比尔·巴罗 亚特兰大——基莎·兰斯·博顿斯在竞选佐治亚州州长时，大量谈论她将推行的政策。这位民主党提名人却较少谈及她若赢得这一职位将创造的历史。
BILL BARROW ATLANTA — Keisha Lance Bottoms talks a lot about the policies she would pursue as Georgia governor. The Democratic nominee is less likely to talk about the history she would make by winning the job.
美国从未有任何一州选出过黑人女性州长。这位前亚特兰大市长、曾担任民主党总统乔·拜登的白宫顾问的女性，正试图在这样一个深南部州实现这一目标——她的家族血脉可以追溯到这个州内战前蓄奴的时代。
Never has a Black woman been elected governor in any state. The former Atlanta mayor and onetime White House adviser to Democratic President Joe Biden is trying to do it in a Deep South state where her lineage extends back to antebellum enslavement.
“我至少是第五代佐治亚人，”56岁的博顿斯在竞选活动中说，“我说‘至少’，是因为我们只能把家族追溯到克劳福德维尔的一个种植园，共五代。”博顿斯很少——如果有过的话——明确提及奴隶制、吉姆·克劳种族隔离，甚至种族问题。但那段历史——她本人的、佐治亚州的以及整个国家的——笼罩着她与共和党提名人里克·杰克逊的选战。
“I am at least a fifth-generation Georgian,” Bottoms, 56, says as she campaigns. “I say ‘at least’ because we can only trace our family back five generations to a plantation in Crawfordville.”Bottoms rarely if ever mentions slavery, Jim Crow segregation or even race explicitly.
这位亿万富翁是72岁的白人男性，在亚特兰大长大，如今住在郊区一座占地广阔的庄园里。他一直猛烈抨击这位前市长是个失败者，把她四年的任期描绘成犯罪猖獗的衰落期。其他共和党人也纷纷附和，直至唐纳德·特朗普，总统指责博顿斯毁掉了一座曾经伟大的城市。
But that story — hers, Georgia’s and the nation’s — shadows her battle with Republican nominee Rick Jackson . The billionaire, a 72-year-old white man who grew up in Atlanta but now lives on a sprawling suburban estate, has hammered the former mayor as a failure, painting her four-year tenure as a crime-ridden decline. Other Republicans, up to Donald Trump , have joined in, with the president accusing Bottoms of ruining a once-great city.
“把亚特兰大描绘成这么一个糟糕透顶的地方，是一套由来已久的套路，”博顿斯说，并斥责共和党的说法荒谬可笑——毕竟这座城市曾举办过奥运会，最近还承办了八场世界杯足球赛。
“It’s a long-standing playbook to paint Atlanta as this big bad place,” Bottoms said, dismissing the Republican frame as ridiculous for a town that once hosted the Olympics and recently staged eight World Cup soccer matches.
她最近的一则广告对此予以回击，其中播放了2020年街头抗议高峰期间她与本市执法部门领导人共同举行新闻发布会的片段。当时亚特兰大和全美各地都在抗议警察对黑人男性的暴力行为。“如果你关心这座城市，那就回家去，”她说，“我们不该是这样。”博顿斯将在周三由贝拉克·奥巴马——美国第一位黑人总统——领衔的集会上回应特朗普和共和党人。
One of her most recent ads pushes back by featuring clips of the news conference she held with the city’s law enforcement leaders during the peak of 2020 street protests of police violence in Atlanta and nationwide against Black men. “If you care about this city, then go home,” she said. “We are better than this.”Bottoms will answer Trump and Republicans at a rally Wednesday headlined by Barack Obama , the first Black U.S. president.
在大多数州，当然也包括佐治亚州，共和党联盟绝大多数是白人，根基在郊区、小城市和小城镇。在这些地方，许多选民对大都市及其管理者持怀疑甚至鄙夷的态度。但针对博顿斯的一些言论，在这个自1776年以来全部83位州长均为白人男性的州里，充斥着种族和性别的幽灵。
Republican coalitions in most states, and certainly in Georgia, are overwhelmingly white and anchored in suburbs, smaller cities and small towns. Those are places where many voters look skeptically, even scornfully, upon big cities and the people who run them. But some of the rhetoric directed against Bottoms is steeped in specter of race and gender in a state where all 83 governors since 1776 have been white men.
