Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former mayor of Atlanta, entered the race for governor of Georgia on Tuesday, becoming the highest-profile Democrat in an election that will test the durability of Georgia’s relatively new status as a swing state.
Ms. Bottoms has immediately set her sights on President Trump, who won Georgia in 2024 but has had a strained history with the state, including with Gov. Brian Kemp and some of the state’s other top Republicans. Ms. Bottoms said she was positioning herself as an antidote to the “chaos in Washington,” citing her time leading Atlanta during Mr. Trump’s first term as useful experience.
“This is a very uncertain and anxious time for people in Georgia,” she said in an interview on Monday, ahead of her announcement, “and people are looking for a leader who is willing to fight for them.”
Mr. Kemp will not run again because of term limits.
Ms. Bottoms’s tenure as mayor from 2018 to 2022 was defined largely by her handling of the turmoil that rattled Atlanta after the coronavirus pandemic began and George Floyd was killed by the police in Minneapolis.
If elected, she would become the nation’s first Black female governor, and the first Black person and first woman to lead Georgia. Her announcement, which came in a video released early Tuesday, makes official a campaign that has hardly been a secret in recent weeks.
She said that one of her top aims as governor would be expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, a move that would support struggling rural hospitals and provide largely free government health insurance to most low-income adults. She also wants to eliminate the state income tax for teachers.
Chris Carr, the state’s Republican attorney general, is the only other well-known figure who has announced a run. Burt Jones, the Republican lieutenant governor, is a possible contender, as is Stacey Abrams, who was the Democratic nominee for governor in 2018 and 2022.
Jason Esteves, a Democratic state senator and a former Atlanta school board member, entered the race in April.
United States Representative Lucy McBath, a Democrat representing a swath of the Atlanta metro area, had been widely expected to join the race. But she announced in late March that she would not, at least for now, because her husband was ill.
The governor’s office has been the biggest target to elude Democrats as they have become more competitive in Georgia.
The party harnessed the rapid growth and diversification of the state, as well as a deep aversion to Mr. Trump among many suburban voters, to help former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. win Georgia in 2020 and elect two Democratic senators months later.
One of those senators, Raphael Warnock, eked out a re-election victory in a runoff in 2022.
But in 2024, Georgia, like every swing state, went to Mr. Trump. Republicans still control both chambers of the state legislature and every state elected office.
Ms. Bottoms, a former city councilwoman and judge in Atlanta before becoming mayor, joined the Biden administration in 2022 as a senior adviser, working primarily on strengthening its ties with community and business organizations. In 2023, Mr. Biden appointed her to the President’s Export Council, an advisory commission on international trade.
During the pandemic, she clashed as mayor with Republican leaders — particularly Governor Kemp — over their aggressive push to roll back Covid precautions and reopen businesses weeks into the pandemic. Mr. Kemp sued Ms. Bottoms and the Atlanta City Council after they defied him by enacting strict masking requirements.
And as racial justice protests spurred by the murder of George Floyd in 2020 turned violent in Atlanta, she was recognized for a response that was regarded as tough yet empathetic.
“We are all angry,” she said in a message frequently replayed on social media and local television and radio. “This hurts everybody in this room. But what are you changing by tearing up a city? You’ve lost all credibility now. This is not how we change America.”
Suddenly, Ms. Bottoms had an unusually high profile, even for a big-city mayor. For a time, she was mentioned as a contender to be Mr. Biden’s running mate in 2020.
But her critics argued that the spotlight had become a distraction from the increasingly urgent needs of Atlanta. As in other American cities, violence exploded there during the pandemic.
Her relationship with Atlanta’s police rank-and-file eroded after her forceful response to a police killing in the city just weeks after Mr. Floyd’s death: Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a white officer. The officer was fired almost immediately, and was later charged with murder. The police chief also quickly resigned.
But the Wendy’s parking lot where Mr. Brooks was killed became the site of renewed demonstrations. Arsonists burned down the restaurant, and then an armed group opened fire on a vehicle, killing an 8-year-old girl.
Ms. Bottoms was criticized for not conducting a nationwide search to find a new police chief. The city’s Civil Service Board reinstated the officer who shot Mr. Brooks, finding that his due process rights had been violated, and eventually, the criminal charges against him were dropped.
In May 2021, Ms. Bottoms abruptly announced that she would not seek a second term as mayor. In an emotional news conference, she ran through a list of hurdles she had encountered since she was narrowly elected in 2017, including a cyberattack on the city government and the continuation of a federal investigation into high-ranking city officials accused of taking bribes and other corruption allegations that had started during the tenure of her predecessor, Kasim Reed.
She said on Monday that she looked back at her mayoral tenure with pride. “I have a track record,” she said, “of being a battle-tested leader in the toughest of times.”
Rick Rojas is the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the South.
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