NEW FROM OVERNIGHT: Former ATL Mayor Bottoms to join Biden WH

Former Atlanta Mayor to advise Biden admin at crucial juncture

Keisha Lance Bottoms

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has accepted an offer to join the White House as a senior aide to President Joe Biden, Axios reported late Tuesday night.

She will become the director of the Office of Public Engagement, where she will play a key role in advising President Biden’s closest advisors — and the President himself — ahead of the midterm elections and his expected 2024 re-election campaign.

She will be replacing Cedric Richmond, another early Biden ally and a former Louisiana Congressman who recently accepted a senior position at the Democratic National Committee.

In Bottoms, the White House is gaining one of the President’s earliest supporters. In 2019, she was one of the first Georgia Democrats to endorse Biden’s campaign for President and was speculated as a potential choice to be his running mate.

Though that role was given to now-Vice President Kamala Harris, Bottoms was reportedly offered another role in the incoming Biden administration after the 2020 election, which she declined.

The hire comes at a critical juncture for President Biden, who is grappling with low approval ratings, record-high inflation, rising gas prices and unrest in Ukraine.

But Bottoms, who led Georgia’s capital city through the COVID-19 pandemic and the social justice protests in the summer of 2020, argues that she has the experience to help navigate the White House through these problems.

“We’ve been through some very challenging times, especially for African Americans in this country,” she said in an interview with Axios. “Those challenges are still very fresh and real to me. And I live it every day: I live it as a Black woman, I live it as a mother of four children, and I know where those challenges are, but I also know where the opportunities are.”

It is unclear when Bottoms will start in her new role, but Axios has learned that she will be spending most of her time in Washington and that her family will remain in Atlanta.