban whites.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.