Stacey Abrams Says She’s Open to Joining Dem Ticket as Veep after Dismissing Idea of Running for ‘Second Place’ By Mairead McArdle
Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Georgia who called out alleged voter suppression during her election, said Monday that she “would be honored” to be the vice presidential candidate on the 2020 Democratic ticket.
“It would be doing a disservice to every woman of color, every woman of ambition, every child who wants to think beyond their known space for me to say no or to pretend, ‘Oh, no, I don’t want it,’” Abrams said on ABC’s “The View.” “Of course I want it. Of course I want to serve America. Of course I want to be a patriot and do this work.”
Abrams shot to notoriety in 2018 when she ran in Georgia to become the country’s first black female governor. She lost the election by 1.4 percentage points to her Republican opponent, Georgia’s secretary of state at the time, Brian Kemp, who enforced one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country while he was running against Abrams. Abrams has refused to concede the election ever since, alleging that Kemp engaged in voter suppression.
Abrams’s openness to accepting a vice presidential nomination comes after she signaled last year she would only run as a presidential candidate.
“You don’t run for second place,” she said in a previous appearance on “The View” in March.
No 2020 Democratic candidate has asked the former Georgia House of Representatives minority leader to join them on the presidential ticket yet, Abrams revealed before saying she would be honored to serve as vice president.
“However, because that conversation started, I’m now getting the question a lot from folks, and the answer is of course I would be honored to run for vice president with the nominee and — It’s a bit disconcerting because it seems really obnoxious for me to say that out loud since no one’s asked me.”
Abrams refused to endorse a particular candidate, saying her “job right now is to fix our democracy” by continuing her fight against voter suppression.
“My best service is to be in that neutral space where it’s not about who the nominee is – it’s about making sure no matter who the nominee is, any person who wants to go and vote, can vote,” she said, citing Fair Fight Action, her national campaign against voter suppression, which worked to expand voting access.
Abrams has floated running for president at some point herself in recent months, and last month predicted the country will elect her head of the executive branch in the next 20 years.
“That’s my plan, and I’m very pragmatic,” Abrams said.
“I want to do good, and there is no stronger platform than president of the United States. And that’s a position I want to one day hold,” Abrams said.
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