After years of ground-level organizing, Black women to hold seven of Georgia's top eight elected leadership roles

Black women have worked for years at ground level to make Democrats competitive again in the US state of Georgia. The election results now reflect that work: Black women will hold seven of the state's top eight elected leadership roles.

On Election Day, 28-year-old Mary-Pat Hector volunteered to help get dozens of voters to the polls. For months before that, she had worked to energize young people to support Democratic candidates.

Hector had hoped Keisha Lance Bottoms would win, making Georgia the first state to elect a Black woman as governor. But the results went further: up and down the ballot, Black women, all Democrats, claimed positions that had long been occupied by Republican men.

When the results came in, Hector called her mentor, a veteran organizer in the state. 'We both just cried on the phone,' Hector said, 'because we have been doing this work for so long.' She added that they could finally 'see the fruits of our labor.'

For decades, Black women have been a trusted base of support for the Democratic Party in Georgia. They have knocked on doors, registered friends and neighbors to vote, driven strangers to the polls and persuaded people who had all but written off the government to show up anyway.

That incremental ground-level work revived the fortunes of Democrats in Georgia after years of Republican control, and this election's outcome has emerged as the result of that long organizing effort.