Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath took the first step toward a likely run for Georgia governor on Wednesday, filing paperwork that lays the groundwork for a campaign that could make her the nation’s first Black female governor.

The four-term congresswoman became the first Georgia Democrat to launch an exploratory committee to start raising campaign cash, and her allies say she’s expected to roll out a full-scale campaign for Georgia’s top office within weeks.

McBath, 64, is trying to build early momentum and scare off potential rivals in the wide-open race to succeed Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who cannot seek a third term. Though the GOP race for the office is well underway, the Democratic field has been more muddled.

“Georgians deserve a governor who understands what’s at stake, because they’ve lived it,” McBath said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“As a mom and breast cancer survivor, I’ve seen first hand how regular people are too often left out of the political process. I look forward to continuing this conversation with my neighbors and fellow Georgians.”

A former flight attendant, McBath became a nationally recognized gun control advocate after the murder of her teenage son, Jordan Davis, who was shot and killed in 2012 while sitting with his friends at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida.

She won elected office in 2018, flipping a congressional district long held by Republicans, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Since then, McBath built a reputation as a leading voice in Washington for gun safety measures, a platform that earned her a primetime speaking slot at last year’s Democratic National Convention.

She also hopes to capitalize on Democratic frustration with President Donald Trump’s policies, as his Georgia allies have backed his efforts to dismantle the federal bureaucracy, fire thousands of staffers and reshape the international order.

But McBath must strike a delicate balance in a state that Trump captured in November. Republicans immediately cast McBath as an out-of-touch Democrat who steadfastly supported President Joe Biden’s priorities.

“If Lucy McBath thinks her horrible record won’t follow her back to Georgia, she’s wrong,” said Courtney Alexander of the Republican Governors Association. “Georgians will soon know the truth: McBath shouldn’t be anywhere near the governor’s office.”

A domino effect

McBath’s strong name recognition in metro Atlanta and fundraising record — she’s amassed nearly $20 million over her congressional career — came despite Republican-led efforts to squeeze her out of her U.S. House district.

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Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Her expected entry could help sort out the Democratic field as the party looks to reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in more than two decades. While Democrats flipped both of the state’s U.S. Senate contests in 2020, the governor’s office has remained out of reach.

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, state Sen. Jason Esteves and former DeKalb chief executive Michael Thurmond are also weighing bids for governor. And two-time gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, who twice lost to Kemp, hasn’t ruled out a third campaign.

Republicans, by contrast, have been jockeying for position for months. Attorney General Chris Carr launched his campaign shortly after the November election, and he’s been in a growing rivalry with Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is expected to announce within months.

Other Republicans are waiting for Kemp to decide whether to challenge U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, perhaps the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in the Senate, before they choose whether to seek higher office or sit out a statewide campaign.

McBath’s impending statewide campaign will also leave open Georgia’s 6th District, a safely Democratic territory that spans much of west metro Atlanta. Among the potential contenders is state Sen. Sonya Halpern of Atlanta.

A rapid rise

McBath stunned even close friends when she ran for Congress and ousted Republican U.S. Rep. Karen Handel in 2018. In a nationally watched special election a year earlier, Ossoff fell just short of flipping the seat.

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Since McBath was elected, Republicans have repeatedly tried — and failed — to oust her from office. Handel’s comeback bid in 2020 fell flat. And in both 2022 and 2024, GOP lawmakers redrew her district boundaries in an attempt to push her out.

Each time, McBath switched to a neighboring district and easily defeated primary opponents before cruising to victory in the general election.

Those shifts also made her a more formidable political force, since McBath has now represented roughly one-quarter of the statewide Democratic electorate at some point in her U.S. House career.

McBath’s supporters argue her ability to win both suburban swing voters and Black women in deep-blue districts makes her invulnerable in a primary and a tough opponent in a general election.

While she has a solidly Democratic voting record, she has co-sponsored bipartisan health care and tax measures that Trump signed into law during his first term — giving her an appeal to independent voters that could prove valuable in November.

Like other Democrats who hope to be on the 2026 ballot, she must also win over a significant number of Trump supporters who helped the Republican narrowly recapture the state last year.

She was among four Georgia Democrats who broke party lines to support a federal immigration measure named for Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student who was killed by a Venezuelan native who was in the U.S. illegally.

And she has had particularly cutting words for state-level Republican gun policies, including a stalled proposal by Jones to pay teachers a $10,000 stipend to carry firearms in public school classrooms.

“It’s absolutely ludicrous and very frightening that we would advocate that our teachers be armed here in the state of Georgia,” McBath recently told the “Politically Georgia” podcast, adding: “There are other ways to keep our children safe in schools.”