SCOOP: Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms will join the White House as one of Biden's most senior aides.
Bottoms, who has a reputation for candor, has committed to serve at least through the midterms, according to a senior administration official. RichmondIn choosing Bottoms to replace Richmond, a Black former congressman from Louisiana, Biden is signaling an ongoing commitment to African American constituents and leaders to elevate people of color in his administration.
Bottoms' work as mayor of a big city in a crucial swing state — during a period that covered the start of the pandemic through nationwide protests against systemic racism — has given her experience with some of the most pressing and divisive domestic issues Americans are confronting., Biden had at one point been considering former Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx as Richmond's successor.
Bottoms had been one of the names on the shortlist for Biden's VP pick. He chose Kamala Harris — and implored Bottoms to lead the Small Business Administration. Asheld a press conference in Atlanta and urged protestors to go home: “This is not a protest. This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. This is chaos," she said at the time. “If you care about this city, then go home.”with "Axios on HBO" in the summer of 2020, she opened up about the struggles of raising Black children amid fears they could be killed at the hands of police tasked with protecting the public.