December 27th, 2025 Len’s Political Note #777 Keisha Lance Bottoms Georgia Governor
2026 General Election
Keisha Lance Bottoms
While we were watching the results of governor races in New Jersey and Virginia, a November 5 poll showed Keisha Lance Bottoms leading in the Democratic primary for governor of Georgia with 40% of the vote. The candidate is second place was 30 points behind.
Consider how Keisha Lance Bottoms got here.
Do you remember Major Lance? If you are my age or your parents or grandparents are my age, you or they might remember him. He was a rhythm and blues figure. Not among the biggest stars, but big enough.
Born in Mississippi in 1939, he grew up in the Cabrini Green projects in Chicago. In Chicago, he was a good basketball player who also played baseball and boxed and sang. He was friendly with Otis Leavill, Curtis Lee Mayfield, Jerry Butler, and Jackie Wilson – all singers and songwriters. Look them up.
Major (that’s his given name) Lance had some success in the 1960s – a number 5 on the pop charts, a number 8 on the pop chart. Like many Black performers of his generation, he had to keep performing to earn money. In order to make records, he had to give up the rights to his music.
He moved, with his wife and three children to England in 1972 where some of his older songs had become popular. There with his wife and three children, he lived a life that was, glamorous and grueling –traveling and performing in England and the Continent.
Two or three years later, they returned to the States. The family was eager for home and home had become Atlanta. His career did not go well. A cocaine conviction, jail time, a divorce, a heart attack, glaucoma all contributed to his giving up his career. He died in 1994
For the family, life was a struggle. As a child, Keisha was a kind of mascot at her uncle’s liquor store. In high school, she worked at her mother’s hair salon – sweeping the floor, answering the phone. Interviewed, Keisha Lance Bottoms explained about her parents. “I never wanted that to be my life,” she says. “I didn’t want to be in prison. I didn’t want to have to struggle like my mother struggled. I didn’t want to run out of gas or have our lights and water turned off.” To this day, she says, the gas tanks of the family cars are always kept full.
High School was less of a struggle. She was registered as living with her grandparents so she could attend Frederick Douglass High School. She was an outstanding student, conscious of others wanting to copy her work, And she knew fellow students with names familiar to us — Michael Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson Jr. Even so, when the school lists its outstanding alums, most of them are current or former athletes. There are exceptions. Two of them are children of Martin Luther King Jr.
Keisha Lance Bottoms went to Florida A & M for her BA, attending during the period when that ambitious HBCU institution recruited Black Merit Scholars from around the country. She got her law degree from Georgia State University. Georgia State is the state’s largest public university, enrolling more students than the University of Georgia or Georgia Tech. It is not an HBCU, but more than 40% of its students are Black.
The Law School has a relatively high rating and is not quite as heavily Black as the institution as a whole. Just under 40% of its students, these days, are non-white.
At the law school, Keisha Lance met and married Derek Bottoms. He has made his own success as a corporate lawyer. She went to work as a prosecutor, then defended children in children’s court. She worked as a speech writer for the state’s attorney general and the Fulton County (Atlanta) chief judge assigned her work as a part-time magistrate judge. She raised their four adopted children while having some flexibility about her time working and then, in 2008 ran for an elective judgeship. She did not win, but earned enough name recognition to run for and be elected to the Atlanta City Council.
On the City Council, she made an alliance with the newly elected mayor Kasim Reed. She was the “work horse” to his “show horse.” He loved the perpetual campaign. And he loved her “steadiness and measured approach” and her loyalty. He loved the process of awarding contracts, for which he eventually got into serious trouble. Keisha Lance Bottoms was a beneficiary of Reed’s support. She was appointed Executive Director of the County Recreation Authority which oversaw the zoo, the parks, the pools, and various youth and adult sports facilities. The job paid more than twice what she earned as a city councilor and she could remain as a city councilor so long as she did not vote on Recreation Authority matters.
Kasim Reed endorsed Keisha Lance Bottoms run for mayor. As he did almost everything, he campaigned vigorously. But there was trouble elsewhere for him. .Reed’s chief procurement officer was found to have accepted bribes. His deputy chief accepted cash and free trips Another political operative accepted a couple of million dollars for steering city work to certain contractors. Reed’s spokeswoman was prosecuted for violating the state’s open records law. Keisha Lance Bottoms was accused of no legal violations, no ethical improprieties.
When Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected mayor, she demonstrated a commitment to openness, to listening to subordinates, and to integrity. Her first crisis was a cyber attack that crippled the city’s electronic network. She rejected the $51,000 ransom demand, scrambled to rely on pen and paper for communications and record keeping, and fixed their network, but at a cost of $17 million.
After the computer system was fixed, she cleaned house, keeping only a few of Kasim Reed’s staff. As mayor, she emphasized social justice issues including assistance to the formerly incarcerated. She ended conditions that led to the arrented sitting for months, even years in jail waiting for a trial. She made it possible for those accused of non-violent crimes to get out of jail while waiting for trial. She found several routes to providing job training for those who needed it and, while she focused on those in need, also raised the pay of the police by 30% and reconstructed an area of the city that had become a wasteland. She did this without raising taxes. Her ultimate challenge was a battle she won against her probable Republican opponent for Governor, Lt. Governor Burt Jones. Jones wanted to remove control of Hartsfield-Jackson, the country’s heaviest used airport, from the City of Atlanta and give it to the state of Georgia.
Keisha Lance Bottoms will need your help to defeat Jones again (or whoever else wins the Republican primary). DONATE to Keisha Lance Bottoms campaign. Help her win this election.
Invest in the following
Arizona. Incumbent Katie Hobbs is tied in the polls with right wing Congressman Andy Gibbs. Katie Hobbs has made solid Supreme Court appointments, worked to diversity Arizona’s governmental leadership, and had been able to fend off the majority Republican legislature. DONATE to Katie Hobbs. See Len’s Political Note #712
Nevada Democratic Attorney General and African American Aaron Ford was tied with the Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo in a November poll 41% each. Aaron Ford is less well known; Lombardo has to defend his support for Donald Trump. DONATE to Aaron Ford. Restore Nevada to Democratic government. See Len’s Political Note #745
Texas. Democrats will nominate State Rep and civil rights and labor attorney Gina Hinojosa. Will Texans elect her as governor? She will have to defeat Greg Abbott, a three term Attorney General now running for his fourth term as Governor. Whether it is no-bid contracts or being tough on cultural issues such as support for the transgendered or busing migrants to New York, Greg Abbott is sufficiently his own person so that any ties to Donald Trump may not matter. But he is not necessarily a likeable person or an attractive candidate despite his wins. DONATE to Gina Hinojosa. She can make a race out of this. With a Senate seat on the line as well as the governorship, 2026 will be a big turn out year in Texas.
