It is crunch time for Georgia gubernatorial candidate and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. 

Bottoms served as mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022, a period many Georgia Gen Z voters remember as they head to the polls in November. The former mayor, an alumna of Florida A&M University, is working to engage young voters while advocating for health care and education. 

In one of the nation’s most closely watched races of 2026, Bottoms leads Republican candidates as she seeks to become the state’s first Black woman governor. 

With the Georgia primary less than a month away, Bottoms said her campaign is focused on “delivering for working families and bringing steady leadership to Georgia amid uncertainty and chaos coming from Washington.” 

You are ahead in the polls. How are you planning to keep up the momentum in the next few months as we get closer to November? 

It’s going to be about taking it to people where they are. That means we will be knocking on doors. We will be calling people on the telephone. We’re going to try and reach them via social media, on the airwaves. There are so many ways that people receive their information. It’s often challenging to break through, but there’s also a good old-fashioned way of campaigning that still works, and that means being out and about. We’ve been traveling around the state, going into communities, hosting town hall-type events, talking directly to people, taking questions from people, and we’re going to keep that up through election day, through the primary and beyond. 

What do you have to say to students to mobilize them to be active in the Georgia governor’s race, especially if they may be discouraged by the outcomes of the 2024 general election? 

I attended FAMU and graduated in 1991. I was a broadcast journalism major. I wrote for The FAMUAN and I worked at the radio station, and I know when you are a student, it’s often difficult to see that things can and will get better, especially when you’re juggling jobs or a full load of classes or trying to figure out when your student loans, scholarships and pay grants are going to come through. So what I would say to students is: don’t give up. If you think about the civil rights movement in America, that movement was fueled by students across this country, by HBCU students who mobilized to make a difference. They believed that things could and should be better, and they literally changed the world. For students in school today, this is the moment to mobilize. This is the moment to stay engaged. The absolute worst thing that students can do is to not step up and express their likes and dislikes, whether through social media or using their votes as their voice. This is a defining moment in history, and I would just encourage students to do what students have always done. Often students have been leaders of movements in this country, and we need students now more than ever. 

Can you expound on your time at FAMU and at the journalism school, and how those skills have been able to translate into your broader career? 

For me, being at FAMU was one of the most defining moments in my life. I grew up at FAMU. I entered as a 17-year-old, and I knew that I wanted to major in journalism. I always had a passion for writing and storytelling, but FAMU was large enough that it allowed me to grow, but small enough that it still allowed me to be nurtured. Part of my scholarship was that I had to have a work-study job. That work-study job was at 90.5, which at that point was a jazz station, and I was also the traffic director. 

But more importantly, there was this expectation of excellence that was created for me there. I often tell the story of Professor Roosevelt Wilson and a current events class — it was an 8 a.m. class — and thinking I could get around passing this quiz. We were supposed to read the Tallahassee Democrat every day, and I failed this quiz the first several times because I just thought that I could cut corners and not do the work. I was on track that semester to make all A’s except for his class, and he called me into his office. He said, “I believe you’ve learned a lesson. I could give you an A, but I’m concerned if I give it to you, you’ll forget the lesson.” And I actually took the B, but it’s a lesson that stuck with me — that there is no shortcut to excellence. 

You have to put in the work, even when it’s difficult, even when you don’t believe that it’s necessary, and that’s one of the many lessons that I learned at FAMU. I still have this army of Rattlers across the country who continue to support me, who continue to reach out to me not even just when I’m asking, but saying, “What can we give?” So I’m so proud to be a Rattler. Going to FAMU was one of the absolute best decisions I ever made in my life. 

How would your administration prioritize funding, infrastructure support and workforce partnerships for Georgia HBCUs, and what measurable outcomes should students expect to see if you’re elected governor? 

Our HBCUs are such an important part of who we are in Georgia. One thing I want to do is create a pathway to free technical and community college that will allow students an opportunity — even if you can’t afford a four-year education — to knock out two years of that education through a partnership with a technical or community college that gives you a pathway to entering one of our great HBCUs. 

We also know there are a lot of funding gaps for HBCUs. There has been a federal study that showed just how much the state of Georgia had underfunded our HBCUs. As governor, I look forward to making sure our HBCUs are getting their fair share and having those funding gaps restored, and working with our board of regents to make sure that HBCUs are offering the best programs available. Whatever the innovative programs may be, making sure that our HBCUs are not an afterthought. Lastly, facilities-wise, we know our HBCUs are often underfunded, that we often don’t have the same facilities and infrastructure that the larger universities have, and there needs to be equity. And then just making sure that our students have access to funding, making sure they have access to scholarships and grants because we know that if we lay this groundwork for our students, we are creating a pathway that will change opportunities for generations. 

What policies would your administration pursue to make housing more affordable for young people, recent graduates and working-class families as Georgia and the city of Atlanta continue to grow as a premier destination? 

There were things that I did as mayor of Atlanta that I know can be scaled statewide. As mayor of Atlanta, I created an affordable housing trust fund that set aside $28 million to help us build and preserve affordable and workforce housing, but also to help offset rising property taxes for people who may be experiencing gentrification being pushed out by rising taxes. That’s something that can and should be scaled statewide, along with giving incentives to homebuilders.