In the history of the United States, three Black Americans have won an election for governor. On Nov. 3, eight Black nominees from both major parties will ask voters in eight states for the job, a record.
The three who came before: Douglas Wilder in Virginia, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts and Wes Moore in Maryland, elected in 2022. David Paterson became New York’s governor in 2008 when Eliot Spitzer resigned, so voters never chose him for the office. Black Americans are about 14% of the country. Moore, who is seeking a second term, has put the arithmetic bluntly. “I became the first in my state’s history and now only the third elected in the history of America, and that is a bit indicting,” he said.
The field, by state:
Democrats: Moore in Maryland; Aaron Ford in Nevada, against Gov. Joe Lombardo; David Crowley in Wisconsin, against Rep. Tom Tiffany; Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, against Rick Jackson; and Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina.
Republicans: Byron Donalds in Florida, against Democrat David Jolly; John James in Michigan, against Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson; and Lisa Demuth in Minnesota.
Some of these races would end with a first. A win for Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, would make her Georgia’s first Black governor and the first Black woman elected governor anywhere in the country. Donalds would be Florida’s first Black governor, and James would be Michigan’s first.
The nominees do not share a party or a platform. Moore has made electing more Black governors a project of his own this year, and says governors are “becoming the last lines of defense against what we’re seeing in Washington.”
Geography is part of the picture. Wisconsin, where Crowley is running, is nearly 85% white. A governor signs or vetoes state budgets, sets the terms of Medicaid and school funding, runs the state prison system and appoints many of the officials who oversee elections, all of which fall hard on Black residents when they go wrong.
Polls close on Nov. 3. Election officials, not campaigns or projections, decide when a count is final, and close races may take days to settle.
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