Keisha Lance Bottoms in her official 2022 portrait. Photo: Executive Office of the President / public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia’s governor’s race Tuesday, defeating Republican Rick Jackson to become the first Black woman elected governor in the United States, the Associated Press projects.

The former Atlanta mayor will also become Georgia’s first woman governor and its first Black governor. She will succeed Republican Brian Kemp, who is completing his second term and could not seek a third consecutive term.

Her victory returns the office to Democrats for the first time since Roy Barnes left in January 2003. Barnes, elected in 1998, lost his reelection bid to Sonny Perdue in 2002. Bottoms succeeds where Stacey Abrams fell short in the 2018 and 2022 elections against Kemp.

Jackson has conceded, FOX 5 Atlanta reports. The health care businessman spent more than $200 million of his own money on the race, making Bottoms’ record at Atlanta City Hall a central target of his campaign.

From Atlanta City Hall to the governor’s office

Bottoms, 56, served as Atlanta’s mayor from 2018 to 2022 after serving on the City Council and as a judge. Her term spanned the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests over police violence in 2020. She did not seek a second mayoral term.

She later joined President Joe Biden’s administration as a senior adviser and led the White House Office of Public Engagement. Her family’s Georgia roots extend back five generations to a plantation near Crawfordville.

Raphael Warnock, Joe Biden and Keisha Lance Bottoms at Ebenezer Baptist Church in January 2023 — From left, Sen. Raphael Warnock, President Joe Biden and Keisha Lance Bottoms attend a service at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church on Jan. 15, 2023. File photo: Adam Schultz / White House, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Schools, housing and health care on her agenda

For North Atlanta families, several of Bottoms’ campaign proposals reach directly into household budgets and public schools. She has proposed eliminating state income taxes for teachers, expanding early childhood education and changing Georgia’s school funding formula.

On housing, she wants an affordable housing trust fund and expanded help for renters and homebuyers. She has also proposed giving cities and counties the option to suspend or eliminate local sales taxes on groceries and essential goods.

Medicaid expansion is another central pledge, alongside measures to support rural hospitals and improve access to mental health care. Those proposals now move from the campaign into the work of assembling an administration and pursuing a legislative agenda. The election itself does not put them into law.

Georgia’s vote totals remain unofficial pending certification. Follow the latest statewide and county developments in our election-night live coverage.