Keisha Lance Bottoms Becomes First Black Woman Elected Georgia Governor, Flipping Seat for Democrats

Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Georgia governor's race on Tuesday, defeating Republican businessman Rick Jackson. She becomes the first Black woman elected governor of the state and the first Democrat to win the office since 1998. The Associated Press reported the result.

Bottoms, a former mayor of Atlanta, won despite a lopsided money gap. Jackson, a billionaire, put more than $200 million of his own fortune into the race. He had begun the campaign as a relative unknown, but his wealth and outsider appeal carried him past the sitting lieutenant governor, who had Donald Trump's early endorsement, as well as the attorney general and the secretary of state.

Bottoms will succeed Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who was barred by law from seeking a third term. It was the third Georgia governor's race in a row with a Black woman at the top of a major ticket. Kemp twice beat Stacey Abrams, who remains a prominent voting rights advocate and Democratic fundraiser but chose not to run a third time. The same night, Georgia reelected Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, its first Jewish senator, who serves alongside Raphael Warnock, its first Black senator. The results also cut against the state's longtime reluctance to put an Atlantan in the governor's mansion, and they show how growth in the largest metro area is reshaping Georgia politics.

Bottoms was one of eight Black major party nominees for governor on Tuesday's ballots nationwide. Only three Black governors have ever been elected in U.S. history, all Democratic men. Two Black women ran this year: Bottoms and Republican Lisa Demuth of Minnesota.

Bottoms rarely spoke directly about the historic nature of her run, though she often told her family story. A descendant of enslaved Georgians, she said she is at least a fifth-generation Georgian, adding that five generations is as far back as the family can be traced, to a plantation in Crawfordville. She said her grandfather moved to Atlanta from rural Georgia and had to walk through the back doors of downtown buildings that she later entered through the front as mayor. Her ancestry, she said, is always present with her. Before Election Day she said what happens in this moment will echo through history.

Her campaign stressed policy. She called for expanding Medicaid to cover hundreds of thousands more people and raising the state minimum wage to $15 an hour. She wants higher pay for teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees, a pause on new data center development, and a halt to installing additional automated Flock cameras used by law enforcement. She also pledged to repeal Georgia's ban on abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, calling it a life and death issue and citing women who have died from miscarriage and pregnancy complications because physicians fear prosecution.

She also made Jackson's ties to Trump a theme. Jackson had said he wanted to govern like Trump with a Southern tone and be the president's favorite governor. In the lone debate, Bottoms said she was not running to be Trump's favorite governor but to work on behalf of people like the voters in front of her. She disputed Jackson's claim to be a self-made outsider who understood Georgians' struggles, pointing to the lucrative government contracts held by his company, Jackson Healthcare, and accusing him of using money made from taxpayers to try to buy the election.

She withstood attacks on her record. Jackson's flood of TV ads used clips of protests after the 2020 police killings of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta and George Floyd in Minneapolis, both Black men killed by white officers. He also criticized her for not seeking a second term as mayor, saying she abandoned the city.

Republicans have held the governor's office and both chambers of the General Assembly for more than two decades. Democrats had already won three U.S. Senate elections since Trump's first presidential victory a decade ago. On Tuesday they were trying to flip the state House, but Republicans were heavily favored to keep the Senate, which would leave Bottoms at least one GOP-led chamber to work with. How her Medicaid, wage and abortion proposals fare there is the next thing to watch.