Keisha Lance Bottoms
Who is Keisha Lance Bottoms?
What education did Keisha Lance Bottoms receive?
What challenges did Keisha Lance Bottoms face as mayor of Atlanta?
What issues did Keisha Lance Bottoms emphasize in her campaign for Georgia governor?
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By the time Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected governor of Georgia on November 3, 2026—becoming the first Black woman elected to govern a state in American history—she had lived through a childhood marked by fame and heartbreak, enjoyed great political success being elected mayor of Atlanta, and subsequently endured bruising questions about her leadership. So on a night when she broke barriers and achieved what many had thought impossible, she remembered her enslaved ancestors and told her supporters:
I don’t know what dreams [my great-great-grandmother] Betsy Peak had for her children or for her grandchildren or the generations that she would never meet, but I know I am standing on shoulders made of steel.
Early life
- Nickname: KLB
- Born: January 18, 1970, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
- Education: Florida A&M University (bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism, 1991); Georgia State University (J.D., 1994)
- Current role: Governor-elect of Georgia
- Political affiliation: Democratic Party
- Family: Married Derek Bottoms, whom she met at law school, in 1994. The couple has four adopted children: Lance, Langston, Lincoln, and Lennox.
- Quotation: On the historic nature of her campaign: “Obviously the historical context to it could be significant. But when I’m talking to voters across the state, they’re concerned about how a leader will deliver for their communities. The question of whether it would be a woman, a Black woman, doesn’t come up. It’s just about how will you make my life better.”
Keisha Lance was born in 1970 in Atlanta to Sylvia Robinson and Major Lance, an R&B musician who opened for the Beatles on their 1964 U.S. tour and played in a band with Elton John. Recalling her father, she has said, “He was a big deal, and my life as a child revolved around him being a big deal.”
But by the mid-1970s, record contracts and concert gigs had dried up, and the family fell on hard times; their home was repossessed, and an eight-year-old Keisha Lance came home from school one day to find her father in handcuffs, arrested for cocaine possession and distribution. Her life changed that day. Her father was sent to prison for three years. Her mother, who had been a stay-at-home mom, took minimum-wage jobs before opening a hair salon. Her parents divorced. She wrote in 2019, “It was the death of our family.”
Education and early career
Lance went on to study broadcast journalism at the historically Black institution Florida A&M University; she received a law degree from Georgia State University in 1994, the same year she married Derek Bottoms and adopted his surname. After graduation she became a prosecutor and represented the rights of children in court. In 2002 she became a magistrate judge in Atlanta but had higher ambitions, running for a seat on the Fulton County Superior Court in 2008. It was her first political campaign; she lost.
Still, that campaign was, as Bottoms said, “when the flame started to flicker.” The next year she ran for the Atlanta City Council and won; she served two terms from 2010 through 2017. Next up: running to be mayor of Atlanta.
Tumultuous term as Atlanta mayor
Bottoms was elected mayor in 2017, defeating a fellow city council member in a runoff. But her campaign faced investigations into financial irregularities and wound up returning campaign contributions from a city contractor who was under investigation and had received millions of dollars in contracts. The most challenging times of her mayoral tenure were yet to come.
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When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, Bottoms endorsed tough lockdown positions, which put her at odds with the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp. Atlanta saw enormous protests in the wake of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She gained national attention, and was discussed as a possible running mate for Joe Biden, when she addressed protesters and vandals in the city’s streets. She acknowledged their pain but delivered an emotional, undeniably tough call for an end to violence: “If you care about this city, then go home.”
Still, her leadership of the city came under scrutiny on two fronts. Some said her administration was not doing enough to crack down on police brutality, while others pointed to a sharp increase in the homicide rate as a sign that she had lost control of the city. Nonetheless, she stunned Atlanta in May 2021 when she announced that she would not seek a second term. “Leadership is about gracefully passing the baton,” she said at a press conference. “I signed up for four years and those four years are almost up. The voters have the right to make a decision and so do I.”
At the time Bottoms said she had no plans for the future. She went on to take a role in the Biden administration.
Historic run for governor
By April 2025 Bottoms was ready to run again—this time for governor, a position that voting rights activist Stacey Abrams had sought but lost in 2018 and 2022. She easily won the Democratic primary in 2026, which set up a general election campaign against billionaire entrepreneur Rick Jackson. (The governor, Kemp, who had been her foil while she was mayor, could not seek reelection because of term limits.) Bottoms ran her campaign focusing on inflation, the war in Iran, and the need for affordable health care. But she also made the U.S. Supreme Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act and the bids to limit voting access by the administration of Pres. Donald Trump central to her campaign. Jackson spent more than $100 million of his own money in an ad blitz to pound her record as Atlanta mayor, but he also repeatedly declared that he intended to be “Trump’s favorite governor.” It was a sound bite that the Bottoms campaign used in its own ads.
On November 3, 2026, Georgia voters gave her a resounding victory: Bottoms defeated Jackson by more than 8 points.