By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 19, 2022 – Back in June 2022 the White House announced in a press statement that public tours of the White House would resume a full operating schedule from Tuesdays through Saturdays beginning on Tuesday, July 19, 2022, adding that public tours “will be available from 8:00 AM to 12:30 PM on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, excluding Federal holidays or unless otherwise noted.”
The release stipulated that all White House tours are free of charge and that “public tour requests are scheduled on a first come, first served basis and must be submitted through a Member of Congress and their Congressional Tour Coordinator.”
“Consistent with prior practices, public White House tour requests must be submitted a minimum of 21 days in advance and no more than 90 days in advance of the requested tour date(s),” the release stated. “Reservations cannot be accepted for tour dates outside this 21 – 90-day window. Congressional Tour Coordinators will be able to submit tour requests for the full operating schedule on Monday, June 27, 2022.”
Given these rigid restrictions, when I saw a collection of photos posted on Facebook by my “adopted niece” Adair White-Johnson and her husband Eugene on a White House tour on Monday, December 19, I could help but wonder if she had received special consideration for an invitation to visit the White House. However, when I scanned through the photos and saw a photo of Adair and Eugene with former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, I guessed – probably correctly — that she was the reason they received invitations for the tour, given the fact they are prominent residents of Atlanta.
Adair is the daughter of the late renowned Bahamian Journalist P. Anthony White, who was not only a journalistic colleague of mine, but one of my closest friends from he was a young journalist in Nassau before he relocated to New York to attend college. I actually met Adair for the first time after her Johnson Tribe Publishing Company, based in Atlanta, agreed to assist me in August of 2017 with the publication of my novel WOES OF LIFE. Incidentally, WOES OF LIFE, based loosely on political developments in The Bahamas, which was published in September of 2017, is still available on Amazon. It is a great Christmas gift.
I am a huge “political fan” of former Atlanta Mayor Bottoms, who in my view did a fantastic job as the 60th mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022. In fact, early in the Biden administration when it was rumored that she would be appointed as U.S. Ambassador to The Bahamas, as a native of The Bahamas I really hoped that the rumor would become a reality. However, it is now obvious that Keisha Lance Bottoms is “a rising star” in national politics in the United States, having been nominated by President Biden as vice chair of civic engagement and voter protection at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for the 2021–2025 term. Then in June of 2022, she joined the Biden administration as Senior Advisor and Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
Bottoms often appears on TV as a spokesperson for the Biden Administration and articulately demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is indeed a “rising star” in the National Democratic Party.
Before becoming Atlanta’s mayor in 2017, Keisha Lance Bottoms was a member of the Atlanta City Council, representing part of Southwest Atlanta. Bottoms did not run for a second term as mayor.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 18, 1970, to Sylvia Robinson and R&B singer-songwriter Major Lance – who became internationally famous in the 1960s with hit songs like “Delilah”, “The Monkey Time”, “Mama Didn’t Know”, “Hey Little Girl”, among others – she was raised in Atlanta and is a graduate of Frederick Douglass High School.[
She earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Florida A&M University, concentrating in broadcast journalism and earned a J.D. degree from Georgia State University College of Law in 1994. Early in her career, she was a prosecutor and also represented children in juvenile court. In 2002, she became a magistrate judge in Atlanta, but in 2008, she ran unsuccessfully for a judgeship on the Fulton Superior Court.
Bottoms was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 2009 and 2013, representing District 11 in southwest Atlanta. She served until 2017 and was concurrently the executive director of Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority starting in 2015.
In the 2017 Atlanta mayoral election, Bottoms was elected mayor after receiving a plurality of votes (26%) in a crowded field of candidates on election day, then defeating fellow city council member Mary Norwood in the runoff election to become the sixth African American and the second African American woman to serve as mayor of Atlanta.
In June 2019, Bottoms endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. After Biden promised during a March 2020 CNN debate to choose a woman as his running mate, Politico reported that Bottoms was a possible pick. In June, CNN reported that Bottoms was among Biden’s top four choices, along with Representative Val Demings and Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. On August 11, Harris was officially announced as Biden’s running mate.
After Biden’s election, Bottoms was mentioned as a possible candidate for United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In January 2021, Biden and Harris nominated Bottoms for a four-year term as the vice chair of civic engagement and voter participation at the Democratic National Committee, a role focused on protecting voting rights and expanding voter participation.
Then in June 2022, it was announced that President Biden had picked Bottoms to replace Cedric Richmond as the director of the Office of Public Liaison.
Clearly, as I previously noted. Keisha Lance Bottoms is a “rising star” in the Democratic Party’s political firmament.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, was the source for most of the information in this article.
