Atlanta school teacher Elizabeth Soreng immediately knew the significance of Keisha Lance Bottoms’ landmark win Tuesday night as she shed tears of joy watching the returns.
“She is the first,” an emotional Soreng told Capital B Atlanta at the Marriott Marquis election night watch party. “I’m feeling so happy because this is something that every single one of my students, students that look like me, Black girls, can see a future for themselves.”
After the Associated Press called the Georgia governor’s race for Bottoms, MS Now political commentator Symone Sanders Townsend reflected on the 2024 election that she felt was a repudiation of Black women and “maybe America doesn’t want us.”
But Tuesday, a Black woman fought back.
“She has won, going out there being herself, connecting with the people,” Sanders said as one of her on-air colleagues passed her a tissue. “Georgia wanted Keisha.”
Bottoms’ gubernatorial run to make her the first Black woman governor is U.S history grabbed most of the headlines during Georgia’s pivotal midterm elections cycle.
But in January, for the first time ever, all of Georgia’s constitutional officers, except for Lieutenant Gov.-elect Josh McLaurin, will be Black women.
Eight women are set to become statewide officers in Georgia, shattering a number of glass ceilings in the process.
For decades, Black women have been the Democratic Party’s most loyal bloc of voters as well as one of the most dedicated groups of volunteers and staffers. Yet prior to Tuesday, the party hasn’t always reciprocated that commitment when Black women are on the ballot for statewide office.
Overlooked and underfunded
Former state Rep. Dee Dawkins-Haigler, host of the Wake Up With Dee morning radio show on WAOK-AM, twice ran failed Democratic primary campaigns for secretary of state.
She lost her 2022 bid to fellow Bee Nguyen, who Dawkins-Haigler said was the candidate of choice among party insiders. She said Black women like herself were often dismissed for statewide candidacies because many felt they couldn’t win in one of the former epicenters of the Jim Crow South.
“It was always the notion that we can’t have more than one or two Black women on the ticket because they will bring the ticket down,” Haigler told Capital B Atlanta.
Bottoms and her fellow Democrats contended with similar cynicism about whether Black women could win statewide elections. The former Atlanta mayor had to overcome a nearly $200 million campaign fundraising gap between herself and billionaire Rick Jackson.
Democratic Party operative Maria Banjo, who served as campaign manager for Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory, said previously that Black women candidates on this year’s ballot had trouble raising money for marketing.
“We don’t even have literature from these Black women candidates because they can’t afford hand cards to put on doors,” Banjo said in September.
With deep personal pockets, Jackson flooded the airwaves with negative ads while Bottoms focused on getting her message out.
Ultimately, the ad blitz wasn’t enough for Jackson to overcome Georgians’ dissatisfaction with the higher cost of living and broken promises made by President Donald Trump and his GOP allies, a fact Bottoms made clear during her victory speech on election night.
“You’ve shown that no amount of money will ever overcome the power of the people,” she told supporters.
Energizing Black voters
More than 4.2 million Georgians cast ballots in this year’s election, setting a record for overall turnout and Black voter turnout, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Just under 1.14 million Black voters cast ballots this year, up from about 1.04 million in 2022. That year saw an estimated 3.96 million overall voters. Stacey Abrams’ candidacy helped set the previous record for midterm election turnout that year when she lost her second race to GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.
While Abrams paved the way for Bottoms and other Black women Democrats’ wins, it was the poor economic conditions created by Trump’s policies that put them all over the top, according to Adrienne Jones, a political science professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.
“This polarized election year created an environment that allowed people to vote [for] their needs, their immediate concerns,” Jones said. “Presidents themselves don’t determine economic conditions, but this president, in fact, is the reason for our economic decline. [He] laid the runway for Gov. Keisha Lance Bottoms.”
“It goes back to the Black women winning these nominations back in the spring,” said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock III. “Having done that, they were well positioned to take advantage of this reaction to Donald Trump and the Republicans more generally. … This was just a much better year to be running as a Democrat.”
The victory was an affirmation for past Black women candidates like Dawkins-Haigler.
“What we saw yesterday rebuked and refuted everything they said about a ticket having too many Black people, and in particular too many Black women,” she added. “It really made me feel like the ancestors were proud. It was our ancestors’ wildest dreams. I was so proud of each and every one of them.”
The women in the Gold Dome
In addition to Bottoms, state Rep. Tanya Miller became the first Black woman elected to serve as state attorney general, and former judge Penny Brown Reynolds became the state’s first Black secretary of state.
Brown Reynolds doubled down on her commitment to protect the voting rights of all Georgians during her Tuesday night acceptance speech.
“I said over a year ago that a vote should be a right and not a fight,”she said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And in Georgia, it’s no longer going to be a fight.”
Former Atlanta City Councilmember Keisha Sean Waites defeated GOP incumbent John King to become the state’s first Black woman insurance commissioner. Farming nonprofit leader Katherine Juhan-Arnold is set to become the next commissioner of agriculture after beating incumbent Tyler J. Harper.
Educator Lydia Powell beat incumbent Republican Richard Woods to become Georgia’s first Black woman state school superintendent.
Nikki Porcher unseated Bárbara Rivera Holmes to become the first Black woman labor commissioner, and Shelia Edwards beat out Josh Tolbert to become the next leader of Public Service Commission District 5. She and Alicia Johnson are now the only two Black women on the PSC
State Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, made history by becoming the first Black woman with a doctorate elected to Congress. In January, she’ll take over for U.S. Rep. Everton Blair in the District 13 seat previously held by the late David Scott, who passed away earlier this year.
Incumbent U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath and Nikema Williams also won reelection.
The night’s triumphs took on added significance for the Black women at Bottoms’ election night watch party, many of whom have known the former mayor for years.
Newnan resident Valentina Robertson said she hosted a Bottoms campaign event at her home earlier this year. Watching Bottoms win reminded Robertson of her days as a college student at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1989 and seeing Douglas Wilder become the first elected Black governor in U.S. history.
“It feels almost the same,” Robertson said. “I stood there just in awe, even after she was announced, just watching the people in the room, and it feels awesome.”
Star Propst said Bottoms will dispel myths about Black women leaders.
“We’ve always been [characterized] as not as qualified,” Propst said. “But as you can see, as life goes on, we have had powerful Black females in the world to prove that we are. And we can accomplish just as [much] as Caucasian people, or men, who don’t seem to understand Black women are highly brilliant and intelligent.”
Jones cautioned Georgia Democrats not to rest on their laurels. She said they should expect a strong reaction to the first Black woman governor, just as the country reacted strongly to Barack Obama becoming the first Black president.
“Keisha is the first person to achieve this, and we should expect that there will be some backlash,” she said.
Bottoms acknowledged the historic milestone she and the other Black women candidates made in Georgia on election night. She also noted her family roots are tied to a plantation in Crawfordville, where her great great-grandmother, Betsy Peek, is buried.
“I don’t know what dreams Betsy had for her children or for her grandchildren or the generation that she would never meet, but I know I am standing on shoulders made of steel,” Bottoms said. “Crawfordville produced the Confederacy’s vice president, but tonight it also produced your next governor.”
Read More:
- Black Democrats Made History, So Did a Black Farmer
- Black Democratic Socialist Wins Georgia General Assembly Race
Staff writer Ann Hill Bond contributed to this report.
