Teresa Pike Tomlinson (Courtesy photo)

Hall Booth Smith partner and former Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson said Friday she is exploring seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2020 to take on Republican Sen. David Perdue.

Even as she finished up her second term leading the combined Columbus-Muscogee County government, she was quietly assembling a team to take on the first-term senator from Sea Island who has become an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump.

“I thought Senator Perdue would be vulnerable, and I thought we could do better,” Tomlinson said Friday in an interview. “We're interested in this being a two-party state and seeing the Democrats have a statewide elected office.”

Tomlinson said she is “standing down” awaiting a decision from Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is on a book tour and talking in national media interviews about whether to run for the Senate or the presidency.

“If she runs, we will not,” Tomlinson said. “I don't want to speak for her. We're all trying to read the tea leaves. If I truly thought she was going to run for the Senate, I would have sent everyone home.”

But Tomlinson added she has a “sneaking suspicion” that Abrams will pursue other options. In that event, Tomlinson said, “we wanted to be ready to have a successful campaign in the fall of 2020.”

Because Tomlinson does already have a campaign organization and has started to incur expenses, she said she has reached the spending threshold for required registration of an exploratory committee with the Federal Election Commission. She filed with the FEC Friday, then reported her intentions on Twitter.

“I just filed an exploratory committee for Georgia's U.S. Senate election in 2020. The roadmap to the Senate majority runs through Georgia, and we're laying the groundwork now. Donate here,” she tweeted at 5:37 a.m.

“I've spent my career taking on bullies, as a lawyer taking on big banks who cheated their customers, agriculture giants whose pesticides hurt farmers and crops, and as mayor of Columbus. There are a lot of bullies in Washington today. We're writing a new playbook to take them on,” she tweeted later in the day.

Tomlinson started her law career at Pope McGlamry in Atlanta, then moved to the firm's Columbus headquarters. She practiced there for 16 years, becoming the first female partner. In 2006, she became the executive director of MidTown Inc., a nonprofit devoted to the redevelopment of Columbus.

She was elected mayor of Columbus in 2010—also the first woman in that job. She served the maximum eight years in office there. She considered a run for governor but dropped the idea after learning that Abrams had long been planning to run when Gov. Nathan Deal finished his second term.

In November, Hall Booth announced she would be joining them. Tomlinson practices in the litigation defense firm's Columbus office and its Atlanta headquarters, handling complex litigation, crisis management and strategic solutions. She called the firm a “perfect fit.”

From the start, the partners have been on board with her budding plans to run for a statewide office, according to Tomlinson. “They believe in good government,” she said. “They have been wonderfully supportive.”