Bottoms and Ossoff plan campaign as ‘partners’ at top of Democratic ticket
Shortly after Keisha Lance Bottoms secured the Democratic nomination for Georgia governor Tuesday night, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff called her with enthusiastic congratulations on her victory.
That same night, Ossoff posted a note to social media, intentionally positive and complimentary. “Congratulations to @KeishaBottoms on a well-fought victory,” it began.
After a note about GOP infighting, Ossoff projected Democratic unity and optimism about the general election ahead with Bottoms joining him at the top of the ticket.
“Keisha’s powerful campaign mobilized voters statewide, and together we are building a massive and unstoppable winning coalition to deliver decisive victories statewide up and down the ballot in November.”
The message from Ossoff, both internally and externally, was that he will stand beside Bottoms as they both campaign as their party’s standard-bearers for the next five months. Bottoms and her team feel the same way.
“Keisha is excited to partner with Sen. Ossoff to lead the ticket to victory in November,” TaNisha Cameron, Keisha for Governor campaign spokesperson, said. “It is clear that voters want leaders who will put people first — and that’s exactly what Keisha and Sen. Ossoff will do.”
Whether and how Ossoff and Bottoms would work in tandem in the months ahead quickly became an open question after Democrats’ experience in 2022.
Although Stacey Abrams and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock were longtime friends and in agreement on most policy matters, the two were not the same dynamic duo in 2022 that Warnock and Ossoff became during their simultaneous 2020 Senate campaigns.
During their runoffs, Ossoff and Warnock campaigned together so much it was like watching a buddy cop movie. Standing side by side on campaign rally stages, they called each other “my brother,” while their staffs handed out co-branded campaign signs.
Voters responded, especially Georgia’s all important Black electorate, and lifted them both to victory.
But by 2022, Warnock and Abrams, the two-time Democratic nominee for governor, ran separate campaigns with significantly different strategies.
While Abrams ran an aggressive rematch against Gov. Brian Kemp and embraced the weakening President Joe Biden, Warnock portrayed his Senate record as bipartisan and worked to appeal to independent and moderate crossover voters.
The two campaigned together so infrequently in 2022 that a joint stop in late August at a Marietta park made news just because Warnock and Abrams both attended.
Four years and another President Donald Trump victory later, Bottoms and Ossoff are now the top of their party’s ticket and, at least for now, planning to be partners in the fight.
“While Republicans head to runoff elections in both the U.S. Senate and Governor races, Sen. Ossoff remains laser-focused on building the largest and most unstoppable winning coalition in the state’s history to elect Democrats up and down the ballot,” Ossoff’s campaign spokeswoman Ellie Dougherty said, “including enthusiastically working to elect Keisha Lance Bottoms to be the first Black woman governor in the country.”
The upsides for both are clear. If Bottoms’ dominant showing Tuesday made one thing clear for Democrats, it is that Black women continue to be the party’s most loyal voters and most successful candidates.
Ossoff’s intentional focus on working to make Bottoms the first Black woman governor in the country, just like he embraced Warnock’s history-making candidacy in 2020, put him on the side of the women he needs to show up for him in November again.
Bottoms stands to gain from a partnership with Ossoff, too. Although national pundits routinely refer to the freshman as the “most vulnerable Democrat in the country,” GOP operatives in Georgia know the reality that Ossoff has proven to be a savvy campaigner and fundraising juggernaut.
His rat-at-tat cadence at campaign rallies has made him a viral star. Bottoms’ team knows that joining with the incumbent senator would only add to her proven strength with statewide Democratic voters while she continues to try to win over, or at least neutralize, skeptics from her tumultuous time as Atlanta mayor.
The united front from Democrats is a stark contrast to what Republicans will deal with for the next four weeks, with Rick Jackson and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones locked in a messy, expensive runoff for governor, and Derek Dooley and U.S. Rep. Mike Collins slugging it out for the GOP nomination to challenge Ossoff.
Should Trump endorse Collins over Kemp’s pick of Dooley in the coming weeks, expect the divisions to last well past June.
While those four camps go at it, Ossoff will be in South DeKalb this weekend to open Democrats’ first coordinated campaign office, a field office to support Ossoff, Bottoms and the other Democrats down-ballot.
There’s no way to know if the kumbaya among Democrats will last, since the party has notoriously found ways to lose otherwise winnable elections.
Republicans believe Bottoms’ outright victory Tuesday night is the best thing that happened to their own chances to hold on to the Governor’s Mansion. And neither Bottoms nor Ossoff would likely stay locked in a joint campaign if the other has crashing poll numbers or an unexpected scandal.
But for now, as Ossoff and Bottoms look ahead to November as the faces of the Democratic Party for 2026, they’re looking forward together.
About the Author
Patricia Murphy is the AJC's senior political columnist. She was previously a nationally syndicated columnist for CQ Roll Call, national political reporter for the Daily Beast and Politics Daily, and wrote for The Washington Post and Garden & Gun. She graduated from Vanderbilt and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
