Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was considered as a possible running mate for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, said she isn’t ruling out a run for public office again.
“Never say never,” Bottoms said Tuesday at Bloomberg’s Equality Summit in New York. “We’ll see what the future holds. I never thought I would run for mayor of the city of Atlanta.”
“I will know when I know,” Bottoms said.
Bottoms also discussed her new role as vice chair of civic engagement and voter protection for the Democratic National Committee. In a wide-ranging interview, she discussed the current political climate approaching the midterm elections, rising inflation and an affordable housing shortage that has beset her city in recent months.
She said that she’s waiting to hear what her role will be in the Georgia campaign of Stacey Abrams, who is trying for a second time to become the nation’s first Black female governor.
“I am sure I will have some marching orders soon,” Bottoms said. “Right now, I am just reminding people to register to vote, and to show up to vote.”
Bottoms, 52, earlier this year joined CNN as a political commentator. A onetime broadcast journalism student at Florida A&M University, she has called the CNN assignment her “dream job.”
Bottoms, whose four-year term ended this January when Mayor Andre Dickens was sworn in, said she is “very concerned” about what she called “massive voter suppression laws put into place in Georgia” in 2021.
During her time in City Hall as Atlanta’s sixth consecutive Black mayor, she faced the social unrest sweeping the nation in the days following the murder of George Floyd. In response, Bottoms called a press conference amid rioting in Atlanta, and with the country watching, she used the moment to sternly chide city residents who had taken to the streets.
“If you love this city, go home,” she implored.
Difficult days
As her national profile expanded in the days and weeks that followed, Bottoms’ name was floated as a potential running mate for Biden, who ultimately selected Kamala Harris.
But the long and difficult days of running a major city during the pandemic extracted a toll. While Bottoms and her husband, Derek Bottoms, an executive at Home Depot Inc., both contracted mild cases of COVID, she drew the ire of Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who opposed mask mandates the mayor had put in place.
When two police officers were seen on video appearing to forcibly pull two college students from a car, Bottoms swiftly fired the two officers, a move that critics said was unfairly rash. The terminations were later overturned. And just a few weeks after the incident involving the officers and the students, another Atlanta police officer was charged with murder, following the shooting of a Black man in the parking lot of an Atlanta fast-food restaurant.
With police morale wounded, violent crime spiking and the city struggling to recover from pandemic-related closures, Bottoms didn’t back down from her positions — no matter how unpopular — nor did she mince words.
All-Star game
When the National Basketball Association’s annual All-Star weekend came to Atlanta in March 2021, Bottoms urged people to stay home and avoid public events and venues that might spread the coronavirus.
“People should not travel to Atlanta to party,” she said.
For businesses that were counting on the basketball crowds for revenue, the mayor’s words were unpopular. And one month later, after the Republican-controlled legislature passed new restrictive voting laws, Bottoms supported a decision by Major League Baseball to move it’s 2021 All-Star game out of Atlanta.
Speaking at the Equality Summit on Tuesday, Bottoms said, “We have to keep reminding people that elections matters.” When people vote, she said, “historic things can happen.”
Bottoms urged women to consider running for mayor in other cities. “There is more in you than you can ever imagine,” she said. “It’s often when you are in the fire, that your ability to lead comes out most.”
