For 250 years, three Black Americans were elected governor of a US state. In the midterms, four more won, and Maryland’s Wes Moore was re-elected. Black governors will now lead five states.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, won Georgia, becoming the first Black woman elected governor anywhere in the country and Georgia’s first woman in the job. She beat Republican Rick Jackson, who spent more than $200 million on the race. Aaron Ford, Nevada’s attorney general, defeated Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and becomes his state’s first Black governor, and the first elected west of the Mississippi, according to CBS News. David Crowley won Wisconsin, defeating Republican Tom Tiffany. Rep. Byron Donalds won Florida and is the first Black Republican elected governor in the country, CBS reported.
Before this cycle the list was short: Douglas Wilder in Virginia, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts and Moore in Maryland. David Paterson of New York was the only other Black governor, and he took office when his predecessor resigned. Moore put the change in his own words: “I’m only the third African American ever elected governor in the 250-year history of this country, and, now, in one cycle, we have at least doubled that number.”
The map matters as much as the count. Georgia is the state where voting rights fights have been loudest for a decade. Wisconsin and Nevada are swing states where Black voters are a small share of the electorate but can decide a close race. Florida is a state where Black voters have watched the governor’s office fight over diversity programs and how Black history is taught. A governor sets the state budget, appoints the heads of corrections and public safety, signs or vetoes the voting bills, and decides on clemency in many states.
That is why a first is not the end of the story. Four of the five are Democrats, and the paper will measure them the way it measures anyone: by what they do on policing, Medicaid, school funding, voting access and the prisons they now oversee. Donalds is a Republican, and Black Floridians will judge him by whether he undoes the policies he inherits or defends them.
The representation is real, and voters waited a long time for it. The next test comes when the new governors take office in January and write their first budgets.
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