Analysis: As the Democratic field grows, Stacey Abrams weighs a presidential race
By Dan Balz Dan Balz Chief correspondent covering national politics, the presidency and Congress Email Bio Follow March 16 at 1:02 PM Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost her bid last year to become governor of Georgia, has decisions to make.
“I think that I am a skilled communicator,” she said. “I think I’m a very good thinker. No, I know I’m a good thinker. I know I have policy chops. I have foreign policy experience. . . . I’ve done a great deal of work on a number of issues. But I need to make certain that I am the best person at this moment for that job and that’s what I need to think about.”
Abrams has been pushed hard by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and many of his colleagues to challenge incumbent Sen. David Perdue next year. If she isn’t going to do that, she knows she owes it to her party to make that known soon. She said she expects to decide about a Senate campaign by early April. If the answer to that is no, she will then turn immediately to the question of running for president.
“But when you talk about it from an activist perspective, it’s an engagement tool. We turned out voters because they knew someone was trying to take something from them, and I want Americans to understand that someone is trying to take their democracy from them and they’ve got to fight to keep it.”Republicans bristle at claims that voter suppression cost Abrams the governorship in the fall. They note that overall turnout was at a high level.
Would a campaign on those issues spark a backlash, and a surge in turnout, among those who might feel excluded? Abrams thinks not. “For those who feel excluded by the articulation of another’s identity, I would say that we all have parts of ourselves that are important,” she said. “But when, in the American jurisprudence and in the American policymaking, we use those identities to harm you or to foreclose your opportunity, then it’s in everyone’s interest that we resolve that.
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