Ms. Abrams is also seeking to empower citizens at the local levels of government. Seemingly small decisions — which cases will be tried, which schools will be shut down, how many seats are on the water board — often have an enormous impact on the lives of people of color. Stronger voter protections for those hyper-local races could make a big difference.

The unique skills and experiences she acquired while running her campaign set her up for success. She flipped the formula on how politicians usually run for office. She trusted the expertise and networks of women of color who are civic engagement organizers, pouring resources into their efforts early on. She expanded the electorate. She talked about race and identity on the stump. She traversed the state, speaking to white people in counties that hadn’t voted for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson. She explained to them why her diverse coalition would also benefit them, whether or not they chose to vote for her.

As a result, more white Democrats in Georgia voted for her than any for any candidate since Bill Clinton. Her campaign doubled youth turnout; tripled Latino turnout; and tripled Asian-Pacific Islander turnout. In 2014, 1.1 million Georgians voted on the Democratic side. But four years later, 1.2 million African-Americans voted for her.

But the thing that kept Ms. Abrams from the governorship is the thing that is keeping other African-Americans and people of color from office in many places — voter suppression. “My mission is to make certain that no one has to go through in 2020 what we went through in 2018,” she said in a speech this week.

Her opponent, Brian Kemp, had created such an obstacle course of discrimination, no one can really say that the election was fair. As secretary of state during the campaign, he held 53,000 voter registrations hostage under the exact match law, which penalized typos, missing hyphens and other tiny things. Seven out of 10 of those registrations came from black voters, who made up only around 30 percent of eligible voters. He pur ged rolls, reduced the number of polling machines and did many other things to limit the impact of black voters in the state. Incidentally, he molded the electoral landscape to favor him. Sadly, Ms. Abrams also has experience going toe-to-toe with politicians who are determined to block minorities from the ballot box.