Keisha Lance Bottoms has been elected governor of Georgia, making her the first woman and the first Black person ever elected to lead the state. The Associated Press called the race Tuesday night after the former Atlanta mayor defeated Republican Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare executive who poured his own fortune into the campaign.
The win flips the governor’s office to Democrats for the first time in decades. Georgia has become a battleground in presidential and Senate races over the last several years, but at the state level it has stayed red. Before Tuesday, Georgia voters had not elected a Democratic governor since 1998, when Roy Barnes won. Her victory also breaks up the Republican trifecta in Georgia, meaning the GOP no longer controls the governor’s mansion along with both chambers of the state legislature.
Bottoms will succeed Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who could not run again because of term limits.
The race got personal on the trail. Jackson openly promised to govern like Donald Trump “but with a Southern tone” and said he wanted to be Trump’s favorite governor. Bottoms made sure voters did not forget it. During their only debate, she told the crowd she was not running to be his favorite governor. Jackson leaned on her record as mayor, hitting her on crime, her handling of COVID and her decision to leave City Hall after one term to work in Washington.
None of it stopped her. Bottoms was the frontrunner from the start of the Democratic primary and dominated it, winning nearly all of Georgia’s 159 counties and locking up the nomination without needing a runoff. In the general election, she had backing from Barack Obama and Joe Biden and campaigned regularly alongside Sen. Jon Ossoff, who held “United for Georgia” rallies with her. Ossoff’s campaign also moved millions of dollars to the Georgia Democratic Party’s joint effort to help get her elected.
Her biggest promise is health care. Bottoms has pledged to fully expand Medicaid as a day one priority. Medicaid is the government health insurance program for low income people, and Georgia is one of the few states that never fully expanded it. Instead, the state runs a program called Georgia Pathways, which only covers some low income adults and requires them to prove they are working, going to school or volunteering at least 80 hours a month. Bottoms wants to replace it with full expansion, which would open coverage to hundreds of thousands more Georgians.
The job carries weight beyond Georgia, too. The governor plays a key role in certifying election results, and Bottoms will be in office for the 2028 presidential election in a state that has been at the center of fights over the 2020 count. Earlier this year, the FBI seized election records tied to Georgia’s 2020 election.
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Bottoms, 56, is an Atlanta native who has said she can trace her family in Georgia back at least five generations, to a plantation in Crawfordville. She served one term as mayor of Atlanta before leaving to become a senior adviser to Biden at the White House.
She could also become the first Black woman governor in American history. That depends on Minnesota, where Republican Lisa Demuth is also on the ballot. Minnesota inaugurates its governor before Georgia does, so if Demuth wins, she would take office first.
