Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Friday she has wrestled since her first year in office with whether to seek a second term, and this week she made a final decision to step aside even as she insisted she doesn’t know what she’ll do next.
“Leadership sometimes is about passing off the baton,” Bottoms told reporters at City Hall, the morning after releasing an election-year surprise public letter and video announcing that she wouldn’t run for re-election this year.
It was a stunning announcement for the 51-year-old politician who is just the second Black woman to lead Atlanta and who less than a year ago was among the women President Joe Biden considered as a possible running mate.
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