The election for President of the United States is over, according to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, but she says there’s more to do. ”Georgia is a battleground state, but it’s not over”, she says.
The last outstanding ballots are still being counted in Georgia, though Joe Biden’s lead continues to widen in the race against President Donald Trump. The state hasn’t elected a Democratic President since 1992.
In an interview with V103’s Morning Culture with Big Tigger, Mayor Bottoms encouraged voters to turn out once again on January 5. That’s when Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff challenge Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in runoff elections. The races will decide which party controls the U.S. Senate.
Bottoms, a fellow HBCU graduate, says she is proud to see Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ ascension to the second-highest political office in the U.S. The Mayor adds, “She’s a woman, she is a woman of color. My daughter gets to see it, my mother gets to see it, our girls across the country get to see it, so it’s a good day. But the work is not done.”
The COVID-19 pandemic is another issue that Bottoms points to as being incomplete. “It’s still here, it’s still killing people”, she says, adding “We can’t get comfortable and think that all of our problems are going to disappear, because it’s still here.”
“Frightening” is how Bottoms describes seeing images of crowds, without masks, inside night clubs.
In the interview Bottoms also discusses the city’s coronavirus status and whether a move to Washington D.C. is in her future.