Keisha Lance Bottoms won the race for governor of Georgia on Tuesday night, becoming the first Black woman ever elected to lead an American state. The Democrat and former Atlanta mayor beat Republican Rick Jackson, a billionaire health care executive. Her win took back a governor's office her party had not held in more than two decades.

The result breaks two barriers at once in Georgia. The state had never chosen a woman or a Black person as its governor. Republicans had run the Governor's Mansion since 2003, when Sonny Perdue unseated Democrat Roy Barnes. Bottoms' victory was the first governor's seat to change parties anywhere in the country on election night.

Jackson spent heavily from his own fortune to win the Republican nomination in a June runoff over Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and then poured more into the general election. He picked up endorsements from President Donald Trump and Gov. Brian Kemp but spent the final weeks of the race talking far more about Kemp than the president.

A long road to the top job

Bottoms, 56, served one turbulent term as Atlanta mayor from 2018 to 2022. Her years at City Hall covered the COVID-19 pandemic, a spike in violent crime and the protests that swept the city in 2020. She chose not to seek a second term and went on to work as a senior adviser in the White House. Jackson's campaign leaned on that record in a long run of attack ads.

On the campaign trail she promised to push back against the Trump administration and to ease the cost of living. Her plans include letting cities and counties drop the sales tax on groceries, ending state income tax for public school teachers and fully expanding Medicaid, which would need approval from lawmakers. She also called for a pause on new data centers in a state that leads the nation in building them.

She campaigned often alongside Sen. Jon Ossoff, who also won his race on Tuesday. She drew backing from former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Bottoms has said her family's roots in Georgia reach back at least five generations to a plantation in Crawfordville. As a descendant of enslaved people, she has called the chance to lead the state deeply personal.

Firsts across the map

Before Tuesday only three Black Americans had ever been elected governor, all of them men: Douglas Wilder in Virginia, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts and Wes Moore in Maryland. Next door in Florida, Republican Byron Donalds won his race to become that state's first Black governor. Hours earlier Stacey Plaskett was elected the first Black woman to serve as governor of a U.S. territory, in the Virgin Islands.

Bottoms will still face a Republican majority in at least one chamber of the state legislature when she takes office in January. Much of her agenda will depend on winning over lawmakers who spent the campaign backing her opponent.