The NY Times sits down with Stacey Abrams…..

She lost a Governors  race in Georgia….

But her loss has kept her in the national political spotlight….

Despite being the first black female nominee from a major party to run for governor of any state, Georgia’s Stacey Abrams surely couldn’t have anticipated that losing her election bid — in controversial fashion to the Republican Brian Kemp — would have catapulted her to the heights of the Democratic Party. Now she faces some temptingly plausible next steps, which could include, at least if you ask Charles Schumer, the Senate minority leader, an Abrams run for Senate. Joe Biden reportedly considered the 45-year-old as his running mate, an idea she quickly dismissed — potentially in favor of something even bigger. (A decision she may have made by the time you read this.) “If people I respect legitimately think this is something that could be so,” Abrams said about the possibility of a challenge for the country’s highest office, “and it’s not my mom and sister saying, ‘You should do this,’ then I owe those people the courtesy of thinking it through.”

I don’t mean to be crass about it, but how much pressure is there for a politician like you to stay in the presidential-candidate conversation as a way of maintaining national relevance?

I’ll tell you my experience. I had a state race that was nationalized because of its historical dimensions…..

I had an outcome that was important because of the implications it had not only for Georgia but for how we think about our democracy…

I was recruited to run for the Senate, which is an important job. At the same time, you had the zeitgeist surrounding the conversation about who should be in the mix for the presidency. It was important to me to not dismiss the calls for me to think about running, especially based on my race and gender and region, because the way I was being dismissed was largely driven by my profile….

More….

image…ajc.com