Eight Black Nominees and What Comes After the First
Updated: Nov 3
Eight major-party candidates put the long exclusion of Black Americans from governorships in focus. The question is who gets the opportunity to govern and what they do with it.
The Commentary with Aigner "Anye Elite" Ellis
Election-night update: Four wins called
Results checked November 3, 2026, at 11:55 p.m. ET / 8:55 p.m. PT.
Four of the eight Black nominees discussed below have won their races: Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Byron Donalds in Florida, David Crowley in Wisconsin and incumbent Wes Moore in Maryland. Four other races remained uncalled in the AP results displayed by MS NOW at the time of this update.
Read our Maryland report: Wes Moore Wins a Second Term as Maryland’s First Black Governor.
Georgia — Keisha Lance Bottoms (D): Projected winner, making history as Georgia’s first Black governor and first woman governor. Read ICN’s Bottoms report. MS NOW race call.
Florida — Byron Donalds (R): Projected winner and the state’s first Black governor. Read ICN’s Donalds report. MS NOW race call.
Wisconsin — David Crowley (D): Winner and the state’s first Black governor. Read ICN’s Crowley report, including our callback to Sherman Phoenix and lasting Black space. AP race call.
Maryland — Wes Moore (D): Won reelection. AP race call.
Still uncalled at this update: Aaron Ford (D), Nevada; John James (R), Michigan; Lisa Demuth (R), Minnesota; and Jermaine Johnson (D), South Carolina. A lead in an incomplete count is not a declared victory. See MS NOW’s AP-powered governor results.
The results move the conversation from who might make history toward what governing will make possible. The standard raised in the original commentary still applies: access to power matters, and so do the resources, opportunities and institutions that follow.
These are election-night race calls, not certified final results. The original commentary and video below were recorded before the results; their hypothetical comparisons remain part of that pre-election discussion.
Original commentary — recorded before results
Host commentary recorded November 3, 2026, before results. The comparisons discussed below are hypothetical, not election outcomes. The candidate excerpts use archival footage and original recorded voices; the dates in their credits identify source publication.
Start with a number. Eight.
That is how many Black major-party nominees are running for governor in the November 3, 2026 election: five Democrats and three Republicans, six men and two women. That is remarkable. But sit with the history for a moment. Before this election, Americans had elected only three Black governors. Three in the entire history of this republic. All three were men. All three were Democrats. [1, 2]
So yes, I am interested in who might make history. I am also interested in what these candidacies tell us about the history we have already lived. After 250 years, we ought to be asking more than who gets to be first. Honestly, what the fuck took so long?
The history behind the number
P. B. S. Pinchback became governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction in 1872. He was a Republican, and he reached the office through succession during a political crisis. He was not elected governor. More than a century later, Virginia elected L. Douglas Wilder in 1989; he took office in 1990. Massachusetts elected Deval Patrick in 2006. Maryland elected Wes Moore in 2022. [1, 2, 4]
David Paterson also became governor of New York in 2008 after Eliot Spitzer resigned. That distinction matters. Serving as governor and being elected to the office are different historical measures. [2]
Governors oversee state agencies, propose budgets, sign or veto legislation, and appoint people to powerful positions. Their decisions reach into education, health care, transportation, criminal justice and economic development. I have lived in more than a handful of states, and those experiences can vary vastly.
Access to a governorship means access to decisions about resources, opportunity and power. That deserves at least as much attention as the photograph that goes into a history book.
Eight candidates with different politics
Georgia — Keisha Lance Bottoms — Democrat
Florida — Byron Donalds — Republican
Maryland — Wes Moore — Democrat
Nevada — Aaron Ford — Democrat
Michigan — John James — Republican
Minnesota — Lisa Demuth — Republican
Wisconsin — David Crowley — Democrat
South Carolina — Jermaine Johnson — Democrat
Black candidates do not constitute one political movement. A Black Republican and a Black Democrat may share experiences of race in America without sharing a governing philosophy. Their identities matter. Their policies and coalitions matter, too. Neither tells us everything about how they would govern.
Black women and the opportunity to compete
Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia and Lisa Demuth in Minnesota belong to different parties. Either could become the first Black woman elected governor in American history. That possibility tells us something about how long Black women have been excluded from this particular kind of executive power. [2]
I do not think the question has ever been whether Black women possess the capacity to lead. Black women have been leading families, institutions, businesses, movements and communities throughout this country's history. I write about that leadership in Rainbow Soul.
The question is why that capacity has so rarely translated into a credible opportunity to become governor. Political parties cultivate candidates. Donors invest in them. Organizations build pipelines. Opportunity begins long before a name appears on the ballot. We need to examine who gets recruited, funded, supported and taken seriously.
What I am watching in the results
Alongside the historic firsts, I am watching for differences between races on the same state ballot. Florida has my attention. I love Florida; it is part of the story I tell in Rainbow Soul. In this election, Republican Byron Donalds is running for governor against Democrat David Jolly, while Democrat Angie Nixon is running for the U.S. Senate against Republican Ashley Moody. Nixon and Donalds are in separate contests and different parties. [3, 5]
Take Texas and Georgia, too. If James Talarico wins his Senate race while Gina Hinojosa loses her race for governor, or Jon Ossoff wins while Keisha Lance Bottoms loses, I want us to ask why. Would those differences tell us something about whose leadership voters are willing to accept, or how parties organize and invest? Those are the questions about race, gender and political power I want us to examine. These are hypothetical comparisons, not predictions or reported outcomes. [3, 6, 7]
If candidates on the same ticket receive different levels of support, I want us to take that seriously. What role did race or gender play? What did voters make of a candidate's record, policies, campaign and coalition? Who received the money and organizational support to compete?
Those questions are worth asking. The results alone cannot answer them. A gap between two candidates does not establish the motives of individual voters, and a statewide total does not tell us that the same people split their ballots. We will need evidence about turnout, voting patterns and the candidates themselves before turning a possibility into a conclusion.
I am asking whether the barriers we celebrate people overcoming are still shaping who gets through. If a party benefits from Black voters but struggles to build winning coalitions around Black candidates or women, that deserves honest examination. So does the claim that representation is enough by itself.
We can recognize a historic candidacy and still ask what that person intends to do for the people they hope to govern. We can celebrate a first and still ask why there have been so few.
What are you watching? Which governor's race deserves more attention, and what would meaningful leadership look like in your state? Leave it in the conversation. Share it with somebody who is watching the Senate races and missing what is happening in the governor's office. We are doing hood journalism today.
Sources
Candidate video sources
This edition adds eight brief, continuous candidate excerpts in their original recorded voices. These are attributed candidate statements, not independent findings. Source publication dates are listed below; the footage was not recorded with the host commentary.
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From Anye Elite
Rainbow Soul brings Black queer music, memory and becoming into conversation with Anye Elite’s own story.
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