Stacey Abrams gambles her political future with vice presidential gambit

Stacey Abrams is squandering a plausible chance at winning the Georgia governorship in 2022 by her quixotic bid to be Joe Biden’s running mate, analysts say.

Abrams is overtly campaigning to be tapped as the vice-presidential nominee by Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic standard-bearer, just as Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, engages in an untested plan to reopen the state’s coronavirus-ravaged economy even though infection rates are not falling.

That could give Abrams a chance to act as a “shadow governor” of sorts, seemingly more concerned with the health and well-being of Georgia residents than for-profit operations that could put their lives at risk if reopened too soon.

“If I’m @staceyabrams, I am shutting down all VP talk, and I’m laser focused on how Gov. Kemp is endangering Georgia in preparation for a ‘22 rematch,” political writer Bill Scher tweeted.

Abrams had long looked like she was angling to run for governor again in 2022 in a rematch against Kemp from the 2018 race, which she lost 50.2% to 48.8%, or just under 55,000 votes.

Abrams, it seemed, had planned to carry forth her message that the 2018 campaign wasn’t run on the up-and-up. Kemp, as secretary of state, had ordered a series of voter roll purges and made other decisions Democrats argued were aimed at disenfranchising minority voters. Shortly after the election certification, Abrams stated that she would not concede defeat to Kemp, but that she would not win the election.

Abrams spurned chances to run for both of Georgia’s Senate seats, which are both up in November 2020. Instead, in recent weeks, she’s put her name forward to be running mate to Biden, the former two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator.

That’s come as Kemp has been on the defensive over his decision to reopen parts of his state’s economy as a balance between economic and public health concerns.

But Georgia-based Democratic strategist Tharon Johnson was more positive about her decision to pursue the vice presidency, while still poking Kemp over his coronavirus response.

“She’s smart enough to know that she can do both at the same time” given the media coverage she commands and her work expanding voting rights in crucial battleground states as part of her Fair Fight network of nonprofit organizations, Johnson said.

“All options are on the table,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner. “She’s positioned herself to say, ‘OK, I can be considered for VP, I can run successful organizations, and, by the way, because I’m doing all that, you’ve still got to strongly consider me as a Democratic contender in 2022 on the Democratic ticket for governor.'”

For the University of Georgia’s Charles Bullock, a greater threat to Abrams’s political future was posed by the extra press attention.

“There are criticisms directed at her role, and some of the nonprofit organizations that she has set up, and the salary she’s been paid out of those,” he said.

More broadly, Bullock warned that her campaigning to become Biden’s No. 2 could put him in an awkward position.

“Biden wants to have a free hand in making his choice. And if he turns her down, then it’s going to be a very public rejection,” he said. “It might hurt him a bit. … She is, at least in Georgia, and I suspect that she could also do this to some extent in other areas, very effective at mobilizing African American turnout. And for Biden or any Democrat to win, you need to have strong black turnout.”

Abrams has been pressed on her thoughts regarding Kemp’s leadership during the COVID-19 virus pandemic. The governor was late to issue stay-at-home orders and was one of the first to start lifting restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

But her focus seems to be her voting rights advocacy and supporting Biden’s White House bid, echoing his “battle for the soul of the nation” campaign slogan during television appearances. She was one of his first backers to side with him publicly amid allegations that he sexually assaulted and harassed a former Senate aide in 1993.

Although Bullock said Abrams had to be careful in her knocks of Kemp because of optics, and “we don’t know how it’s going to work,” Abrams was simply “dealing with what’s immediately in front of her,” according to Bill Nigut, host of Georgia’s Political Rewind-Two Way Street broadcast program.

A hypothetical gubernatorial rematch is still two years away, and Abrams has “plenty of time to hone the other messages she would use if, in fact, she becomes a candidate against him in 2022,” Nigut said.

“If she were to start attacking him now over other issues — his stance on guns, on a work requirement for food stamps, etc. — I’m not sure her message would penetrate,” Nigut said.

Abrams’s push for the understudy role dovetails with Democratic efforts to have a black woman in the mix. More than 200 African American women signed an open letter last week, urging Biden to consider a list of potential nominees for the job with “the experience, qualifications and principled core values of a true leader that would make for the right partner.”

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, whose endorsement in his early voting state helped Biden wrest the primary from then-front-runner Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, previously called for a minority woman to be elevated to the position, but on Wednesday equivocated in an interview with NBC News.

“It would be great for him to select a woman of color. But that is not a must,” Clyburn said, though he shared his preferred contenders with Biden’s team and emphasized the importance of black women to the Democratic coalition as well.

Meanwhile, Abrams has defended her decision to seek the honor actively.

“I try to be straightforward,” she told ABC’s The View last week. “I learned early on that if I didn’t speak for myself, I didn’t tell the story.”