By Li Wong, CEO & Publisher, Georgia Asian Times
Saturday, November 7, 2026 – The Governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms stood inside the Georgia State Capitol and introduced “Georgia’s Promise,” the team that will help build her administration on Friday. It is an impressive list. The co-chairs include Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank, former Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer and filmmaker Tyler Perry. The honorary co-chairs include two former governors, two sitting U.S. senators and Ambassador Andrew Young.
Former state Rep. Pedro Marín, the longest-serving Latino legislator in Georgia history, looked at that same list and summed it up in four words: “No Latino or AAPI.”
He is right. Thirty-three people were named on Nov. 6: a chief operating officer, 10 co-chairs, 20 honorary co-chairs and two others recognized from the podium. Not one of them is publicly known to be Latino or Asian American and Pacific Islander.
For communities that helped put Bottoms in the governor’s mansion, that is a slap in the face.
WE SHOWED UP
Georgia’s Latino and AAPI communities are not a footnote to this state’s story. They are among its fastest-growing chapters. More than 368,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander Georgians are now eligible to vote, about 4.6% of the electorate, and that number grew 76% in a decade. Latino Georgians are a larger and also fast-growing share.
And this year, they delivered. According to ABC News voter polling, about 6 in 10 Latino voters backed Bottoms. That is roughly 10 points better than the Democratic nominee did in 2022. In the final weeks of the race, Bottoms came to us. She met with community leaders at the Latin American Association on Buford Highway. She sat down with AAPI voters in Alpharetta, at an event where representation was part of the conversation.
Three days after the election, when it came time to choose who sits at the table, we were not there.
WHY THE TABLE MATTERS
Some will say a transition team is ceremonial. It is not. Bottoms said so herself on Friday: the decisions made in the next few weeks about who will lead state agencies will shape how her administration delivers for all Georgians over the next four years.
Those agencies decide whether a grandmother in Doraville can get Medicaid information in Korean or Vietnamese. They decide whether a family-run business on Buford Highway can make sense of state licensing rules. They shape how Georgia responds when immigration enforcement reaches into our schools and workplaces. When no one at the table has lived those realities, they become afterthoughts.
A PATTERN WORTH NAMING
To be fair, Bottoms has a record of speaking to diversity. As mayor of Atlanta, she created the city’s first equity office and its first director of LGBTQ affairs. She stopped the city jail from holding federal immigration detainees. After the 2021 spa shootings that killed six Asian women, she spoke forcefully against blaming the victims.
But words are not seats. We could find no public record that, as mayor, she appointed a Latino or Asian American leader to her top cabinet. Her equity office was led by four different people during her term, and none came from our communities. Now the first list of her governorship repeats the same omission. When Black and white Georgians are treated as the whole picture, the “other” people of color in this state are left to wait outside.
THERE IS STILL TIME
The governor-elect has said that more co-chairs, policy leads and senior staff will be announced in the coming weeks. That is her opportunity, and we urge her to take it.
- Name Latino and AAPI co-chairs, not just honorary ones. Georgia does not lack talent. Leaders such as Pedro Marín, Jason Esteves, Rep. Sam Park, Rep. Michelle Au and former Rep. Bee Nguyen have served this state with distinction.
- Appoint policy leads who know our communities, especially on immigration, language access, small business and health care.
- Commit publicly that her agency heads and cabinet will reflect the Georgia that elected her.
Georgia made history this week by electing the nation’s first Black woman governor. That victory was built by a broad coalition, and coalitions are not dismissed once the votes are counted. If “Georgia’s Promise” is to mean anything, it must be a promise to all of Georgia.
