Keisha Lance Bottoms defeated healthcare billionaire Rick Jackson to make history tonight as the first Black governor of Georgia and the first Black woman governor in the country.
Expanding Medicaid, building more workforce and affordable housing, and protecting Black voting rights were some of the top campaign priorities for Bottoms. The former Atlanta mayor also campaigned on a message to pause data center construction in one of the nation’s epicenters.
“This campaign was for every community and every corner of Georgia,” Bottoms told supporters at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta.
“This win is for all of us,” she said. “Thank you Georgia, I am honored to be your 84th governor.”
Jackson, who spent over $200 million on his campaign, told his Republican supporters he respected the voters’ decision and that he called Bottoms to congratulate her on her victory.
“Keisha Lance Bottoms deserves our congratulations and our prayers as she prepares to take office,” Jackson said.
The historic win also wasn’t lost on supporters who rejoiced in the hotel ballroom as the DJ spun an ATL anthem “Knuck if you Buck” and supporters began to swag surf.
Political commentator Symone Sanders Townsend, said on MS Now after AP officially called the race at 9:24 that the 2024 election had felt like a repudiation of Black women and that “maybe America doesn’t want us.”
But tonight, a Black woman fought back.
“She has won, going out there being herself, connecting with the people,” Sanders said through tears. “Georgia wanted Keisha.”
Kandice Bell couldn’t contain her excitement Tuesday night inside the Bottoms’ watch party when the huge on-stage TV screens first showed MS Now projecting Keisha Lance Bottoms had won Georgia’s race for governor.
“I was ecstatic because Keisha looks like me and our ancestors fought and died for this,” Bell, 37, told Capital B Atlanta after doing the electric slide with other attendees. “This really gave me a boost of confidence that somebody that looks like me is going to be in that governor’s mansion. Black women, we are amazing. We can do absolutely anything! I know she is going to do an amazing job!”
Bell was one of hundreds of Black voters who erupted in cheers once they learned Bottoms had officially won. Immediately, the event changed from a political party into a night club. The DJ played Atlanta hiphop classics like Bonecrusher’s “Never Scared,” and Lil Jon’s “I Don’t Give A…” (the censored version).
Celebrities Tyrese Gibson, Young Joc and Killer Mike were on stage to celebrate this moment in Black history with attendees holding signs that read, “Madame Governor.”
Adamsville voter Shanise Wright told Capital B Atlanta today that she was excited to cast her ballot for Bottoms. “I know she was our mayor previously, but let’s give her a chance. She went for a chance to step up. Let’s see what she can do. Let’s see what she’s all about.”
For Star Propst, a Vine City resident, she felt a Bottoms win would signal something larger about Black women overall. “We’re always [told] our mind and brain is not as qualified,” Propst said outside of her polling location. “But we have had powerful Black females in the world prove that we can accomplish [things] just as well as other Caucasian people or men who don’t seem to understand Black women are highly brilliant and intelligent.”
Making history
On the campaign trail, the 56-year-old married mother of four frequently cited the roots of the five generations of her family who have lived in Georgia. It is a journey that she said began in bondage with her great-great-grandparents, Shephard and Betsy Peek, who were enslaved on a plantation in Crawfordville.
Her family later migrated to Ellin Street in Atlanta, where her grandfather ran a horse and buggy business.
“He would haul trash and paper from businesses in communities or businesses uptown that allowed him to hire men in his community that’s now known as Vine City English Avenue,” Bottoms told the crowd of Black men during a campaign stop in June.
In May, when she became the Democratic nominee for governor, Bottoms paid homage to her living Black family, including her mother, Sylvia Robinson, and her late father, soul singer Major Lance.
“I am the composition of their dreams and the ones they pushed me to dream for myself,” she told a reverent crowd full of Black supporters inside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Atlanta.
Bottoms’ victory cements her legacy as one of Georgia’s and America’s Black history legends. She now joins the ranks of Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, and the city’s first Black woman mayor, Shirley Franklin.
She’ll also be synonymous with the nation’s first elected Black male governor, Doug Wilder; the nation’s first Black woman U.S. senator, Carol Moseley Braun; the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama; and first Black woman vice president, Kamala Harris.
Bottoms’ race to the Gold Dome was a bruising battle from the very beginning.
A controversial mayoral tenure
When she first ran for mayor in 2018, part of her campaign’s appeal was that she was deeply rooted in Black Atlanta. Proudly repping the city’s southwest side, she declared victory after a heated run-off against City Councilmember Mary Norwood, a formidable white opponent whose campaign threatened to end Atlanta’s 44-year run of Black mayors.
With promises to address an affordable housing crisis and public safety, and to clean up city government after several employees from the previous administration were convicted in a federal bribery investigation of City Hall, Bottoms confidently took the helm as Atlanta’s 60th mayor and only the second Black woman mayor in the city’s history.
