Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms delivered remarks before an overflow, high-energy crowd at the biggest Gwinnett County Democrats’ Blue Breakfast to date.
Mayor Bottoms laid out for over 120 grassroots activists, local officials, and volunteers why she’s running, stressed that Gwinnett County played a pivotal role in winning statewide, saying that Gwinnett is “the future that is representative of our state in so many ways” and previewed her priorities when she’s in the governor’s office.
Also Saturday, Mayor Bottoms visited the Juneteenth Celebration Fair at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, where she toured vendor booths and heard directly from small-business owners about the challenges they face amid the chaos of the Trump administration.
Key highlights at the Gwinnett County Blue Breakfast
Why she’s running: “I woke up the day after the election in November, like so many of you, going what does this mean for me? What does this mean for my family? What does this mean for my community? I asked myself, am I going to look my children in the eyes and say that I rested while the world, while our state was coming apart, in many ways, at the seams? And the answer was ‘absolutely not.’”
On Gwinnett County: “From not having a Level 1 trauma center here, to having teachers leave Gwinnett County, to having small businesses concerned about these tariffs, and what it’s going to do for our economy. You are living it every single day…But this room, as I look around this room, you are Georgia. You are living, you are in many ways thriving in this state. In many ways some of us are just surviving in this state. But you represent who we are as a state, the diversity of this great state, and the possibilities of this state.”
On how she’ll take on Donald Trump: “I am going to take the approach that works for Georgia…I’ve never been afraid to fight against Donald Trump in anything that I thought was hurting us in this state. Nobody wants to have to fight with the President, but when you have policies that are detrimental to people in your community, then you have to just come back out swinging…I am going to just always fight for Georgia, whatever that looks like.”
On Black women and leadership: “We are leading every single day. Whether it’s in our sororities, in our communities. On the bench. On the commission. You all, all of you all, are leading every single day. And what we know is that politics is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. So when I say I want to be governor of Georgia, it’s …because I know leadership matters. And you’ve gotta have someone in office who’s thinking about you every day. Making decisions about their communities, making decisions about your families, determined to make a difference.”
