Four Black women are on statewide ballots this November, with five weeks left before Election Day as of October 9, 2026.
Keisha Lance Bottoms is running for governor of Georgia. Juliana Stratton, the sitting lieutenant governor of Illinois, is running for the United States Senate. Angie Nixon is running for the Senate in Florida. A fourth Black woman is on the Senate ballot in Oklahoma.
Bottoms tied her campaign to the vote itself. “It may not be perfect, but I believe it’s still worth fighting for, and part of fighting for our democracy means fighting to maintain the integrity and the sanctity of our right to vote,” she said.
Stratton was blunter about the moment she is running in. “We’re going along as if this is a normal president, a normal president that I say, is not even a normal person,” she said.
No Black woman has ever been elected governor of any state.
These four have been covered one at a time, in four different states, by four different sets of local reporters. Put on one page they look like what they are: not four long shots, but a pattern that shows up every cycle and gets counted late.
Election Day is November 3.
