Three Key Takeaways
Now, nearly three decades after leaving FAMU, Bottoms is one month away from potentially making history.
- The race is remarkably close. Recent polls show Bottoms and Republican Rick Jackson separated by only a few points, making the final weeks critical.
- A Bottoms victory would break a barrier that has stood throughout American history. No Black woman has ever been elected governor of a state.
- Before Keisha Lance Bottoms was the mayor of Atlanta, a White House adviser or a candidate for governor of Georgia, she was a student at FAMU.
Keisha Lance Bottoms is 30 days from potentially making American political history. The former Atlanta mayor and FAMU grad is fighting to become Georgia’s first Black governor. Bottoms studied broadcast journalism at FAMU, where she developed the communication skills that would carry her from the classroom in Tallahassee to Atlanta City Hall, the White House and now the center of one of the country’s most closely watched gubernatorial races.
A victory on Nov. 3 would make her the first Black woman elected governor of any state in the nation.
The race, however, is anything but settled.
A Wedgewood Poll conducted Oct. 2-3 found Republican Rick Jackson leading Bottoms 51 percent to 49 percent among 600 likely voters. Other recent surveys have produced similarly narrow margins, leaving the contest effectively within striking distance for either candidate.
Bottoms therefore enters the final stretch with something rare in Georgia politics: a credible path to the governor's mansion.
She earned her undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism from FAMU, before receiving her law degree from Georgia State University.
She became an attorney and magistrate judge before entering Atlanta politics, winning a seat on the City Council in 2009. In 2017, she narrowly won the mayor's race and became one of the country's most prominent Black female mayors.
Her tenure coincided with a series of crises, including the coronavirus pandemic, racial-justice protests and debates over crime and public safety.
The experience elevated Bottoms onto the national stage. In 2022, President Joe Biden appointed her a senior adviser for public engagement.
Now she is attempting to convert that résumé into statewide political power.
Georgia is no longer the reliably Republican state it once was. Democrats have won recent statewide contests, including the 2020 presidential election and two U.S. Senate races.
Atlanta and its suburbs remain the Democratic Party's political engine, and Bottoms enters the race with deep relationships across the state's Black political establishment.
But that coalition alone is not enough.
To win, Bottoms must generate strong turnout among Black voters while limiting Republican margins in rural and exurban Georgia. She also needs to hold suburban voters who have increasingly become competitive territory for Democrats.
Her performance in the Democratic primary offered some encouragement. Bottoms won 56 percent of the vote in a six-candidate field and carried 158 of Georgia's 159 counties, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Whether those rural gains translate into a general-election coalition is the larger question.
Her Republican opponent presents another challenge.
Jackson, a billionaire health care entrepreneur and political newcomer, defeated Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in the Republican primary. Unlike many Georgia Republicans, Jackson did not emerge from decades of statewide elected office, giving Bottoms an opportunity to frame the race as a choice between political experience and business experience.
She is running for an office that would make her a historic figure, yet she has generally resisted making that history the central argument of her campaign.
That is probably deliberate.
Georgia voters are not simply deciding whether to create a historical first. They are deciding who they believe can address the cost of living, education, health care, housing and public safety.
And, Bottoms has largely kept her campaign focused on the issues.
Still, the historical stakes will be unavoidable if she wins.
No Black woman has ever been elected governor of an American state.
Georgia could change that.
The university has produced generations of prominent graduates in journalism, law, medicine, business, government and the arts. And, has increasingly been noted for its role in helping to build Atlanta's Black professional class. Bottoms's trajectory would offer another example of the strong reach of FAMU education.
A Bottoms victory would put that idea on one of the nation's biggest political stages.
The first major test comes Tuesday, when Bottoms and Jackson are scheduled to meet in their first major face-to-face debate. Atlanta News First will host the Oct. 6 town hall, giving both candidates an opportunity to make their case directly to voters.
For Bottoms, it is an opportunity to demonstrate why her experience running Atlanta and serving in the White House makes her ready to lead Georgia.
For Jackson, it is a chance to argue that Georgia needs a different kind of governor.
However, Jackson's greatest asset may also be his greatest liability: Donald Trump.
Trump endorsed Jackson after he defeated Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in the Republican runoff, and Jackson has embraced the president's support. But the alliance gives Bottoms an opening to portray Jackson as an extension of Trump at a time when suburban and independent voters could decide a close race.
Jackson needs Trump's conservative base, while Bottoms has an incentive to make the election a referendum on the president. With the race essentially tied, that tension could prove decisive.
In a race that could be decided by a few thousand votes, of fewer, the distance between Tallahassee and the Georgia governor's mansion suddenly does not seem quite so far.