Keisha Lance Bottoms becomes first Black woman elected US governor
Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor who later advised former US President Joe Biden, has been elected governor of Georgia, becoming the first Black woman chosen as a US governor. She defeated Republican Rick Jackson, a billionaire who spent more than $200 million of his own money in a bid to succeed outgoing Republican Governor Brian Kemp. Kemp is leaving office in January after eight years because of term limits.
Bottoms’s victory was driven in part by the state’s large Black electorate, which turned out strongly in early voting. Republicans tried to portray her mayoral record as a crime-ridden decline for Georgia’s largest city — a tactic she dismissed to the Associated Press as a longstanding effort to paint Atlanta as “this big bad place.”
Her win is the third consecutive Georgia Democratic nomination of a Black woman for governor. Stacey Abrams lost to Kemp in 2018 and 2022.
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