Wednesday Nov 4: On 'National Common Sense Day': Georgia Makes History: KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS WINS GOVERNOR'S RACE!

ATLANTA — Georgia voters have elected Keisha Lance Bottoms governor, making the former Atlanta mayor the first Black woman elected governor in American history. 

Her victory over Republican businessman Rick Jackson also makes her Georgia’s first Black governor and first woman governor—a breakthrough in a state whose history has so often placed both race and gender between its citizens and political power.

Bottoms’ election returns the governor’s office to Democrats for the first time since Roy Barnes left office in January 2003. She will succeed Republican Brian Kemp, who could not seek a third consecutive term. After more than two decades of Republican governors, Georgia has chosen a different direction.

And it's LONG OVERDUE!

For Bottoms, the road to the governor’s mansion began in Atlanta, where she grew up and graduated from Frederick Douglass High School. She earned her undergraduate degree at Florida A&M University and her law degree at Georgia State University. The daughter of Sylvia Robinson and R&B singer Major Lance, Bottoms has spoken about her father’s imprisonment and her mother’s struggle to support the family—experiences that helped shape her interest in law and public service.

Her résumé spans the courtroom, City Hall and the White House. An attorney and former magistrate judge, she represented southwest Atlanta on the City Council before winning the mayor’s office in 2017. She served as Atlanta’s 60th mayor from 2018 to 2022, then joined President Joe Biden’s administration as a senior adviser and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

Her mayoral tenure brought extraordinary tests, including the coronavirus pandemic and the protests following George Floyd’s murder. Those years placed her before a national audience while exposing her leadership to intense scrutiny. Her campaign for governor asked voters to consider that experience as preparation for the state’s highest office.

Bottoms centered her campaign on the pressures facing working families. Her proposals included expanding Medicaid, raising Georgia’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and repealing the state’s six-week abortion ban. She defeated Jackson despite his spending more than $200 million of his own money on the contest.

The history reaches further back than her political career. 

According to her campaign biography, Bottoms traces her Georgia ancestry through five generations to an enslaved family on a plantation near Crawfordville. That lineage gives the victory particular weight: a descendant of people denied freedom will now prepare to lead the state they helped build.

A historic election does not erase history, nor does it settle the daily problems voters expect a governor to address. But it changes who can stand at the center of that work—and who can see herself there next.

For Georgia’s Black women, whose organizing and persistence have sustained communities across generations, this election offers a powerful image: one of their own, elected to the highest office in the state.

Georgia has written a new page. Keisha Lance Bottoms will help determine what follows.

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