Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor and Democrat, won the Georgia gubernatorial race on Tuesday, to the surprise of Republicans. Bottoms will become the first black female governor of the United States.
Georgia is historically a swing state offering tight margins to winners in statewide contests, and billionaire businessman Rick Jackson had been favored to win the race until recent days.
Lance Bottoms campaigned with Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who was also re-elected Tuesday, as well as former President Barack Obama days before the election.
Bottoms, 56, is a native of Atlanta and the child of blues musician Major Lance. She worked as an attorney and served as a magistrate judge in Fulton County before first winning elected office on the Atlanta City Council in 2009.
Jackson invested more than $100 million of his personal fortune in the campaign, flooding the media with chaotic scenes from the 2020 George Floyd protests and the death of Secoriea Turner, an eight-year-old girl murdered during a street takeover by men armed with rifles.
But in a sign of a turnaround against Donald Trump and the Republicans as a whole, voters elected Lance Bottoms.
In the final days of the George Floyd protests — when she was on the shortlist of potential vice presidential candidates in a Biden administration — Bottoms, Atlanta’s mayor at the time, announced she would not run for office that year.
She then joined the Biden administration as senior advisor and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, until 2023.
Bottoms entered the Georgia gubernatorial race shortly after party favorite U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath opted not to run, citing her spouse’s health issues. She then beat six other candidates in the Democratic primary without a runoff.
Bottoms campaigned on affordability issues, pledging to sign legislation expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and rolling back restrictions on abortion access in the state.
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