Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is projected to win the Democratic nomination for Georgia governor, setting up a historic chance to become the first Black woman elected governor and the first Black governor of the Peach State.

Her path to the governor’s mansion hinges on a June 16 run-off between Republican billionaire corporate executive Rick Jones and President Donald Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, two 2020 election deniers who failed to secure at least 50% of the vote in the Republican gubernatorial primary.

A clear Democratic front-runner with high statewide name recognition, Bottoms led decisively in polls and ran on a platform of expanding Medicaid, state voting laws, and reproductive freedom, core issues the state’s Democratic Party had also aggressively challenged under Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

She easily defeated former DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (a Republican-turned-Democrat who left his party last year) and state Sen. Jason Esteves. When the race was called, Bottoms was earning nearly 58% of the vote, more than 40 percentage points more than Esteves, who was in second place.

While Georgia is widely considered a swing state, Democrats have not won a gubernatorial election there since 1998.

A recent endorsement from former President Joe Biden, for whom Bottoms served as a senior advisor after her mayoral tenure, has also worried some Democrats, according to Politico, as the president left office with a low approval rating. Critics have questioned her mayoral record over one of America’s largest metropolitan cities during the coronavirus pandemic and her response to subsequent spikes in violent crime at the time.

But many supporters view her candidacy as a make-or-break chance to flip power in favor of the Democratic Party. Earlier this month, Kemp, who is term-limited, called for a special legislative session to convene on June 17 in part to redraw the state’s congressional map for the 2028 election cycle.

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