In 2018, Democrat Stacey Abrams came within hair's breadth – about 55,000 votes short, or 1.4% – of winning Georgia's gubernatorial election over Republican Brian Kemp, the closest race the state had seen since 1966.
On Wednesday, after months of speculation, the former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives made it official: Abrams announced she's running for governor again, setting up a likely rematch in the Peach State which could become one of the most closely watched races in the 2022 midterms.
"I’m running for Governor because opportunity in our state shouldn’t be determined by zip code, background or access to power," Abrams, a staunch voting rights advocate, wrote on Twitter alongisde her campaign announcement video.
“Regardless of the pandemic or the storms, the obstacles in our way or the forces determined to divide us, my job has been to just put my head down and keep working toward one Georgia,” she said. “Because in the end, we are one Georgia.”
The 2018 race was a contentious one, with Abrams refusing to concede and accusing Kemp, who was then the state's secretary of state, of voter suppression; Kemp denied the allegations.
If elected, she would be the first Black person to represent Georgia as governor and the first Black woman elected to serve as governor in U.S. history.
The race could set up a showdown with Gov. Kemp, if he's able to make his way through a potentially crowded Republican primary.
Former state representative Vernon Jones, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump who espoused false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, joined the race to challenge Kemp. And former Georgia Sen. David Perdue, who lost to Sen. Jon Ossoff in January, has publicly mulled a bid for governor, though has not yet entered the race.
Following Abrams' announcement, Gov. Kemp released a statement on his personal Twitter account criticizing her, saying that "with Stacey Abrams in control, Georgia would have shut down, students would have been barred from their classrooms, and woke politics would be the law of the land and the lesson plan in our schools."
"Next November’s election for Governor is a battle for the soul of our state," Kemp added. I’m in the fight against Stacey Abrams, the failed Biden agenda, and their woke allies to keep Georgia the best place to live, work, and raise a family."
Jones also slammed Abrams on Twitter after the announcement, but did not spare any shrapnel for his GOP primary rival Kemp.
"With [Abrams] now officially in the race for Governor, one thing is clear: Republicans need a fighter they can unite behind," he wrote on Twitter. "Not [Kemp], who barely beat her in 2018 and betrayed our party when we needed him most. Georgians have NOT forgotten."
Abrams has been busy the last four years: She became the first Black woman to deliver a rebuttal to the State of the Union in 2019. She launched the Fair Fight organization, which aims to combat voter suppression and expand voting rights nationwide. She was on President Joe Biden's short list as a running mate in the 2020 election.
And she's widely credited with boosting Democrats in Georgia: Abrams not only helped to flip the state blue for the first time since 1992 for Biden, but helping to send historic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate in the state's January runoff elections, giving Democrats control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in a decade.