Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms has won Georgia’s race for governor, becoming the first Black woman elected governor of a US state and delivering her party a landmark victory in one of America’s most closely divided battlegrounds.
Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, defeated Republican businessman Rick Jackson on Tuesday, according to US media projections reported by Reuters and the Associated Press. The result remains a projection rather than a certified outcome, with the final official count to be confirmed by Georgia’s election authorities in due course.
She succeeds Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who was barred by law from seeking a third consecutive term after serving since 2019. Her win ends more than two decades of Republican control of Georgia’s governor’s office and makes Bottoms the first Democrat to win the post since Roy Barnes was elected in 1998.
Bottoms, 56, served as Atlanta’s mayor from 2018 to 2022, leading the city through the pandemic and a period of protest over policing and racial injustice. She later served as a senior adviser to former President Joe Biden and as director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
The victory is a milestone for Black women in American politics, who have long formed a central part of the Democratic coalition but have remained underrepresented in the nation’s highest elected offices. Only three Black governors have previously been elected in US history, all of them men.
It also follows a long road in Georgia itself. Fellow Democrat Stacey Abrams became the first Black woman nominated for governor by a major US party in 2018, but lost to Kemp that year and again in 2022. Her campaigns helped build a broad coalition that turned a reliably Republican state into a national battleground, electing two Democratic senators and delivering Georgia’s electoral votes to a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in decades.
Jackson, the billionaire founder of a healthcare staffing company, campaigned as a political outsider on tax cuts, public safety and reducing regulation. Reports noted that he spent heavily from his own fortune, giving him a large financial advantage that Bottoms overcame.
The Georgia result came on the same night that Democrat Jon Ossoff was re-elected to the US Senate from the state, underlining how far Georgia’s politics have shifted. Black voters have formed a central part of the Democratic coalition behind that change, and Bottoms’ win extends it to the governor’s mansion for the first time.
Note: the featured image is an official portrait from 2022, not a photograph from election night.
Sources: Reuters, “Keisha Lance Bottoms wins Georgia race, becomes first Black woman elected governor of US state”, 4 November 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/keisha-lance-bottoms-wins-georgia-race-becomes-first-black-woman-elected-2026-11-04/ ; Associated Press, via Now Georgia, “Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms makes history as 1st Black woman to be elected Georgia governor”, 3 November 2026, https://nowgeorgia.com/breaking-now-democrat-keisha-lance-bottoms-makes-history-as-1st-black-woman-to-be-elected-georgia-governor/
