It’s official: Stacey Abrams has her eyes on the Georgia governor’s mansion.
Abrams announced in a video posted to her Twitter account on Wednesday afternoon that she plans to be on the ballot to be the Democratic Party’s nominee to try to unseat Republican incumbent Brian Kemp in next year’s race.
Her announcement underscores Georgia’s importancee in the crucial 2022 midterm elections. Since her 2018 loss to Kemp , Abrams has become one of the most formidable figures in her party. She built an infrastructure centered around the fight against voter suppression in Georgia, and her organization, Fair Fight PAC, has raised a reported $100 million since 2018. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that that surpasses any other candidate for office in 2022—and that’s only counting money raised through June of this year.
Millions of that money went to help other Georgia Democrats, including U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who rode a wave of anti-Tump sentiment on the way toward turning the once deep-red state purple in 2020.
With all that swirling, Abrams enters a gubernatorial race in what’s become a swing state and what could be a bellwether for broader national political changes, given its rapidly shifting demographics. In Atlanta, the state’s capital and for decades regarded as the nation’s Black cultural and political capital, white voters had a slight participation edge over Black voters in last year’s presidential contest. Abrams, herself a Black woman, will be running in a state that now has the highest number of Black women legislators in the nation.
Earlier this month, a media blitz saw Abrams featured in a Newsweek cover story that dropped right after Democrats took an L in Virginia’s governor’s race, a sign of possible weakness for the party as it tries to hold Congress down the back stretch of the Biden presidency.
Abrams has already acknowledged that she’d like to be president one day. Flipping the Georgia governor’s seat would build a lot of momentum.