Keisha Lance Bottoms is projected to defeat Republican businessman Rick Jackson in Georgia’s governor’s race, giving Democrats control of the state’s governor’s mansion for the first time in more than 20 years.
The former Atlanta mayor is also set to become Georgia’s first woman governor and the first Black woman elected governor in the United States. Democrats last won the state’s governorship in 1998, when Roy Barnes was elected. Republicans took the office in 2002 and have held it since.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff also won reelection, according to projections.
Bottoms was Atlanta’s mayor from 2018 to 2022. She later served in the Biden White House as a senior adviser and director of the Office of Public Engagement. After winning the Democratic primary, she faced Jackson in the open-seat contest, as Republican Gov. Brian Kemp was barred from seeking another term.
Jackson, a healthcare executive making his first run for office, spent more than $200 million of his own money on his campaign. He won the Republican runoff against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who had President Donald Trump’s endorsement.
The race attracted national attention in a state that has become increasingly competitive. Joe Biden narrowly carried Georgia in 2020, the first Democratic presidential win there since Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992. Trump won the state for Republicans again in 2024.
Bottoms campaigned on expanding Medicaid, increasing Georgia’s minimum wage and boosting pay for public employees. Jackson proposed phasing out the state income tax and presented himself as an outsider who would run state government like a business.
Jackson often criticized Bottoms’ time as Atlanta mayor. Bottoms, meanwhile, questioned his use of personal wealth to fund the campaign and tried to link him to Trump.
Her projected win would end the Republican stretch in the governor’s office that began with Sonny Perdue’s election in 2002 and continued under Nathan Deal and Kemp.
