Keisha's A Governor, the South Is In Play and Black Women Are Leading the Fight for Democracy
I was there when Keisha Lance Bottoms announced her run for governor at the Leading Women Defined Summit two years ago. I hope what was born in that room lives forever.
Never underestimate Black women. (Especially if their name is Keisha.)
Keisha Lance Bottoms made history last night. In one triumphant swoop, she became Georgia's first female governor, its first Black female governor, the first former Atlanta mayor to become governor, and the first Black woman to lead a U.S. state.
Period. Dot.
To put her win in perspective, Ernie Suggs wrote this for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
In 1860, an enslaved man named Sheppard Peek was listed among the possessions of William Peek, a white man in Crawfordville.
His value was placed at $1,400.
On another surviving document, Sheppard signed his name with an X.
More than a century and a half later, Sheppard’s great-great-granddaughter, Keisha Lance Bottoms, was elected governor of Georgia.
Bottoms' historic election was part of the Blue Tsunami that hit Tuesday night, when Democrats took both houses of Congress, several governorships, and many local seats, creating Democratically led states throughout the union. The move surprised many—polls and pundits predicted close races and talked about a blue wave, but after the election prediction fiascos of 2016 and 2024, nobody wanted to commit.
Then, when recently gerrymandered, "safe" Republican districts in Florida, Texas, and North Carolina started turning blue, it became clear it would be a good night for Democrats across America, especially in the South.
But it was an even bigger night for Black women.
The Black vote came through en masse across the South, lifting Democratic candidates like Bottoms on the strength of Black women's political organizing. It was political genius Stacey Abrams who paved the way for Bottoms' win last night. During her two unsuccessful bids for Georgia governor in 2018 and 2022, she built a grassroots movement that became the blueprint for taking back the South. It helped Joe Biden win Georgia in 2020 and helped elect Georgians Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff to the U.S. Senate, turning the once solidly red state blue.
It also set the stage for the right candidate at the right time, and that was the former Atlanta mayor, whose campaign for governor began two years ago with an impromptu announcement at a luncheon during the Leading Women Defined Summit in Laguna Niguel, Calif.
An annual convening of Black women leaders created and curated by former CEO of BET Networks Debra Lee, Bottoms and I both attended in 2025. We were seated at the same table when she told a few of us she planned to run for governor of Georgia and needed our support. During the lunch, I asked Bottoms if I could tell the entire room about her ambitions, and she agreed.
Photos: Phelan Marc Media for Leading Women Defined
Just before we moved to the luncheon's next speaker—who, unbeknownst to us, was former Vice President Kamala Harris—I raised my hand, interrupted, and announced, "I have breaking news!" I then happily told the room, which had more than 200 Black women, that Bottoms needed our help because she was running for governor of Georgia.
The luncheon erupted in applause, tears, and cheers as attendees leaped to their feet and pledged their support to Bottoms, with many going on to throw fundraisers, donate, and help with Bottoms' campaign.
Moments after Bottoms was cheered on by her cohorts at LWD, VP Harris came out to address the group, thanking us for our support. It was one of the most electrifying experiences of my life. But it also spoke to the power of Black women, especially women like Lee, who bring some of the most powerful Black leaders in America to LWD, from former First Lady Michelle Obama to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The room is filled with politicos and legal eagles, business leaders and founders, media mavens and top executives—all coming together in sisterhood and leaving more empowered than they came.
On her win, LWD founder Lee said: “Keisha’s election is a powerful reminder of what vision, persistence, and collective action can make possible.”
I've attended LWD since 2018, and getting an invite to this experience is akin to getting Willy Wonka's golden ticket. I have no idea how I got invited that first time, but I've been back again and again because of the experience. It's an intimate, transformative, and life-affirming event where I have made real connections and friends.
This is the key to our success as a community—Black women making connections and building power together.
That's what the Trump Administration and Project 2025 sought to break, seeing how we are the backbone not just of the Democratic Party, but of our families and communities. We are the glue that keeps it all together. We are the vanguard, voting at more than 93 percent to protect Democracy and hold this country's leaders accountable. They may have managed to push us out of the federal workforce and out of the corporate sector, with more than 600,000 Black women losing their jobs since Trump's return to power, but we are more than our job titles.
We are the protectors of our people. We are the mothers of this world. And it's going to take more than a few drug-addled billionaires and corrupt politicians to stop us.
We didn't become "twice as good" for nothing.
But now that we are free from the corporate grind, we can harness our real power for ourselves, our families, and communities. We can flex our power for our people. And if, after Tuesday, our former corporate overlords recognize the error in their ways and want us back, two things must be remembered:
Diversity, equity, and inclusion can't solely be a shield against critique. DEI (or whatever replaces it) must be a real, integral part of the corporate ethos.
And...
Yesterday's price is not today's price. (Bevy Smith voice.)
Last night, I was prepared for a bust. What I got was more than that. I got a movement. One that survived Harris' loss in 2024, the death of the Voting Rights Act, and the racist redistricting that followed. Bottoms is part of that movement, along with Stacey Plaskett, the new governor of the Virgin Islands, Julianna Stratton, the newest U.S. Senator from Illinois, and Angie Nixon, who came close to winning a U.S. Senate seat in Florida. And it's a movement where Black women aren't just supporting and building coalitions—we are leading them.
Because if we can overperform in the worst circumstances, imagine what we could do in the best.
After the darkness of the past two to 250 years, the sky's the limit.