Two Democratic candidates for governor made last-minute campaign swings through Coastal Georgia to win over undecided voters and rouse their supporters to the polls on Tuesday.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta’s former mayor, blitzed through Coastal Georgia on Saturday, making stops in Waycross, Savannah and Statesboro. Jason Esteves, a former state senator from Columbus and previous chair of Atlanta’s election board, rolled into the Hostess City early Monday.
Although polls show Bottoms leading Esteves, Geoff Duncan, Michael Thurmond and three others ahead of Tuesday’s primary, her numbers don’t exceed the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff between the two top vote-getters. Esteves hopes to be one of those. What makes the outcome of the voting so difficult to predict is the huge number of voters who tell pollsters they are undecided.
Despite her lead in the polls, the sparse crowd that gathered to see her at the Front Porch Improv off Victory Drive in Savannah — 15 people, not counting elected officials — seemed to illustrate the mixed feelings that persist about her among Democrats.
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson introduced her but pointedly has not endorsed her or anyone in the race. Neither has the influential The Savannah Tribune, the oldest Black-owned newspaper in Georgia.
Regardless, the campaign is projecting a confident image. A van bearing her portrait blared a custom campaign theme song. Nearby, her staff posted her campaign signs, which have been noticeably rare in the city.
Bottoms’ most recent stop in Savannah, a Democratic Party stronghold, was in January. She told the room that did not reflect her campaign’s regard for Coastal Georgia and its importance.
“South Georgia is very important, especially Coastal Georgia, to this election. And that is the reason we’re making it part of our last week” of campaigning, she said, as she urged her supporters to call their friends and relatives and urge them to the polls on Tuesday.
Her campaign does not have a staff member based in Coastal Georgia, and when asked how she would ensure a high voter turnout in Savannah on Tuesday, Bottoms, 56, had only a vague reply. “We’ll be making phone calls. We’ll be relying on all the tools,” she said.
Esteves faced a similarly sparse crowd of some two dozen people at the Vintage Special Event Center off Louisville Road in west Savannah, though that was hardly surprising, given it was Monday morning.
In his push for a spot in the runoff, Esteves declared that his campaign had the commodity that every candidate yearns for as election day draws near. “I have the momentum to get into that runoff and ultimately beat Keisha Lance Bottoms,” he told reporters.
In his remarks to the attendees, Esteves leaned into what he believes is one of his biggest selling points to undecided voters: his age.
“I tell them if they’re tired of the same old politics and the politicians that got us into many of these crises in the first place, then I’m asking for their vote,” the 42-year-old lawyer said. “People are ready for a new generation of leadership.”
To spur voter turnout, Esteves highlighted last month’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that hollowed out a landmark Civil Rights-era law that has increased minority representation in Congress and elsewhere.
With the encouragement of President Trump, the decision has led to plans to redraw congressional maps across the South, including in Georgia. On Monday, Esteves raised the alarm.
“He’s actively targeting black representation across this country and the Republican Party here in Georgia is helping them,” he said.
“What the Supreme Court did was raise the stakes on making sure that we elect a Democratic governor, that we elect a Democratic secretary of state and attorney general, and to make sure that we elect judges that are going to apply the law in a fair and balanced manner and not assist the Republican Party in breaking the system.”
This article appears in 2026 Elections: Candidate lists, news.
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