Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams will hit the national stage Tuesday as she delivers the Democratic response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address.
From Atlanta, she will give her response to Trump's speech.
Abrams narrowly lost her bid to become the first black woman to be elected governor of Georgia last November in a race full of disputes over ballot access and integrity.
In selecting Abrams, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is looking to tie into the growing national political clout of black women.
He is also looking to recruit Abrams to run for the Georgia U.S. Senate seat that is up for grabs in 2020. That seat is now occupied by the state's junior senator, David Perdue, who is a strong supporter of Trump's border security and Mexican border wall initiatives.
Abrams' political action group, Fair Fight, purchased airtime on several Georgia television affiliates outside of the more expensive Atlanta market on Super Bowl Sunday to push for election law changes.
The former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, and not a stranger to reaching across the aisle to get Republican help to advance her causes, appeared alongside Republican Habersham County Commissioner Natalie Crawford in the ad calling for hand-marked paper ballots to replace Georgia's touch-screen voting system.
"We don't agree on everything," Crawford said in the ad.
"But we love Georgia," Abrams said. She later adds, "Every vote should be counted, from every corner of the state."
Since the start of this campaign cycle, Georgia is increasingly being seen as one of the new generations of battleground states, where the next presidential election will likely be decided. As such, the eyes of the nation are more focused on Georgia politics than ever.
Abrams' ability to turn out a large vote during this past election cycle has not gone without notice. Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) both felt that the type of image that Abrams presented worked, given the attention she was able to craft during the often bitter and divisive ballot fight for the Georgia governor's office.
After Schumer announced Abrams as the Democratic choice to deliver the party's response to Trump's address, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez emphasized the choice with a resounding endorsement of the inspiration he said that Abrams provided to Georgia's voters during the fall election.
"Stacey didn’t just inspire the people of Georgia last year, she electrified voters across the country with a powerful vision and a positive message of unity, inclusion, and opportunity," Perez said.
Trump has pointed out that Abrams is one of three high-profile Democrats who lost in their bid for national office in November. The other two also have strong national credentials and attention -- Texas Senate nominee Beto O'Rourke, who lost out to Sen. Ted Cruz and former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who narrowly lost in his bid to become Florida's first black governor.
If Abrams does, indeed, choose to run for Senate against Perdue, she would enter the race with significant national name recognition.
She remains quiet so far about plans for a Senate run, but for many political watchers, the writing is on the wall.
Meanwhile, her primary focus in Georgia has been geared toward ensuring fair elections in the state through her group, Fair Fight.
Federal District Court Judge Amy Totenberg ruled in September 2018 that there is a concern regarding the integrity of Georgia's voting machines and their vulnerability to hacking.
She said that despite this, there was not enough time to force the state to convert to paper ballots prior to the November General Election. In her opinion, Totenberg said that she was advising the defendants and the state to revisit the issue as quickly as possible.
During a hearing prior to her decision, Totenberg expressed concern about the voting technology, saying, "It's not just a theoretical, paranoid notion" that the machines are vulnerable as federal officials repeatedly warn against nation-states directing their energies against American democratic institutions.
One provision of the judge's ruling mandated that the state would have to completely revamp its voting mechanism prior to the next election cycle.
The state's current voting system, in use since 2003, has been at the center of controversy, with charges of voter suppression and claims of a lack of election integrity.
As Secretary of State, Kemp purged more than a half-million voter registration records during 2016 and 2017. Of that number, more than 107,000 were removed simply because they had missed a couple of elections or had not contacted election officials in seven years, as opposed to being disqualified.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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