The honeymoon didn’t last long.
For many, their lasting image of Bottoms — and one that thrust her onto the national scene — was as an impassioned and frustrated politician denouncing vandalism and violence in the city’s streets. Pleading for calm during a press conference, she called out protesters for tearing up their beloved city during demonstrations over the death of George Floyd in 2020.
“What I see happening on the streets of Atlanta is not Atlanta,” Bottoms said. “This is not a protest. This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. This is chaos.”
After her remarks went viral, she was soon being name-checked as a potential 2020 running mate for Joe Biden. The woman who was the only Atlanta mayor to serve in all three branches of government was quickly branded a rising star within the Democratic Party.
Which is why supporters and critics alike were puzzled when Bottoms issued an open letter online announcing her decision to not seek a second term in 2021. Titled “Dear Atlanta,” the message was clear that her time in office had taken a toll.
But the former prosecutor, who also spent eight years on the Atlanta City Council and logged two years as a Fulton County Superior Court judge, wasn’t finished with politics.
Bottoms headed to Washington to serve in the White House as director of the Office of Public Engagement and as a senior adviser to President Biden from 2022 to 2023.
Thanks largely to name recognition, she swiftly secured the Democratic nomination.
“When people ask me if it can be done, I think of the words of Nelson Mandela who said, ‘It always seems impossible until it’s done,’” Bottoms said during her acceptance speech. “We will get it done in Georgia.”
Going on the attack
Once Jackson, a self-funded political novice, secured the Republican nomination in June, he wasted no time in attacking Bottoms record in searing run of TV ads.
Jackson, who promised to be “Trump’s favorite governor,” questioned Bottoms decision to rein in aggressive police tactics in the wake of the police killing of Rayshard Brooks in one of two aggressive ads that use threatening rhetoric.
“Law enforcement is not the enemy,” Jackson said in his ad. “That’s a woke lie. And it might get you killed.”
Bottoms responded to Jackson’s attacks in an April 22 Facebook post that included audio from Atlanta rapper Bone Crusher’s “Never Scared.”
“Gazillionaire MAGA Republican Rick Jackson says he will do whatever it takes to defeat me in November,” Bottoms wrote. “He may have the money, but we have the power.”
As Jackson flooded the airway with ads Bottoms focused on getting her message out directly to voters across the Peach state.
Noting that Black men, the party’s second-most loyal voting bloc, don’t always receive the same level of attention, Bottoms initiated targeted outreach.
Providing free pathways to technical and community college programs and increasing support for Black-owned small businesses are two of the ways she said she wanted to improve the lives of Black men across Georgia.
“The policies I’m talking about apply not just to Black men, but to people across the board,” Bottoms told Capital B Atlanta at a campaign event at The Gathering Spot. “When our men are stronger, our communities are stronger.”
In the final weeks of the campaign, Bottoms got a boost from President Barack Obama. On Oct. 8, the former president released a video endorsement.
During the 54-second clip, Obama called on Georgia voters to support his “friend,” while touting her public service record.
“She’s invested in young people, delivered historic pay raises for police officers and fire fighters, and balanced the budget without raising taxes,” Obama said in the video. “Now Keisha has a plan to lower costs, expand Medicaid, strengthen rural hospitals, and give communities the option to eliminate grocery taxes.”
“There’s a lot at stake in this election, Georgia,” Obama continued. “Make your voice heard and vote for Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor.”
The New Challenge
Bottoms must now chart a new course for a state Republicans have led exclusively for most of the 21st century. Data center proliferation, Medicaid expansion and rural hospital closures are some of the issues the former mayor must address. But she may also have to contend with potential limits to her new powers as the state’s chief executive.
Outgoing GOP Gov. Brian Kemp is expected to convene a special session in the wake of the Nov. 3 election, where GOP state lawmakers can install new legislative reins on the incoming governor less than three months before she takes office, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They’re also expected to draw new political maps that dilute the voting power of Black Georgians after forgoing efforts in June in response to Louisiana v. Callais.
The landmark April 29 U.S. Supreme Court ruling nullified a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and effectively made it legal to dilute the collective power of Black voters, who overwhelmingly support Democrats in most elections, as long as that isn’t lawmakers’ explicitly stated purpose.
Bottoms has vowed to veto any political maps that limit the power of Black voters, who represent about one-third of Georgia’s electorate.
She also must deal with an affordable housing crisis that’s made metro Atlanta the eviction capital of America and caused the region’s homeless population to rise four consecutive years. Black Georgians have been the face of the eviction epidemic.
“Georgia, we sent a message loud and clear: that we want a leader who will put Georgia first and will stand up to all the chaos coming out of Washington D.C.,” Bottoms told supporters.
But those are all problems for another day. Tonight, Atlanta parties as it makes history.
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