African Americans run for Governor

In the weeks and months leading up to the midterm elections much talk has centered on the possible shift in the balance of power in both the House and the Senate from the Republican to the Democratic camp. What has flown under the radar is the number of African Americans vying for governor. Eight African Americans are in the race for governor--Wes Moore in Maryland, Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina, John James in Michigan, Lisa DeMuth-Minnesota, Aaron Ford in Nevada, David Crowley in Wisconsin, Byron Donalds in Florida and Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia. Donalds, DeMuth, and John James are Republicans while the remaining five are Democrats.

Only three African Americans have been popularly elected to a governorship in U.S. history. Oddly enough the first African American elected governor of an American state hailed from Richmond, Virginia, once considered the capital of the confederacy. That distinction goes to Douglas Wilder of Virginia in 1989. 

Those who thought his election would open the floodgates were sadly mistaken. It took nearly twenty years before another African American would capture a governorship and that was Deval Patrick of Massachusetts in 2006. In 2022, Rhode Scholar and political novice Wes Moore of Maryland captured the governorship in convincing fashion with 64.7 percent of the vote. 

None of the candidates before or since Wilder boasted or boasts the kind of political resume that he possessed in terms of credentials and length of service, which makes these contests all the more exciting. The qualifications of the current batch of gubernatorial candidates run the gamut. 

Wilder climbed the ladder and labored in the political vineyards for decades before making his run for governor and he timed it just right. Wilder, a lawyer by profession, served in the Virginia State Senate for fifteen years before being elected the state’s Lt. Governor for four years. Wilder spent those four years building a formidable war chest and making the kinds of contacts needed to make a serious run for the governor’s mansion. There were few major newspapers around the globe that did not report on Wilder’s history making victory.

The race some consider to be the most intriguing is in Georgia where former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is squaring off against Republican Rick Jackson. The last Democrat elected Georgia’s governor was Roy Barnes nearly thirty years ago. A healthcare CEO and billionaire Jackson has received the endorsement of the state’s outgoing Governor Brian Kemp. Bottoms won her primary race with a solid showing that included a crowded field of candidates while Jackson emerged victorious in a Republican primary runoff that was tightly contested for much of the race. 

Despite Jackson’s wealth Trump initially threw his support behind Republican Lt. Governor Burt Jones. Reports have Jackson pouring more than $200 million into his campaign. Thus far, his war chest hasn’t given him the decided advantage he hoped it would. 

Bottoms’ campaign for the governor’s mansion comes eight years after Stacey Abrams made her first run for the same position and four years after her second attempt at the governorship. Abrams lost to Kemp in 2022 by 7.5 percent of the vote. The first go round was much closer with Kemp winning by only 54,723 votes in 2018 making it the closest gubernatorial race since 1966. Lance Bottoms seeks to do what has twice eluded Abrams. According to Lance Bottoms’ campaign website, she threw her hat in the ring for governor “to deliver for working families and bring steady leadership to Georgia in the midst of uncertainty and chaos coming from Washington.” 

If Lance Bottoms emerges victorious tomorrow, she will be the country’s first elected African American woman governor and will have Abrams to thank to some extent as it was the selfless and forward thinking Abrams who laid the groundwork for the election of both U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff several years earlier, making them the first Democrats to win a U.S. Senate election in Georgia since 2000. 

If Lance Bottoms wins tomorrow night, analysts and talking heads would do well to give some credit to Abrams and her people, whose grassroots work across the state of Georgia over the past decade is reminiscent of the on-the-ground-work carried out by Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. in Chicago in the early 1980s that contributed to the election of Harold Lee Washington, the city’s first African American mayor. 

Judson L. Jeffries is Professor of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University.