Only three Black people have ever been elected governor of a U.S. state. On Tuesday, eight Black nominees from the two major parties are on the ballot for the office, the largest group in any election cycle, according to coverage by The Associated Press and CNN.
The three who won are Douglas Wilder in Virginia in 1989, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts in 2006 and Wes Moore in Maryland in 2022. All were Democrats and all were men. The governorship has been harder for Black politicians to reach than the U.S. Senate, and no Black woman has ever held it.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic nominee in Georgia, would be the first. “Just because it hasn’t happened, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen real soon,” she told CNN.
The eight are spread across both parties and every region the map offers. The Democrats are Bottoms in Georgia, Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina, David Crowley in Wisconsin, Aaron Ford in Nevada, who is the state’s first Black attorney general, and Moore, who is the only sitting Black governor and is running for a second term in Maryland. The Republicans are Byron Donalds in Florida, John James in Michigan and Lisa Demuth in Minnesota, the state’s first Black House speaker.
What a governor controls
A governor signs or vetoes the state’s criminal justice bills, appoints the judges and parole boards in many states, runs the agencies that administer Medicaid and school funding, and can grant clemency. Those are the offices where policing, prisons, health coverage and schools are decided for Black residents, state by state.
The candidates do not all frame their race the same way. Asked about it after winning the Florida Republican nomination, Donalds said, “Florida is a great meritocracy in America. I’ll let you guys write about that.” Democratic candidates have pointed to Supreme Court redistricting decisions and attacks on diversity programs as reasons the stakes are high. Moore, who chairs the National Governors Association, said: “Governors, in many ways, are becoming the last lines of defense against what we’re seeing in Washington.”
Not every nominee is favored. Georgia’s race is a contest between Bottoms and Republican Rick Jackson, and results in each state will depend on the count, which election officials and the wires will report as it comes in. Polls close on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
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