The former Atlanta mayor overcame more than $200 million in self-funding by her Republican opponent to return Georgia’s governorship to Democrats for the first time in more than two decades.
By EEW Magazine Political Editors
Keisha Lance Bottoms will take office as Georgia’s governor in January, succeeding term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp. (Photo courtesy of the Bottoms campaign)
Georgia voters made American history Tuesday, electing former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms as the first Black woman ever to win a governor’s race in the United States. The Democrat defeated Republican businessman Rick Jackson, The Associated Press projected. She will also become Georgia’s first woman governor and its first Black governor when she succeeds term-limited Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in January.
Jackson conceded Tuesday night. “Tonight the voters spoke, and I respect their decision,” he told supporters. He added that Bottoms “deserves our congratulations and our prayers as she prepares to take office.”
Bottoms won despite a staggering financial gap. Jackson, a billionaire health care staffing executive, poured more than $200 million of his own fortune into the race, shattering Georgia records. She is the first Democrat to win a Georgia governor’s race since Roy Barnes in 1998.
President Donald Trump invites Republican Rick Jackson, who lost Tuesday’s Georgia governor’s race to Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, to speak at a campaign rally at Guardian Centers of Georgia in Perry, Ga., on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Before the 2026 elections, only three Black Americans had been elected governor: Douglas Wilder of Virginia, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Wes Moore of Maryland, all Democratic men. Bottoms was one of a record eight Black major-party nominees for governor this year. In Florida, Republican Byron Donalds was projected the same night to become that state’s first Black governor.
Her win comes four years after Stacey Abrams’ second loss to Kemp. In 2018, Abrams became the first Black woman to win a major party’s nomination for governor, and her voter registration work is widely credited with making Georgia competitive for Democrats.
Stacey Abrams, then the Democratic nominee for Georgia governor, gives a concession speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, after her second loss to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. (AP Photo/Ben Gray, File)
Bottoms rarely spoke about the history her campaign could make. She often spoke about her family’s. “I am at least a fifth-generation Georgian,” she said on the trail. “I say ‘at least’ because we can only trace our family back five generations to a plantation in Crawfordville.”
The daughter of R&B singer Major Lance, Bottoms earned degrees from Florida A&M University and Georgia State University’s law school. She worked as a prosecutor and judge and served on the Atlanta City Council before winning the mayor’s office in 2017.
Her single term as mayor spanned the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests that followed the 2020 police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. She clashed openly with Kemp over pandemic restrictions. She did not seek a second term and later served as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden.
Jackson attacked her record as mayor and said she had abandoned the city. He ran on his own life story, summed up on his billboards as “foster care to billionaire.” He promised to cut the state income tax in half within four years and eliminate it within eight.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, now Georgia’s governor-elect, speaks at a campaign rally in Morrow, Ga., on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026. (Erik S. Lesser/AFP via Getty Images)
Bottoms challenged his outsider image by pointing to the nearly $1 billion his company had earned from state contracts. Jackson pledged to unwind those contracts if elected.
President Donald Trump endorsed Jackson, who said he wanted to govern like “Trump with a Southern tone” and become the president’s “favorite governor.” “I’m not running to be his favorite governor,” Bottoms said during their lone debate. Former President Barack Obama campaigned with her in the final week.
Bottoms ran on expanding Medicaid, which she called a first-day priority, and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. She also proposed letting local governments drop sales taxes on groceries, building more housing and fully funding schools.
Those plans now meet the Legislature. Republicans entered Election Day controlling both chambers of the General Assembly, and the minimum wage increase and grocery tax change will need lawmakers’ votes. Bottoms will take office in a Capitol that has not answered to a Democratic governor since 2003.