Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms has won Georgia’s race for governor, NBC News projects, defeating Republican Rick Jackson and flipping control of the battleground state office for the first time in 24 years.
Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta and a former Biden administration official, overcame an enormous spending disadvantage against Jackson, a wealthy healthcare executive who pumped more than $100 million of his own money into his campaign.
Bottoms is the first woman and the first Black person to be elected governor of Georgia. She is also the first Black female governor in the country’s history.
Like many Democrats across the country, Bottoms leaned heavily into a message focusing on affordability and economic issues. Down the late fall stretch, she also ran ads that hit Jackson over previous comments supporting the construction of data centers and linked him to President Donald Trump, who faced low approval ratings in the state.
Throughout a contentious Republican primary campaign this spring, Jackson had frequently compared himself to Trump, allowing Bottoms to use many of his own words against him in the general election.
During their sole general election debate last month, Bottoms slammed Jackson for having “said he wants to be Trump’s favorite governor.” She also tried to tie Jackson to Trump’s yearslong effort to sow doubt over the results of the 2020 election. The issue remains particularly pertinent in Georgia, as the FBI seized election records related to the 2020 election this year, and the governor will play a critical role in certifying the 2028 presidential election results.
During the primary, Jackson refused to say who won the 2020 election. But ahead of his matchup against Bottoms, he acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory.
Bottoms, who will succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, also linked herself to popular Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who was up for re-election this year.
Ossoff held several “United for Georgia” rallies with Bottoms, while his campaign also transferred millions in cash to the Democratic Party of Georgia’s coordinated campaign to help her.
Her win marks a landmark moment for Georgia Democrats. While Georgia emerged as a key battleground in federal elections in recent years, it has continued to skew Republican at the state level: Before Tuesday, Georgia voters hadn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1998.
In the last weeks of the campaign, Bottoms enjoyed support from high-profile national Democrats. Former President Barack Obama endorsed her in a video spot, while Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and several other prominent Democratic officeholders campaigned for her in Georgia.
Bottoms overcame sustained attacks from Republicans over her tenure as mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022. Her four years in office were affected by the Covid pandemic and the social unrest that came during it — and she didn’t run for re-election, citing the challenges she’d faced in office.
Jackson, a first-time candidate who unexpectedly launched his campaign in February, cast himself as a successful businessman and outsider in the mold of Trump during the primary campaign, even though another candidate, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, had Trump’s endorsement. Once he advanced to the general election, Jackson shifted to connecting himself to Kemp.
Some intraparty fractures were never fully resolved after a bruising primary. Jones, who lost to Jackson in a June runoff, never publicly backed his rival, even though Trump privately urged him to do so.
This article originally appeared on NBC News.
