Before Tuesday, American voters had elected exactly three Black governors: Douglas Wilder in Virginia in 1989, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts in 2006 and Wes Moore in Maryland in 2022. On Tuesday, four more Black candidates won governor’s races, Blavity and Black Enterprise reported. One election night produced more than the whole history before it.
Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia and is the first Black woman elected governor of any state. Aaron Ford, a former math teacher, won Nevada. David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, won Wisconsin. Byron Donalds won Florida and is the first Black Republican elected governor. None of those four states had ever had a Black governor.
Bottoms beat Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare staffing executive who put about $200 million of his own money into the race. Black women have carried the Democratic Party in Georgia for years, and one of them now holds the office. “This win is for all of us,” Bottoms told supporters, Black Enterprise reported.
The four winners do not share a politics, and Black voters did not send them as one bloc. Bottoms, Ford and Crowley ran on health care, Medicaid and the cost of living. Donalds won Florida with about 13% of the Black vote. A first is a first. It is not a mandate from the people it is a first for.
Governors sign or veto budgets, run state Medicaid programs, appoint the officials who oversee prisons and policing, and decide who gets clemency. Those powers are why the milestone matters beyond the photograph.
The first budgets and the first appointments, due when the new governors take office, will show which of the four understood that. Black voters in Atlanta, Milwaukee and Las Vegas waited generations for this. They are owed Medicaid that covers them, schools that fund them and an office that answers when police kill someone.
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