Keisha Lance Bottoms Wins Georgia, Becoming the First Black Woman Elected Governor

Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia’s race for governor on Tuesday. She is the first Black woman elected governor of a U.S. state.

Bottoms, a Democrat and the former mayor of Atlanta, defeated Republican businessman Rick Jackson, according to projections from U.S. media outlets including NBC News and Decision Desk HQ. The Associated Press also called the race for Bottoms. Unofficial results put her at about 54 percent of the vote. Results are not final until they are certified.

She will also be Georgia’s first woman governor and its first Black governor. She succeeds Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who could not seek a third consecutive term under Georgia law. She becomes the first Democrat to win the governor’s office in Georgia since 1998, ending 24 years of Republican control of the job.

Bottoms, 56, served as Atlanta’s mayor from 2018 to 2022. She later served as a senior adviser to former President Joe Biden and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

A race about the economy, and about Trump

Bottoms campaigned on expanding Medicaid to cover hundreds of thousands more Georgians. She called for raising the state minimum wage to $15 an hour and raising pay for teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees. She also proposed pausing new data center construction and repealing Georgia’s ban on abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy.

Jackson, the billionaire founder of the health care staffing company Jackson Healthcare, campaigned as a political outsider. He called for tax cuts, stronger public safety and less government regulation. He put more than $200 million of his own money into the race, according to the Associated Press, leaving Bottoms at a large spending disadvantage.

The race also became a contest over President Donald Trump. Bottoms pledged to protect Georgia from what she called the harmful policies of the Trump administration. She reminded voters that Jackson had said he wanted to govern like Trump with a Southern tone and become the president’s favorite governor.

“I’m not running to be his favorite governor,” Bottoms told voters during the rivals’ only debate. “I’m running to work on behalf of people like you.”

Jackson attacked Bottoms’ record as mayor. His television ads used clips of protests after the 2020 police killings of Atlanta resident Rayshard Brooks and Minneapolis resident George Floyd. He also said she abandoned Atlanta by not seeking a second term as mayor. Bottoms answered that Jackson Healthcare held lucrative government contracts, and she disputed his claim to be a self-made outsider. She accused him of trying to buy the election with money made from taxpayers.

The history behind the win

Bottoms was among eight Black major-party nominees for governor on the ballot Tuesday. Before Tuesday, only three Black governors had been elected in U.S. history, all of them Democratic men.

Her win comes eight years after fellow Democrat Stacey Abrams became the first Black woman nominated for governor by a major U.S. political party. Abrams lost Georgia governor’s races in 2018 and 2022, both times to Kemp. She did not run a third time. Tuesday was the third Georgia governor’s race in a row with a Black woman leading the Democratic ticket.

Bottoms rarely talked directly about the historic nature of her candidacy. She often talked about her family instead. She is a descendant of enslaved Georgians and describes herself as at least a fifth-generation Georgian, tracing her family back five generations to a plantation in Crawfordville.

“I am at least a fifth-generation Georgian,” she said. “I say ‘at least’ because we can only trace our family back five generations.”

She has said her grandfather moved to Atlanta from rural Georgia and had to walk through the back doors of downtown buildings she would later enter through the front as mayor.

What comes next in Georgia

Republicans have held a statehouse trifecta in Georgia for more than two decades, controlling the governor’s office and both chambers of the General Assembly. Democrats were trying Tuesday to flip the state House, though Republicans were heavily favored to keep their Senate majority. That would leave Bottoms with at least one Republican-led chamber to work with when she takes office in January.

Tuesday brought other firsts. In Florida, Republican U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds was elected governor, becoming the first Black Republican elected governor in the U.S. The same evening, Stacey Plaskett was elected governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, becoming the first Black woman elected governor of a U.S. jurisdiction.

Georgia also reelected Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, the state’s first Jewish senator, to serve alongside Sen. Raphael Warnock, its first Black senator.