Stacey Abrams reportedly mulling U.S. Senate run against David Perdue in 2020

WASHINGTON — Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams is discussing a possible run for one of Georgia’s seats in the U.S. Senate in 2020 and has already started talking with top Democrats about a potential bid.

Abrams met separately last week with both Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, to discuss a possible Senate run in 2020, according to a source familiar with the meetings.

Abrams electrified Democrats with her unsuccessful bid for Georgia governor in 2018, losing by less than 2 points to Gov. Brian Kemp and just narrowly missing the threshold for forcing a runoff (that would have required holding Kemp, who finished with 50.2 percent of the vote, under 50 percent).

And Abrams has continued to stoke speculation about her political future in the weeks since the midterms — in mid-December, she told a crowd at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit, “Yes, I’m going to run again,” adding, “what it is I’m going to run for I haven’t decided yet — stay tuned.”

The near-miss in 2018 left Georgia Democrats frustrated. Abrams considered a series of legal challenges, including an unprecedented attempt to request another election, and conceded nearly a week and a half after Election Day, saying, “The law currently allows no further, viable remedy.”

Kemp, who previously served as Georgia’s secretary of state, resigned from his position the day after the contest, amid criticism of his handling of Georgia’s elections — including ballot rejections and malfunctioning voting machines — and a series of lawsuits.

But the results were also encouraging for state Democrats. Abrams herself told Rolling Stone magazine shortly after her concession, “Georgia is a purple state now,” adding, “my opponent did not outperform Republican presidential candidates. I did. I outperformed Democratic presidential candidates, and what that signals is that this is a competitive state.”

If Abrams does decide to jump into the state’s 2020 U.S. Senate race against incumbent Republican David Perdue, she would instantly be a frontrunner in the Democratic primary and be able to draw on a fundraising base that powered her to a record-breaking $22 million haul in 2018.

Abrams, who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2013 until her gubernatorial bid in 2018, has been serving on the board of directors for the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy organization based in Washington, since December.