杰克逊的电视广告——由他本人超过2亿美元资金资助的铺天盖地的投放——使用了2020年亚特兰大示威和暴力事件的画面，以及博顿斯的模糊影像。这些抗议活动发生在亚特兰大一名白人警察枪杀手无寸铁的黑人男子雷沙德·布鲁克斯之后。
Jackson’s TV ads, a deluge funded by more than $200 million of his own money, feature footage of the demonstrations and violence in Atlanta in 2020 , along with grainy images of Bottoms. The protests followed the police killing of Rayshard Brooks, an unarmed Black man, by a white Atlanta police officer.
共和党的竞选攻势在一些博顿斯的支持者中并非无人注意，尤其是其他黑人女性。
The Republican campaign effort has not gone unnoticed among some Bottoms supporters, especially other Black women.
“人们很容易基于自己的偏见来攻击亚特兰大和博顿斯市长，”退休教育工作者、博顿斯的支持者贝弗利·赖斯说。
“It’s easy for people to attack Atlanta and Mayor Bottoms based on their own biases,” said retired educator Beverly Rice, a Bottoms supporter.
博顿斯的参选标志着佐治亚州民主党连续第三次提名黑人女性竞选州长。斯泰西·艾布拉姆斯在2018年和2022年两次败给共和党州长布赖恩·坎普，坎普因任期限制将于2027年在任职八年后卸任。艾布拉姆斯比之前任何黑人女性都更接近赢得州长选举。
Bottoms’ bid marks the third consecutive time that Georgia Democrats have nominated a Black woman for governor. Stacey Abrams lost in 2018 and 2022 to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp , who is leaving office in 2027 after eight years due to term limits. Abrams came as close to winning a governor’s race as any Black woman before her.
在一次采访中，艾布拉姆斯不愿将种族和性别视为她败选的决定性因素。但她表示，竞选州长的黑人女性面临更高的门槛，因为对于那些特别看重行政经验的选民来说，目前还没有先例可循。同样来自亚特兰大的艾布拉姆斯此前曾担任州众议院少数党领袖，共和党人贬低这一职位，称其经验不足。
In an interview, Abrams was reluctant to assign race and gender as the deciding factor in her defeats. But she said Black women running for governor face a higher bar because there is no example yet for voters who place a special emphasis on executive experience. Abrams, also an Atlantan, had served previously as state House minority leader, a role Republicans minimized as insufficient experience.
艾布拉姆斯说，在政治中，行政标准“并不平等地适用于所有候选人”。她说，博顿斯“有充分的论据”，因为她曾担任行政职务。在此之前，博顿斯曾是市议会议员、治安法官和检察官。艾布拉姆斯等人说，正是这份履历，让共和党人如此猛烈地批评博顿斯的经验。“糟糕的市长当不好州长，”杰克逊在竞选最后阶段反复说道。
Abrams said that executive standard “does not apply equally across candidates” in politics. She said Bottoms “has a sound argument” because she has held the executive’s role. Before that, Bottoms was a City Council member, magistrate judge and prosecutor. That resume, Abrams and others said, is why Republicans have so aggressively criticized Bottoms’ experience. “Bad mayors don’t make good governors,” Jackson’s said over and over in the closing stretch of the campaign.
他特别注意到她决定不再竞选连任市长，而是加入拜登的白宫担任高级顾问——博顿斯说，她有意推迟这一举动，以完成自己的四年任期。在杰克逊的说法中，博顿斯“背弃了亚特兰大”。其他保守派人士比杰克逊走得更远。
He has taken special notice of her decision not to run for a second term as mayor, instead joining Biden’s White House as a senior adviser – a move Bottoms said she deliberately put off to finish her four-year term. In Jackson’s telling, Bottoms “turned her back on Atlanta.”Other conservatives have gone further than Jackson.
“基莎·兰斯·博顿斯让亚特兰大燃烧，”杰克逊的高级代理人约翰·金有时在候选人集会上说。约翰·金曾是亚特兰大警察，现在是州保险专员。
“Keisha Lance Bottoms let Atlanta burn,” top Jackson surrogate John King, a former Atlanta police officer and now state insurance commissioner, sometimes says at the candidate’s rallies. That is a reference to protesters setting fire to a Wendy’s fast food restaurant close to where Brooks was killed.
这指的是抗议者在布鲁克斯被杀地点附近纵火焚烧一家温蒂快餐店。这一提法在一座以凤凰从灰烬中升起为象征的城市里有着额外的分量——采用这一象征，是因为内战期间联邦军队烧毁了年轻的亚特兰大的部分地区。
The reference carries an extra weight in a city whose symbol is a phoenix rising from the ashes — a symbol adopted because Union forces burned parts of a young Atlanta during the Civil War. At a Trump rally last weekend in Macon, a smaller city in middle Georgia, the president hammered away, too.
