NEW ORLEANS — For 31 years, hundreds of thousands of Black women — from Atlanta natives to former first lady Michelle Obama — have traveled to New Orleans over Fourth of July weekend for the Essence Festival, a celebration of Black women’s culture, influence and power.
This year, one of those women was Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Bottoms made the trip to New Orleans during Essence weekend to take meetings and participate in at least one private fundraiser. She did not hold public campaign events.
Still, her presence placed her in the middle of a weekend that has become more than a cultural gathering. For Democrats, Essence is also a political proving ground — one of the few places where culture, politics, celebrity, activism and Black women’s electoral power all move through the same rooms.
Black women are repeatedly described as the Democratic Party’s backbone. For decades they have been the voters who organize, turn out, persuade and help Democrats survive close elections. But as Bottoms tries to become Georgia’s first Black woman governor, she faces a more complicated reality: younger Black women may still lean Democratic, but many are less interested in party loyalty than in what the party can deliver.
PeachPol discussed this story with a spokeswoman for Bottoms’ campaign several times. The campaign did not make Bottoms available for an interview or provide a statement by publication time.
The Peach Pulse
Become a founding subscriber
Get PeachPol’s exclusive Georgia political reporting and analysis — and lock in your founding subscriber rate as long as your subscription remains active.
The tension among Black women voters is not that younger women are becoming Republicans. Instead, many are treating Democratic politics less like an inherited loyalty and more like a strategic choice. They may still see Democrats as closer to their values, but they are also asking what the party is offering on housing, wages, safety, LGBTQ rights, reproductive freedom and the future they are trying to build.
Strategic voting
Voting as strategy is not new for Black women in Georgia — or across the country.
LaTosha Brown, the Georgia-based co-founder of Black Voters Matter, challenges the idea that the consistent support Democrats receive from Black women is due to “loyalty.”
“The party has always been a strategy; it has never been the destination for us,” she said.
For the past 50 to 60 years, Democrats have generally been more supportive of policies that are important to many Black women voters, including affordable housing, living wages and reproductive freedom.
The question for younger Black women is not whether they understand the stakes, Brown said. It is whether Democrats can show a return on the political investment they keep asking Black women to make.
“What have you done for me lately?” Brown said.
Cameron Bothwell, a 26-year-old Ellenwood resident and cosmetology student, said she understands why some of her peers may have a bitter taste in their mouths when it comes to supporting Democratic candidates.
“I am very concerned with policy,” Bothwell said. “However, just because of the political state of America and the way Republicans band together … more times than not, I tend to vote like, this is a Democratic candidate, so I’m going to vote for them.”
But Bothwell said she is more drawn to candidates with progressive policies, especially those willing to speak directly about LGBTQ issues.
“I do like to try to go for people with more progressive policies because I feel like the Democratic Party now is even at a divide,” she said.
Testing the bargain
That tension is normal, said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University. Younger voters are testing the Democratic bargain in a different media and political environment than those who are older.
“Younger people don’t necessarily have that same type of experience, and so they’re testing it out,” Gillespie said.
That does not mean younger Black voters are abandoning Democratic candidates, Gillespie said. But they may have less fixed party identification than older voters and may be more willing to question whether the party is delivering enough to justify their support.
“The Democratic Party has not perfectly aligned with African Americans… It’s just been closer to Black political practices than the Republican Party was,” she said.
For Bottoms, the challenge is not whether Black women understand the stakes of the election. It is whether her campaign can persuade younger Black women that voting Democratic is not just a defensive act, but a path to something better.
That task is especially important in a race where Republicans are already looking for signs of Democratic fatigue.
Garrison Douglas, a spokesman for Republican nominee Rick Jackson’s gubernatorial campaign, said Jackson is trying to reach voters who have not traditionally felt courted by Republican candidates. Shortly after the runoff, Jackson held a campaign event at a barber shop and salon owned by a Black man and woman.
The Republican opening may not be winning large numbers of younger Black women outright. It may benefit Republicans if some Democratic-leaning voters feel uninspired, unheard or taken for granted.
Gillespie said that is why candidates cannot treat reliable voters as automatic ones.
“Part of the challenge is to show up, and show up consistently,” she said. “Don’t be like, ‘Thank you for your vote,’ and then go away. There still has to be some demonstrative engagement. … They’re asking to be courted in the way that they perceive that other constituencies get courted.”
For Bottoms, that may be the real test. Black women voters remain central to Democratic hopes in Georgia. But younger Black women are making clear that support should not be mistaken for satisfaction — and that showing up for Democrats does not mean giving the party a blank check.
Want sharper Georgia political analysis in your inbox? Become a founding subscriber to The Peach Pulse.
