A day before the midterms, Keisha Lance Bottoms found herself at a cemetery in a small rural town staring at the grave of her great-great-grandmother. The descendant of enslaved people in Georgia, Bottoms told me that at that moment she felt the power of the past — and specifically her family history — as she made her bid to become the first Black female governor of Georgia, and of any U.S. state.
The blue tsunami that swept across America on Tuesday elevated many precedent-breakers — in Texas, New Hampshire and beyond — but perhaps no win had more symbolic meaning than Bottoms’s. Before the Civil War, Georgia had more enslaved people living in it than almost any other state, and after Reconstruction it became the home of some of the harshest, most punitive Jim Crow laws in the country. It was no coincidence that the civil rights movement was led by the Georgia son Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
And yet, Bottoms is keenly aware that history-making has its limits, and that in order for her or any other Democrat to make what happened this election the start of a realignment rather than a one-off, it will require tangible results for frustrated voters. I sat down with Bottoms to talk about her background, her road to the Governor’s Mansion and what she planned to do when in power, which you can watch or listen to here.
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