上周末，在佐治亚州中部较小的城市梅肯举行的一场特朗普集会上，总统也猛烈抨击。特朗普说，博顿斯“用她的犯罪、污秽和持续不断的骚乱摧毁了亚特兰大”，这与他针对许多黑人人口众多或占多数的地区所发出的那种有时粗俗的攻击如出一辙。
Bottoms “destroyed Atlanta with her crime and filth and constant riots,” Trump said, echoing the kind of sometimes profane attacks he has leveled against many places with large or majority Black populations. “I always viewed Atlanta as a great city,” he insisted.
“我一直把亚特兰大视为一座伟大的城市，”他坚持说，“现在它不再被视为伟大了。”在2017年与时任美国众议员约翰·刘易斯的一场争执中，特朗普称这位民权偶像的选区“犯罪猖獗”，并称其“正在崩溃”。该选区包括达美航空和可口可乐的全球总部以及佐治亚理工学院。根据联邦统计数据，亚特兰大在博顿斯任期内确实出现了犯罪率飙升，但在全国新冠疫情期间犯罪率普遍上升的背景下，这并非孤例。
“It’s not considered that anymore.”In a 2017 dispute with then-U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Trump called the civil rights icon’s district, which includes Delta Airlines’ and Coca-Cola’s world headquarters and the Georgia Institute of Technology, “crime-infested” and said it was “falling apart.”Atlanta did see a crime spike during Bottoms’ tenure, but it was not an outlier alongside the COVID-19 pandemic surge across the country, according to federal statistics.
疫情消退后，美国和亚特兰大的犯罪率大幅下降。博顿斯确实签署了一项行政命令，阻止亚特兰大监狱关押联邦移民拘留者。
After the pandemic waned, U.S. and Atlanta crime rates dropped significantly. Bottoms did sign an executive order blocking the Atlanta jail from holding federal immigration detainees.
共和党人夸大了她在保释方面的举措。博顿斯签署了一项城市条例，取消了某些非暴力犯罪的现金保释，目的是减少监狱人口，并减少她和其他市政官员认为对轻罪过度惩罚的做法。
Republicans have exaggerated her action on bail. Bottoms signed a city ordinance that eliminated cash bail for certain nonviolent crimes, intending to reduce the jail’s population and what she and other city officials deemed excessive punishment for low-grade offenses.
她最新的广告反击是在筹款激增之后推出的，而在杰克逊夏季广告攻势期间，她一直没有这样的筹款。一则画外音说：“当一场全国性危机涌入亚特兰大时，基莎·兰斯·博顿斯站了出来。”
Her latest advertising retort follows a surge of fundraising that she did not have throughout Jackson’s summer advertising onslaught. “When a national crisis poured into Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms stood up,” a voice-over says.
除了呼吁人们离开街头，这位四个孩子的母亲还说：“最重要的是，我是一位母亲，所以你在关心程度上比不过我，在关心我们所处局势上也比不过我。”她的助手认为，这则广告——以及她实时处理该事件的方式所呈现的现实——塑造了一位强硬而富有同理心的政治人物形象，既了解公共安全方面的担忧，也了解美国黑人的现实处境。
Besides her exhortation for people to leave the streets, the mother of four said, “Above everything else, I am a mother, so you are not going to out-concern me and out-care about where we are.”Her aides see the ad — and the reality of how she handled the matter in real time — as depicting a political figure official who is tough and empathetic, aware of public safety concerns and the realities for Black Americans .
但博顿斯的顾问以及她本人也表示，他们希望佐治亚州民众根据切实的政策差异做出决定，其中最突出的是她强调解决经济困难并扩大医疗补助保险资格——此举将惠及跨越种族界限的城市和农村人口。退休教育工作者赖斯说，这正是州长办公室的意义所在。
But Bottoms’ advisers, and the candidate herself, also say they want Georgians to make their decisions on tangible policy distinctions, most notably her emphasis on addressing economic struggles and expanding Medicaid insurance eligibility — a move that would reach urban and rural populations across racial lines. That is the point of the governor’s office, said Rice, the retired educator.
“我百分之百相信，只要人们用自己的价值观来评判她，她就能赢，”她说。“我看着她，不会看到一个‘黑人州长’。我看到的是一个为所有人服务的州长。”
“I have 100% faith that she can win if people just judge her with their values,” she said. “I don’t look at her and see a ‘Black governor.’ I see a governor for all the people.