Wednesday 04 Nov 2026
Keisha Lance Bottoms speaks at a rally ahead of the midterm elections in Morrow, Georgia, US, October 28, 2026 (Photo/Edgar Su/Reuters)
Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms has become the first Black woman elected governor of a United States state after defeating Republican Rick Jackson in Georgia's gubernatorial election.
Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor and adviser to former President Joe Biden, also made history as the first woman and the first Black person elected governor of Georgia.
Her victory marks a major breakthrough for Democrats, who had not won a gubernatorial contest in the southern state since 1988, flipping an executive mansion held by Republicans for over two decades.
Bottoms, 56, defeated Jackson, a 72-year-old billionaire healthcare tycoon and first-time candidate who largely self-funded his campaign, in a closely contested battle to succeed term-limited Republican Governor Brian Kemp.
Flipping battleground Georgia
The outcome comes two years after Republican President Donald Trump carried Georgia in the 2024 presidential election, following Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the state in 2020.
Trump had endorsed Jackson, telling a campaign rally in July: "I watched this man run and he's really phenomenal actually."
However, Jackson distanced his messaging from Trump in the closing weeks of the race as Republican candidates confronted headwinds driven by Trump's falling approval ratings, rising voter frustration over living costs, and the ongoing conflict with Iran.
Bottoms, who led Atlanta as mayor from 2018 to 2022, built her campaign around expanding Medicaid, addressing affordable housing, and mounting opposition to several Trump administration policies, successfully assembling a winning coalition in one of the midterm cycle's marquee battlegrounds.
A historic path
Born in Atlanta, Bottoms graduated from Frederick Douglass High School, earned an undergraduate degree from Florida A&M University, and obtained a law degree from Georgia State University.
The daughter of the late R&B singer Major Lance and Sylvia Robinson, she worked as a solicitor and magistrate judge before winning a seat on the Atlanta City Council in 2009.
In 2017, Bottoms won the mayoral race and served as Atlanta's 60th mayor through the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 civil unrest.
She later joined President Joe Biden's administration in 2022 as senior adviser and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement before securing Georgia's Democratic gubernatorial nomination in May 2026.
Her historic election broke racial and gender barriers in an office previously occupied exclusively by white men, following earlier bids by Stacey Abrams in 2018 and 2022, and returned the Georgia governorship to Democratic control for the first time since 2003.
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Source: TRT
