Keisha Lance Bottoms has spent her first full day as Georgia’s governor-elect defending a choice she made herself. On Friday she named Tyler Perry co-chair of her transition team, while two men’s sexual assault lawsuits against him are still before the courts.
It is the first appointment of the first Black woman ever elected governor of a U.S. state, and it will be read by Black Georgians as a statement of who she brings into the room. Perry employs hundreds of people at his Atlanta studio, and she introduced him as “an entertainment mogul who is also a huge philanthropic part of our Georgia community.” She announced the committee, called Georgia’s Promise, at the state Capitol.
The suits are not settled facts. They are allegations, and Perry denies them. Actor Derek Dixon sued in June 2025 for $260 million, alleging repeated sexual battery and assault going back to 2021. Mario Rodriguez sued in December 2025 for $77 million, alleging years of unwanted advances and an assault at Perry’s Los Angeles home. Perry has called the Rodriguez case a “money grab” and a “shakedown.” Both men share a lawyer, Jonathan Delshad.
The Rodriguez case is moving. Perry is due for an in-person deposition on Dec. 9. Rodriguez’s side has claimed Perry avoided key questioning, and Perry’s representative has answered flatly: “Tyler did not fail to appear for a deposition nor refuse any line of questioning. We will seek sanctions.”
Bottoms and Perry have history. She was an executive producer on his 2025 Netflix political comedy, Miss Governor. The rest of the committee reads like a corporate roster: Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank, former Walgreens chief executive Rosalind Brewer, nonprofit leader Michelle Nunn and Delta executive Richard Cox. Perry is the only co-chair named in the reports we reviewed.
There is a fair defense. A man is not guilty because he has been sued, and Perry has not been found liable of anything. A transition committee is advisory, and Georgia has few Black billionaires who will pick up the phone for a Black governor.
But a transition is the one appointment list a governor-elect writes with no confirmation fight and no one to blame. She chose a friend and business partner over the many people who could have done the job without a deposition on the calendar. Whoever Bottoms puts first says what her administration will treat as the cost of doing business, and survivors of sexual violence, a large share of them Black women, are among the Georgians watching.
The paper does not need Bottoms to prejudge a court. It does need her to say why Perry, why now, and what changes if the Dec. 9 testimony goes badly. She takes the oath Jan. 11, 2027.
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