After months of anticipation, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, has officially announced her run for governor of Georgia. Bottoms launched her gubernatorial campaign on Tuesday with the release of a video, aiming her political target directly at President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
“Georgia families deserve far better than what Donald Trump and Republicans are giving us,” says Bottoms in the campaign video. “Most Georgians are right to wonder who’s looking out for us. Donald Trump is a disaster for our economy and our country, from his failure to address rising prices to giving an unelected billionaire the power to cut Medicare and Social Security.”
The 55-year-old Democrat also evokes memories of growing up in Atlanta during the 70s and 80s, and her grandmother, whom she remembered would call her and other relatives every morning.
“We didn’t need an alarm clock. We had grandmama,” Bottoms says in the opening of her campaign video.
The fifth-generation Georgian, who served as Atlanta mayor from 2018-2022, told theGrio that her grandmother, as well as her grandfather, “always looked out” for her family, “even when they had very limited resources.”
But unlike those days, when working-class Americans could achieve some level of prosperity, Bottoms said, today, most Georgians don’t know whom to rely on amid concerns of economic downturn caused by Trump’s global tariffs and little to no change in rising costs for everyday goods.
“Invoking my grandmother really is about saying to people I know what it’s like to have somebody in your life who is looking out for you, someone who’s thinking about you, and that’s the type of governor that I will be for Georgia,” Bottoms told theGrio.
Bottoms, who served as a White House senior advisor to President Joe Biden, described the road ahead under the Trump administration as a “fight against chaos” that is creating a lot of “uncertainty” and “anxiety” for everyday Georgians and Americans across the country. The White House, led by billionaire Elon Musk, fired tens of thousands of federal employees and slashed billions of dollars in spending that Congress already approved.
“Whether you are a small business owner, whether you own stock, whether you have a retirement account, whether you’re trying to figure out how to put food on the table, gas in the car, or pay off your student loans,” she told theGrio. “There’s one thing after another that’s disruptive.”
Bottoms pledged to make the expansion of Medicaid a priority if elected governor. She noted that Georgia remains one of the few states in the nation that has not taken advantage of the provision under Obamacare that allows states to ensure greater health care coverage for low-income residents. She said it is “costing nearly 300,000 Georgians health care coverage and forcing nine rural hospitals to close.”
Bottoms also pledges to eliminate state income taxes for teachers, better support small businesses, crack down on corporate landlords driving up rent and housing costs, and invest in more pathways to college or career training.
If elected, Keisha Lance Bottoms would become the first Black woman to be elected governor of any state in U.S. history. However, she faces an uphill battle.
Former Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams failed to clinch the governorship in Georgia twice, in 2018 and 2022. Similarly, former Vice President Kamala Harris saw a devastating loss to Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Pundits concluded that Abrams and Harris’ campaigns were marred by both racism and sexism.
Bottoms told theGrio she acknowledges those barriers but is prepared to earn every vote.
“No one ever said it would be easy,” she said. “Politics, elections, those are full-contact sports. So you go in, you look at all the things that were done right, you build on that, and you look at what, if anything, you should do differently.”
The gubernatorial hopeful said she is taking her message “directly to the voters.” She added, “I’m going to fight for them.”
Bottoms reminded that Georgia went blue in 2020 when it elected Joe Biden for president–the first time for a Democrat in nearly 30 years–as well as Democratic Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
“Even with the loss of Vice President Harris in the state, those numbers were still extremely close,” she added. “So we know it can be done, and I’m looking forward to earning the support of people in Georgia to getting that done.”
If elected in 2026, being a Democratic governor while Donald Trump is president will almost certainly present its challenges, and likely political clashes. Bottoms was an early target of Trump when he returned to the White House on Jan. 20.
On his first day in office, the president announced that Bottoms had been “fired” from her Biden-appointed role on the President’s Export Council, a national advisory committee on international trade. However, she had already resigned from the position weeks prior. In her campaign video, the Georgia leader said she “laughed” at Trump’s attempt to terminate her from a position she no longer held.
Bottoms recalled being one of several women leading cities across the country who were targeted by Trump during his first term in office.
“On a daily basis, he was coming for us, whether it was personal attacks or just being disruptive with his policies. So I know what it’s like to lead under his chaos,” she told theGrio.
Bottoms pointed to another Georgia native, the late civil rights activist and former Congressman John Lewis, for a sense of direction on how to move forward despite many feeling lost or even scared.
“[He] told us our vote is the most powerful weapon that we have…We aren’t the first generation that’s faced uncertainty, who’s faced someone in the White House who’s not been on our side,” she said.
Bottoms added, “What generations before us did, they stood up, they mobilized, and they fought. And that’s what I’m looking to do on behalf of the people of Georgia.”
