Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is leaving her temporary role as a senior official in the Biden administration, but she made clear Monday she intends to stay involved in public policy as she returns to Georgia.
“It’s time for me to get back home, get back to my family and focus on the future,” Bottoms said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
President Joe Biden announced Monday that Steven Benjamin, the former mayor of Columbia, S.C., will replace Bottoms as a senior adviser and Director of the Office of Public Engagement. Benjamin’s new job begins in April.
The president said Bottoms helped keep equity at the heart of his political agenda during her stint in his administration. The office, he added, served as the connective tissue between his office and everyday Americans who struggle to be heard in Washington.
“I have leaned on Keisha as a close advisor with exceptional instincts, and I am grateful to her for serving our nation with honor and integrity,” Biden said. “I wish her the best as she returns home to Atlanta to be with her family.”
Bottoms, who served as mayor from 2018 through 2021, joined the Biden administration last summer to replace Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman who was Biden’s first Office of Public Engagement director as well as a close adviser.
“I was proud to bring a different voice and a different face to the White House: A voice from the South, an African-American woman in this White House. It was extraordinary,” Bottoms said, adding: “Sitting across from the president in the Oval Office, he knew that whatever my response was, I was speaking for so many people.”
As Biden’s adviser, Bottoms had a direct line to the president and Vice President Kamala Harris in serving as a public face of the administration at various press events. She most recently hosted an HBCU Student Journalist briefing at the White House with Harris last week.
“I’d never seen anyone like me inside of the White House, and here I stand many, many years later,” Bottoms told the young journalists on Feb. 23. “God always has these amazing dreams for us, and we don’t always know when they will happen.”
Biden hosted a fundraiser for Bottoms in 2021 before she made the surprise announcement that she wouldn’t seek a second term.
Bottoms’ time in office included an extraordinary set of challenges for the city, including a cyberattack, the pandemic and mass protests for racial justice in 2020 that tested the city’s relationship with Republican leaders.
At the same time, however, Bottoms was an early and ardent supporter of Biden when he was running for president in 2020. Bottoms backed Biden when many others doubted his chances in a crowded Democratic primary. She was on his shortlist of vice presidential picks, and after he was elected, Biden offered Bottoms a position in his Cabinet, though she did not accept it.
Bottoms left office with an overall positive approval rating from residents, but she had a strained relationship with the City Council and some community groups, especially amid a rise in crime during the pandemic.
“We have opened up the doors to thousands of people to engage with the White House in a meaningful way,” she told the AJC. “That’s what I’m really proud of. We have been able to hear from voices of a cross-section of people.”
Asked about whether she could seek office again, perhaps in 2026 when the governor and other statewide jobs are on the ballot, Bottoms left her options open.
“Never say never. I said that when I left the mayor’s office. Stay tuned.”
Excerpts of Bottoms’ interview:
On what’s next:
“It’s time for me to get back home, get back to my family and focus on the future. This is a time for me to rest and reevaluate and determine what’s next. Georgia has always been on my mind. I’ve never been far. And for the foreseeable future I am going to take a breather, take a vacation I haven’t been able to take from well before I entered the mayor’s race. I’ll be spending time with our family. Just breathing.”
On her time in the White House:
“I was proud to bring a different voice and a different face to the White House: A voice from the South, an African-American woman in this White House. It was extraordinary. Each time I walked through there, I thought of my grandfather who used to haul cardboard and paper from buildings downtown. To be able to help fulfill what he could have hoped for his children and his children’s children. Sitting across from the president in the Oval Office, he knew that whatever my response was, I was speaking for so many people.”
On her approach to engagement:
“We have opened up the doors to thousands of people to engage with the White House in a meaningful way. That’s what I’m really proud of. We have been able to hear from voices of a cross-section of people.”
On whether she will seek public office again:
“Never say never. I said that when I left the mayor’s office. Stay tuned.”
