Five Black Governors to Serve at Once for First Time
Five Black governors will serve at the same time in the United States for the first time in history when the winners of the 3 November midterm elections take office in January 2027.
Four Black candidates won governorships on election day, joining Maryland governor Wes Moore, who won re-election to a second term. Before this election, only three Black Americans had ever been elected governor of a US state, and no two elected Black governors had ever served at the same time.
The four newcomers are Keisha Lance Bottoms of Georgia, Byron Donalds of Florida, Aaron Ford of Nevada and David Crowley of Wisconsin. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which tracks Black representation, said the results more than doubled the total number of Black Americans ever elected governor, from three to seven.
Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, became the first Black woman elected governor in American history, as well as Georgia's first woman governor. Donalds, a Republican congressman, became Florida's first Black governor and the first Black Republican ever elected governor in the United States. Crowley became Wisconsin's first Black governor, and Ford became Nevada's first Black governor.
The Joint Center noted that five of the nine Black major-party nominees for governor won their races. The milestone crossed party lines, with three Democrats and one Republican among the four new governors, and victories spread across the South, Midwest and West.
The organisation cautioned that its overview is updated as races are called, and some midterm results were still being finalised. But the five-governor figure stands as a record, ending a history in which the only previous elected Black governors were L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia in 1989, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts in 2006 and Moore in 2022.
[Source: jointcenter.org](https://jointcenter.org/black-representation-in-the-2026-midterm-elections/) | [Source: usatoday.com](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/11/04/black-governors-2026-election-history/92612279007/)
