Associated Press | Pool ImageStacey Abrams delivers the Democratic party's response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address, Tuesday from Atlanta.

ATLANTA – Former Democratic candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams took her call for election reform to the national stage late Tuesday night in a rebuttal speech to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.

“While I acknowledged the results of the 2018 election here in Georgia, I did not and we cannot accept efforts to undermine our right to vote,” Abrams said into the camera during a 10-minute speech.

“This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country,” she said. “We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a ‘power grab.’”

Abrams, who is the former state House minority leader, was referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s remarks criticizing Democratic efforts on the national level to increase voter turnout as a “power grab.”

Back home, the state Republican Party quickly hit back, calling her “Any Seat Abrams.”

“Georgians already rejected Stacey Abrams’ extreme views, and they know a career politician when they see one,” John Watson, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, said in a statement sent to reporters.

The 45-year-old Atlanta attorney is the first black woman and non-sitting elected official to give the rebuttal to the State of the Union.

She is widely said to be mulling a run against first-term U.S. Sen. David Perdue, who is considered a close Trump ally in Washington and who is up for reelection in 2020. She has not said whether she plans to do so.

Speaking from the downtown Atlanta headquarters of the IBEW labor union, Abrams pushed back on the president’s policies while reviving key issues from her near-miss gubernatorial campaign last year. She talked bipartisanship under the Gold Dome, the need for tighter gun laws and missed opportunities to improve access to health care.

She also set her aim squarely on Trump, without naming him, pointedly blaming the president for a government shutdown that she called a “disgrace.”

“The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the president of the United States, one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people – but our values,” she said.

“I didn’t always agree with the Republican speaker or governor,” Abrams said of her time as the minority leader in Georgia. “But I understood that our constituents didn’t care about our political parties — they cared about their lives.

“So, when we had to negotiate criminal justice reform or transportation or foster-care improvements, the leaders of our state didn’t shut down — we came together. And we kept our word,” she said.

Since narrowly losing to Kemp last year, Abrams has continued pushing for changes to state election laws. She most recently appeared in a Super Bowl ad with Natalie Crawford, a Republican county commissioner from Habersham County, making the case that “every vote should be counted from every corner of our state.”

She has also founded a group, Fair Fight Action, that has challenged the state’s election system in court, alleging absentee ballots were unfairly tossed out and that other missteps were made.

But the implications of Abrams giving the rebuttal are broader than just her potential political aspirations, said state Sen. Nikema Williams, a fellow Atlanta Democrat and the newly elected chair of the Georgia Democratic Party. Williams is also the first black woman to head the state party.

“It just goes to show that Georgia is on everybody’s mind, and we are not a battleground state down the road. We’re a battleground state today, and everybody’s watching us and we’re ready,” Williams said Tuesday.

Trump had stayed mostly positive in his remarks about Abrams leading up to Tuesday. It was a break from last year, when the president said Abrams was “not qualified to be the governor.” Trump campaigned heavily for Kemp, even holding a rally for him just days before the election. Kemp won by about 55,000 votes.

Rep. Dexter Sharper, a Democrat from Valdosta, said this was Abrams’ chance to show everyone how wrong Trump was about her.

“Once everybody across the world actually sees and hears her, they will know what Trump was talking about was strictly political to help Gov. Kemp and that evidently he didn’t know anything about Stacey Abrams,” Sharper said.

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for The Valdosta Daily Times, CNHI’s newspapers and websites.