Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is considering a run for governor of Georgia
Bottoms plans to return to Georgia politics after serving in various capacities in the Biden administration.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta who ushered the city through COVID and the George Floyd uprising in May 2020, is heading back to Georgia and back into Georgia politics. Bottoms hinted at a run for the Georgia governor’s office in a recent interview with Jorge Estevez of Atlanta’s WSB-TV.
When asked about whether or not there was an office she might be considering running for in the state, Bottoms made mention of one particular race.
“Well, there will be a governor’s race on the ballot.”
The next election for governor of Georgia takes place in November 2026, so Bottoms would have plenty of time to campaign around the state that nearly elected Stacey Abrams to the governorship in 2018. Abrams also ran in 2022, losing to incumbent Brian Kemp. Kemp would be term-limited in 2026 so the governor’s race will feature a new set of candidates; Bottoms’ future is looking very bright in that regard.
Bottoms’ national profile rose during 2020 when, much like the rest of America, Atlanta was dealing with protests that sometimes got out of hand in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It wasn’t uncommon to see Bottoms on television attempting to keep order in Atlanta, using her connections to popular entertainment figures in the city to connect with the citizens.
A run for governor of Georgia makes sense for the former prosecutor, judge, and Atlanta city councilwoman. After leaving the mayor’s office in 2022, she joined the Biden administration in Washington, serving as a senior advisor to the President before becoming the director of the Office of Public Engagement and then the President’s Export Council, where she advised the President on issues relating to international trade.
She served in that role until January 20, 2025, when the Trump administration took over the White House. President Trump recently made a show of alleging that he fired Bottoms from her role on the council, but Bottoms broke it down so that it could forever be broke that she quit the job well before Trump singled her out on TruthSocial with a post that said, to her (and many others), “YOU’RE FIRED.”
In response to Trump’s post, Bottoms said, “Oh, he thinks he fired me too from the job that I didn’t get paid for.” As it turns out, Bottoms (along with what I can only assume are many, many former members of the Biden administration) tendered her resignation on January 4, 2025, with an effective date of January 20, 2025. Basically, she didn’t get fired because she’d already quit.
Presidential shenanigans aside, Bottoms has bigger fish to fry if she’s going to run for the highest office in the state. She has to convince a state full of Trump voters that she’s the right candidate for Georgia. It’s a task she seems optimistic about.
When asked if Georgia is ready for a female of color with a political past that folks can judge, Bottoms made it be known that Georgia…is ready.
“Absolutely. Absolutely.”
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
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