Keisha Lance Bottoms wins Georgia governor race, becoming first Black woman elected governor of a US state
Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms has defeated Republican businessman Rick Jackson to win Georgia’s governor race, becoming the first Black woman ever elected governor of a US state and the first Democrat to win the Georgia governor’s office since 1998.
Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms has won Georgia’s race for governor, defeating Republican businessman Rick Jackson and making history as the first Black woman ever elected governor of a US state. The Associated Press called the race for Bottoms on Tuesday night, with projections putting her on about 55% of the vote to Jackson’s roughly 45%.
Bottoms, 56, is also the first woman to be elected governor of Georgia, and the first Democrat to win the state’s top job since 1998, ending more than two decades of Republican control of the governor’s mansion. She will succeed Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who was barred by term limits from seeking a third term after serving since 2019.
The result caps a remarkable contest in which Bottoms fought a vast spending gap. Jackson, a billionaire healthcare executive, poured more than $200 million of his own fortune into his campaign, according to reports of the race, yet Bottoms still won by a wide margin. Al Jazeera reported that strong turnout among Black voters, a significant bloc in Georgia’s electorate, helped propel her to victory, including during early voting.
Bottoms is no stranger to Georgia voters. She served as mayor of Atlanta, the state’s largest city, and later as a senior adviser to former President Joe Biden and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Her campaign leaned heavily on affordability and public services, promising full Medicaid expansion, a trust fund to finance housing and rent support, free community college, and the expansion of abortion rights in the state.
Her victory is the third consecutive Georgia governor’s election in which a Black woman has led the Democratic ticket. Stacey Abrams, who became the first Black woman nominated for governor by a major party in 2018, lost to Kemp in both 2018 and 2022. Bottoms has now gone one step further, converting that nomination into an outright win in a state long regarded as one of America’s most closely divided battlegrounds.
Jackson, 72, had presented himself as a business outsider who could succeed the popular Kemp, but his campaign struggled to match Bottoms’s support in the state’s cities and suburbs. He declined to take part in an October debate, a decision Bottoms’s campaign repeatedly highlighted, and his vast personal spending did not translate into a lead in the final stretch.
The Georgia result formed part of a strong night for Democrats nationally, alongside the Senate flip in North Carolina, the re-election of Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia itself, and Chris Pappas’s Senate win in New Hampshire. Together, those results suggested that the party’s message on affordability and healthcare cut through in states where Republicans had expected to hold firm.
For Georgia, the practical consequences will begin with the transition. Bottoms is due to take office in January, when she will inherit a state government shaped by eight years of Kemp’s administration, from its tax and education policies to its approach to voting rules and healthcare. She will also have to work with a state legislature in which Republicans hold majorities, meaning her headline promises — above all Medicaid expansion — will face immediate negotiation rather than easy passage.
Nationally, the result will be read as a landmark regardless of the policy battles ahead. Bottoms was among eight Black major-party nominees for governor on the ballot on Tuesday, and her win breaks a barrier that has stood since the first governorships of the American republic. It also gives Democrats a high-profile governor in the South heading into the next presidential cycle.
The result remains subject to the usual official certification, but the scale of the margin leaves little doubt about the outcome. After conceding nothing on election night, the focus in Georgia now turns to the transition, the shape of Bottoms’s first cabinet, and whether a governor elected on affordability can turn that promise into law in a divided state government.
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