‘It’s About Time’: Are Black Women the New Face of Georgia Politics?

The Georgia primary runoff election begins with early voting from June 8-12 and continues on runoff election day, Tuesday, June 16. Georgians will have to return to polling stations to make their final selections for the next Republican nominee for governor, the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, or the next Fulton County Commission chair. In addition to those races, there are so many more up for grabs, and Black women are leading the way in many of them.

High-profile primary campaigns for Democratic governor, won in a landslide by former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and attorney general, won in equal and equally as impactful measure by Rep. Tanya Miller (D-62) with 84.55% of the vote. For those Black women who had been previously elected by the public, a successful primary, though impressive, was expected. For Democrats such as former Atlanta City Councilwoman Keisha Sean Waites, running for insurance commissioner, Nikki Porcher, running for labor commissioner, Judge Penny Brown Reynolds, running for secretary of state, and Sojourner Marable Grimmett, the upcoming runoffs are what they have their sights set on.

On Monday, Memorial Day, in the midst of a rainy holiday weekend, Grimmett, a wife, mother, and graduate of Clark Atlanta University, sat down at a table inside a local pizzeria with a slice and a dream. She wants to be the next woman to represent the Democratic Party in the race to see who will be the commissioner in Fulton County’s 5th District. Without a campaign manager, corporate or Super PAC ad dollars, Grimmett is qualified for a runoff by winning 35% of the vote compared to the 43% won by her opponent, Helen Zenobia Willis, a South Fulton City Councilwoman. Grimmett pulled a political door hanger out of her purse and laid it on the table in between bites.

“This is a grassroots campaign. What I do have is family, friends, neighbors, and believers,” Grimmett, wearing an emerald green dress and her signature wide smile, said. “That belief piece is that good people can be elected.”

Grimmett said she was pleased with how her campaign was doing despite the impressive voter turnout for Willis, also a Black woman. The daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning author, historian, and scholar Manning Marable, Grimmett is running her second political campaign of her lifetime. Her first was for the seat vacated by the passing of the eight-term Fulton County Board of Commissioners member Emma I. Darnell. Grimmett placed third, but with that loss, there was learning, she said. She remembers learning that she lost by a small margin.

“I remember someone explaining it as losing by a sub-division,” she said. “And that’s all they had to tell me.”  She picked up the door hanger in order to properly emphasize her next point. “This time around, I will not miss a single neighborhood.” 

At a Black-owned coffee shop, Black Coffee Atlanta, on Jonesboro Road, the woman with the lavender hair was fired up about the recent primary election results and the upcoming runoff election. Nikki Porcher is running as a Democrat to challenge the current Georgia Commissioner of Labor, Barbara Rivera Holmes. She is now in a runoff with Michelle Sanchez. With a campaign as grassroots as Grimmett’s, Porcher, a veteran, mother of a soldier, and political neophyte, won 30% of the vote. Sanchez, who admitted via one of her social media accounts that she didn’t know what a labor commissioner did, won 25%. 

Porcher told The Atlanta Voice that she had visited 56 counties during her initial campaign. That works out to just under 9,000 miles. She’s got to do it again in order to seal the deal.

“There are so many people telling Black women what to do, and now we’re taking the lead,” Porcher said. “People did not think I was going to get this far.” 

Porcher spoke about the microaggressions she has faced during the campaign, but the inspiration she received when she saw that she was not alone. There were other Black women getting past political barriers during this election season. Asked if they are proud of their fellow Black women candidates, both Grimmett and Porcher said they were. 

“I’m getting goosebumps. To see so many Black women representing and leading, you have to be happy,” Porcher said. 

“It’s inspiring, encouraging, uplifting, and gives me more motivation,” Grimmett said.

Porcher founded an organization for Black women business owners, Buy From A Black Woman, and she served the country as an airman in the United States Air Force, so she knows how to organize, focus, and finish a job. This latest task has her in another election just to get the right to run in another election in November. As a Black woman in Georgia, she’s not alone.

There’s a whole state that will be impacted by these elections,” Porcher said. “It’s finally like the state is looking like its true representation.

“And it’s about time.” 

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