Photo: Executive Office of the President of the United States, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Official portrait, 2022.
Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms has won Georgia's governor's race, defeating Republican Rick Jackson and making history as the first Black woman ever elected governor of a U.S. state. The Associated Press called the race for Bottoms on Tuesday night.
With about three-quarters of the vote counted at the time of the call, Bottoms led Jackson 55.4 percent to 44.6 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal's account of the AP call. She will become Georgia's first Black governor and its first woman governor, and the first Democrat to win the state's top office since Roy Barnes, who left office in 2003.
A barrier broken
No Black woman had ever been elected governor in American history before Tuesday night. Only three Black governors have ever been elected in the United States, and all of them were men. Bottoms's win breaks that barrier in a Deep South state where her family history stretches back to enslavement.
Georgia has now had a Black woman at the top of the Democratic ticket in three consecutive governor's races. Stacey Abrams, also a Black woman, ran in 2018 and 2022 and lost both times to outgoing Republican Governor Brian Kemp. Bottoms, who succeeds the term-limited Kemp, finally carried the office.
An expensive race, a clear margin
Bottoms won despite a wide spending gap. The Associated Press reported that Jackson, a health care executive, put more than $200 million of his own fortune into his campaign. Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor who later served in President Joe Biden's White House, focused her campaign on rising costs, an issue that dominated voters' concerns across the country on election night.
The margin was clear enough for the race to be called on election night, even with votes still being counted. Bottoms led by about 11 points when the AP made its call, and she joins Senator Jon Ossoff, who won re-election on Tuesday, in giving Democrats a sweep of the top of Georgia's ballot.
From Atlanta City Hall to the governor's mansion
Bottoms, 56, served as Atlanta's mayor from 2018 to 2022 and previously sat on the Atlanta City Council. In 2022 she joined the Biden administration as a senior adviser and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, serving until early 2023. She announced her run for governor in April 2025 and won the Democratic nomination in May 2026.
Her victory is also a milestone for Georgia's changing politics. The state, once reliably Republican in statewide races, has become one of the country's most competitive battlegrounds, and Tuesday's result gives Democrats control of the governor's office for the first time in more than two decades.
What comes next
Bottoms is scheduled to be sworn in as governor on January 11, 2027, succeeding Kemp, who was barred by law from seeking a third term. As with all election-night calls, the result remains subject to final tabulation and certification by Georgia election officials.
For now, the history stands on its own: a former Atlanta mayor, the daughter of an R&B singer, raised in the city she once led, will become the first Black woman to govern any American state.
Sources: Associated Press election results and call, November 3, 2026; The Wall Street Journal live midterm coverage, November 3, 2026; USA Today live election coverage, November 3, 2026. Results are projections and remain subject to certification.