Georgia's Black voters expect economic answers after Democratic sweep

Black women will hold almost all statewide offices in Georgia

Black voting power helped secure victory for US Senator Jon Ossoff, Keisha Lance Bottoms’ run for the governor’s race and a slew of down-ballot candidates in Georgia’s 2026 midterms, and those voters now expect to be heard, The Guardian reported on November 15. Democrats won every statewide election from the lieutenant governor’s office down to the insurance commissioner, displaced the Republican majority on the electricity rate-setting public service commission, and elected Ossoff alongside governor-elect Bottoms.

The sweep extends down the ballot. Almost all of Georgia’s statewide office holders will be Black women, including incoming Georgia House speaker Carolyn Hugley, a state representative from Columbus. Democrats are one state senator short of controlling both chambers.

What The Guardian called culture war issues — on abortion, on guns and on LGBTQ+ rights — come with the change in partisan control of Georgia’s government, but the customary politics of Georgia start and end with business, an attitude the paper described as bipartisan.

Organizers say the result was built rather than delivered. “This was not just a magical thing. This took a long time, building the infrastructure for the south and particularly for Georgia,” said Deborah Scott, executive director of Georgia STAND-UP, a “think and act tank” non-profit advocating for job training and economic development for working families. Scott said the outcome followed multiple failed election cycles and the chipping away of layers of cynicism, and she credited Stacey Abrams, the two-time gubernatorial candidate turned democracy activist, alongside organizations led by Black women. “If Stacey is the tree that all of these newly elected officials are sitting in, then the roots of that are community-based organizations and non-profit organizations like Georgia STAND-UP and the People’s Agenda, folks that have been doing the work for a long time,” she said.

Scott said describing the results as a referendum on gas prices, the war or Donald Trump is reductive, because Black voters assess their conditions holistically. “It’s not just about the gas prices are too damn high – which is true – but it’s also about the quality of life for regular Americans,” she said.

The last two years have been radicalizing for some Georgia voters, Scott said. Highly educated CDC employees found themselves impaled on the spear tips of HHS secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, she said, while nonprofits serving low-income communities like hers scrambled to replace federal spending and a dearth of private grants. Before the election, activists squabbled over scarce resources, she said; today, they are bathing in the afterglow of political unity.

The economic record behind those expectations is mixed. Georgia’s Black voters have long wrestled with the Black Mecca paradox. Atlanta has long attracted Black professional talent from across the country and the world, yet upward mobility for native-born Black Atlantans has been anemic. Black unemployment rates are lower in Atlanta than the nation overall, and Georgia leads the nation for Black executive representation and recent income growth — but The Guardian reported that Georgia offers the worst chances for wealth of any state for a Black child born into poverty.

For 20 years Democrats were shut out of major decisions about Georgia’s policy direction. The state has restrictive abortion laws and permissive gun laws, and it is one of 10 states that did not expand access to Medicaid. Under Governor Brian Kemp’s two terms, Georgia attracted stunning amounts of foreign investment from car manufacturers, battery plants and chip makers, but almost all of that state-directed economic development landed either in the north Georgia foothills or in rural south Georgia, including the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America manufacturing hub in Bryan county — a pattern The Guardian described as rewarding white, Republican voters with jobs and political attention. Scott characterized the divide as “a tale of two states,” adding, “It’s Atlanta and the rest of the state. And of course, even in Atlanta, it’s the tale of two cities. Those that are born poor will not come out of it. There’s an opportunity for really affordable housing and real economic development.”

Grassroots organizers had spent years shouting about these issues from soapboxes, and they now expect an answer. The opinions of Black voters — particularly Black women — have been ignored for years, said Tiffani Stephens, a voter in DeKalb county. “We’re taken as the pretty person and all we care about is clothes, shoes and makeup,” she said. “Where if you really know a Black woman, you know these are additives. We are of substance. Deep substance.”

Stonecrest, a suburb of south-eastern Atlanta and by one measure the largest city in the United States with a non-Hispanic Black population above 90%, offers a sample of what the coalition expects. About six out of 10 of its voters cast ballots in the 2026 election and about 90% of them voted for Democrats, according to election figures. About 10 years ago, Stonecrest’s Black middle-class voters incorporated the community so it would be served the way white middle-class voters are served 30 miles north in Sandy Springs.

Keisha Lance Bottoms held a September fundraiser at the Privi event center and retreat in suburban Atlanta that drew little attention. “It’s infuriating,” said Vaughn Irons, Privi’s founder. “I think she came to speak to a community that often gets driven through and flown over.” “As a small business owner, which I am, this is an opportunity to have a seat at the table,” said Kazemde Ajamu, who owns Akoma Coffee & Books at Stonecrest, adding that he wants Georgia to recognize microbusinesses and better empower entrepreneurship for small business owners. “I feel good about the incoming governor-elect, that this gives us an opportunity to have a voice to speak to it, to create laws that help micro-businesses, mom-and-pops … That’s one example of having a seat at the table, having a voice, and someone that’s listening and can be proactive in that area.”

Irons, a former HUD official and economic development director for DeKalb county, said Democratic control of the apparatus of state government is not necessarily permanent, and that political competition will force Bottoms and the state legislature to pay attention everywhere. Access alone does not solve problems, he said. “Everybody’s interest is in growing, and having prosperity and better education,” Irons said. “The success of what’s likely to happen for the next governor is to create an environment where all parties that are serious about the growth and the prosperity of the state of Georgia can have a seat at the table.” He added: “I think every community has to be ready for the investment that it wants. And so you have a governor that you can access differently,” Irons said. “I think Governor [Brian] Kemp probably was aware of the needs, but a different group of people had access, right? I think now that just because you have access doesn’t mean you don’t have your own responsibility to be ready.”

Scott spoke in the same breath about encoding voting rights protections into the Georgia constitution, deepening the port of Savannah and the new Audi car plant being built near Macon. “This is an opportunity for economic development in all of the regions around Georgia … it’s an opportunity to equalize the state,” she said.