By Tamar Hallerman and Greg Bluestein

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Stacey Abrams will deliver the response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address next week, giving Georgia’s highest-profile Democrat one of the nation’s most prominent pulpits as she considers whether to run for U.S. Senate in 2020.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters he asked Abrams to deliver the address, which will air shortly after Trump finishes his address to a joint session of Congress next week, because “she has led the charge for voting rights, which is at the root of just about everything else.”

The speech will be a pivotal moment for Abrams, who narrowly lost last year’s gubernatorial race to Republican Brian Kemp and refused to formally concede the race, citing his refusal to step down as the state’s top elections official.

“At a moment when our nation needs to hear from leaders who can unite for a common purpose, I am honored to be delivering the Democratic State of the Union response,” she said on social media.

In the weeks since her defeat, she has launched a well-funded voting rights group to carry her message and challenge GOP policies in court, joined a Washington think tank and launched a “thank you” tour as she weighs whether to run against U.S. Sen. David Perdue.

The high-profile speech is seen as the latest sign among some of her supporters that she is more likely than not to challenge Perdue, a first-term senator who ran as an outsider with business savvy and is one of Trump’s most dependable legislative allies.

Abrams remains the most influential Democrat in Georgia politics, and her endorsement is coveted by the growing number of presidential candidates who see the state as a battleground. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll released this month showed Perdue’s favorability ratings at about 45 percent — about 7 percentage points behind Abrams.

She has given herself a March deadline to announce whether she will run for Senate in 2020 — or potentially plan for a rematch against Kemp two years later. She’s under intense pressure from supporters, elected officials and donors to run against Perdue, and the party is clearing her path.

She met recently with Schumer to discuss the race, and other potential Democratic candidates appear to be deferring to her.

Trump was originally scheduled to deliver the State of the Union on Jan. 29, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to sign off on the speech during the government shutdown. He will now address a joint session of Congress from the House chamber on Feb. 5.

Abrams will be the first non-sitting public official to deliver the State of the Union rebuttal since the tradition began in 1966. Abrams stepped down from the Georgia Legislature, where she was the House’s top Democrat, to run for governor in 2017.

The national platform will require a policy shift for Abrams. Over the last two years, she kept her attention squared almost entirely on state issues and rarely uttered Trump’s name aloud during the campaign, even after the president endorsed her opponent.

Trump has peppered her with criticism over the last few years. Shortly after her defeat, Trump tweeted that Abrams had a “terrific political future.” But he had nothing positive to say about her before her defeat.

He told reporters in Washington she’s “not qualified” to be Georgia governor. And at a rally in Macon, he claimed that her victory will have “Georgia turn into Venezuela” and called her one of the “most extreme, far-left politicians in the entire country.”

“She wants to raise your income tax very substantially, she wants to raise your property tax very substantially,” Trump falsely asserted, adding “she supports a socialistic takeover of health care.”

The gig has been seen as a launching pad for rising political stars. Then-Congressmen Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush earned national notoriety by delivering the GOP responses to President Lyndon Johnson’s speeches in the late 1960s.

But it’s also a notoriously difficult one that some have dubbed the “worst job in politics.”

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was ridiculed for his 2013 counter-address, not because of his policy points but an awkwardly timed water break.

And many of the headlines generated from Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy’s speech last year focused on his glistening lips, not his larger point that Trump was taking a sledgehammer to core American values.