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U.S.|Keisha Lance Bottoms, Former Atlanta Mayor, Enters Georgia Governor’s Race
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/keisha-lance-bottoms-former-atlanta-mayor-enters-georgia-governors-race.html
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She became the highest-profile Democrat to announce her candidacy in an election that will be a crucial test of her party’s ambitions in Georgia.
May 20, 2025, 6:00 a.m. ET
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.
