Keisha Lance Bottoms

Keisha Lance Bottoms (born January 18, 1970) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 60th mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, from 2018 to 2022.

Bottoms was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 18, 1970, to Sylvia Robinson (not to be confused with the singer/songwriter and co-founder of All Platinum Records and Sugar Hill Records) and R&B singer-songwriter Major Lance.

She was raised in Atlanta and is a graduate of Frederick Douglass High School.

She earned a bachelor's degree in communications from Florida A&M University, concentrating in broadcast journalism.

She earned a J.D. degree from Georgia State University College of Law in 1994.

She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

Bottoms was a prosecutor and also represented children in juvenile court.

In 2002, she became a magistrate judge in Atlanta.

In 2008, she ran unsuccessfully for a judgeship on the Fulton Superior Court.

Bottoms was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 2009 and 2013, representing District 11 in southwest Atlanta.

She was concurrently the executive director of Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority starting in 2015.

She was elected mayor in 2017.

Before becoming mayor, she was a member of the Atlanta City Council, representing part of Southwest Atlanta.

Bottoms did not run for a second term as mayor.

President Joe Biden nominated Bottoms as vice chair of civic engagement and voter protection at the DNC for the 2021–2025 term.

In June 2022, Bottoms joined the Biden administration as senior advisor and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement where she served until February 2023.

Bottoms currently serves as a member of the President's Export Council.

She served until 2017.

Bottoms was elected mayor of Atlanta in 2017, after receiving a plurality of votes (26%) in a crowded field of candidates on election day, then defeating fellow city council member Mary Norwood in the runoff election.

She is the sixth African American and the second African American woman to serve as mayor of Atlanta.

Bottoms was investigated during the mayoral election for several lump payments to campaign staff totaling more than $180,000 that were not reported properly.

In October 2017, she voluntarily returned $25,700 in campaign contributions she had received from PRAD Group, an engineering contractor whose office had been raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation the previous month.

On November 4, 2017, she called on the attorney general of Georgia to investigate fake robocalls made in her name.

Bottoms declared that Atlanta was a "welcoming city" and "will remain open and welcoming to all" following then-president Donald Trump's actions regarding refugees in the United States.

In 2018, she signed an executive order forbidding the city jail to hold ICE detainees.

In 2018, she had created the city's first LGBTQ advisory board, which included entertainer Miss Lawrence and activist Feroza Syed.

In July 2019, Bottoms said, "Our city does not support ICE. We don't have a relationship with the U.S. Marshal[s] Service. We closed our detention center to ICE detainees, and we would not pick up people on an immigration violation."

In June 2019, Bottoms endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries.

In February 2020, Bottoms released Atlanta's first LGBTQ Affairs report that focused on how various policies, initiatives, and programs can improve the lives of LGBTQ Atlantans.

In December 2020, Bottoms appointed the city's first director of LGBTQ Affairs, Malik Brown, and announced the continued LGBTQ advisory board leadership.

Bottoms strongly rebuked Georgia Governor Brian Kemp after he announced the reopening of Georgia businesses in April 2020, saying that it was too early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Atlanta experienced riots in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Bottoms condemned those involved, but later expressed optimism while speaking to demonstrators at a protest, saying, "There is something better on the other side of this."

She also repeatedly condemned Trump for "making it worse" and stoking racial tensions, and encouraged people to vote, saying, "If you want change in America, go and register to vote. That is the change we need in this country."

In June 2020, many Atlanta Police Department officers went on strike to protest the charges brought against the officers involved in the killing of Rayshard Brooks.

Bottoms said that APD morale "is down tenfold".

In early July 2020, as COVID-19 cases escalated in Atlanta, Bottoms issued an executive order rolling back some of its reopening measures from Phase 2 to Phase 1 and requiring everyone within the city limits to wear a facial covering, but no citations enforcing it were issued.

On July 15, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp issued an order suspending all local mask mandates, and on July 16 he filed suit against Bottoms in Superior Court, seeking to invalidate her order and prevent her from talking about it.

He did not file similar suits against other Georgia cities with mask mandates, such as Savannah and Athens.

A hearing scheduled for July 21 was postponed when the judge recused herself.

In May 2021, Bottoms announced she would not run for reelection in the 2021 Atlanta mayoral election.