Jon Carabello

Brace Yourselves, Georgia! This woman is who you elected to represent you for the next four years: Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms will be the state’s first woman and first Black governor, and the nation’s first Black woman to hold the office. Historic, sure. Competent? Her record says otherwise. Bottoms ran Atlanta from 2018 to 2022, then left for a short stint as a senior adviser in the Biden White House. Under her watch the city’s homicide count exploded from 99 in 2019 to 157 in 2020 and 158 the next year—the highest in more than two decades. Shootings surged right alongside them. More than 200 Atlanta police officers walked out the door in 2020 alone. Her response was to end cash bail for certain low-level offenses, scold Republican Governor Kemp for reopening the economy too soon, and blame guns and the pandemic. She also cut the city’s longstanding agreement with ICE and declared Atlanta a welcoming city. When the job got too hard, she simply declined to run for reelection. Conservatives warned for months that Keisha Bottoms’ Atlanta tenure would travel with her to the statehouse. Crime up, police demoralized, cash bail softened, federal immigration enforcement opposed. Georgians just voted for more of it, plus whatever Progressive priorities she and Democrat Senator Jon Ossoff can push through a Democrat trifecta. The rest of the country will get to watch the experiment in real time.