Jason Esteves is 6’6”, plays pickup basketball at the YMCA three times a week at 6 a.m., owns two breakfast restaurants and an urgent care with his wife, practices law, and is running for Governor of Georgia. If that sounds like a lot, he would be the first to tell you that running for office requires a particular kind of crazy, and he means that as a compliment.
Esteves, a former Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education chair and Georgia State Senator, is one of several Black candidates running in the 2026 Democratic primary for governor, a race that, if Democrats win in November, will produce the first Black governor in Georgia history.
It is a milestone that Esteves speaks about with both urgency and confidence, the kind that comes from a man who has spent his career working to improve the systems he is now asking voters to let him lead.
He grew up on the south side of Columbus, Georgia, raised by working-class parents and a community that taught him early what inequality looks like when it is baked into a zip code. He became a middle school social studies teacher, then a lawyer, then a school board chair who helped turn Atlanta Public Schools from a 55 percent graduation rate to over 90 percent, then a state senator.
Now he is asking Georgians to send him to the Governor’s mansion.
Esteves says he represents a new generation of leadership, focused on health, wealth, and opportunity. He aims to reach voters in every part of Georgia, building a multigenerational, multiracial coalition that will flip the Georgia governor’s office blue for the first time in nearly thirty years. Esteves has already picked up impressive endorsements from former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former State Senator Jason Carter, labor unions, End Citizens United, and over 70 leaders statewide.
We spoke with Esteves for a conversation about who he is, what drove him here, and what he wants Georgians to understand about this moment.
Jason Esteves in conversation with Eric Keith, Editor-in-Chief, The Quintessential Gentleman [Interview has been edited for length and clarity]
QG: Who is the candidate behind the campaign? Who are you as a man?
Jason Esteves: I am a risk taker for the betterment of my community. That goes back to values that my mom and dad put in me as a young child wanting to give back. But I should also mention that first and foremost, I’m the husband to my wife, Ariel. She is a nurse practitioner from Albany and we are the parents of two small children, Jaeden and Zoe. We’re small business owners. We own two breakfast restaurants and an urgent care. And I’m also a lawyer. So that’s what I do by day, and then by night, I try to improve my community through public policy.
QG: What is it actually like running for office?
Jason Esteves: You have to be a little crazy. It’s kind of like going out to the middle of the street and singing a song, hoping that people pay attention, that they actually like what you’re singing, and that they ultimately start to clap. You’re going out on a limb and hoping that people want to hear what you have to say. It’s very much like entrepreneurism. You take a risk. What gives me comfort is that I’m doing it for good reasons. And that risk, over the course of my life, has allowed me to be in positions where I’ve made an impact on my community.
QG: You grew up in Georgia. What did that upbringing teach you about the state you’re now trying to lead?
Jason Esteves: I grew up on the south side of Columbus, Georgia, a lower-income, working-class community. What I saw early on was that there is a disparity between the opportunities I was receiving on the south side of town and what other people were receiving on the north side of town. Growing up, it seemed normal. It wasn’t until I was a middle school social studies teacher, in the classroom with kids like me, that I realized they were not having the opportunities they deserved either. If your opportunity to thrive is dictated by your zip code, the system is unfair. That is what ultimately motivated me to go from the classroom to law school to become a lawyer and then run for office. The south side of Columbus taught me that inequality is real, that the issues we have are systemic, and that we have to be intentional about changing those systems.
QG: You went from attorney to the Atlanta Board of Education to state senator to running for governor. Walk us through the moments that pushed you toward public service.
Jason Esteves: My classroom experience is what has motivated me my entire life. Teaching 150 kids changed my life, changed my outlook on what I wanted to do. Atlanta Public Schools was at a point when I was first elected to the school board, where the cheating scandal had just happened. The school system had broken trust with the entire community, and I was tasked with rebuilding that trust. We went to work with parents, students, teachers, and people in the community. And because of the work that we did, we were able to turn around a school system that was graduating 55 percent of its kids to today, where Atlanta Public Schools has a higher graduation rate than the state of Georgia, graduating more than 90 percent of its kids.
But what I noticed was that we were relying on our education system to fill in the gaps that existed in our society, the lack of food, healthcare, clothing, jobs for parents. So I went to the state Senate because I thought Georgia families deserve better. And what I found was Republican leaders who were distracted by politics, distracted by what Donald Trump was doing. And that fired me up even more because in this state, we have the resources to make Georgia a much better place to live. But because leadership continues to put politics ahead of people, people in our communities are actually suffering.
QG: What does it mean to you personally to be a Black man running for Governor of Georgia?
Jason Esteves: We’re making history in Georgia. We have four Black men who are running. We have a Black woman who’s running. And I know that Georgia is going to make history this year when we elect our first Black governor. What we’ve seen is that Donald Trump is actively trying to attack Black representation, Black history, Black culture, and trying to take away our rights. Just a couple of weeks ago, we saw the Supreme Court move the ball forward when it comes to taking away the Voting Rights Act and harming Black power in this country.
Georgia is a perfect example of what it looks like when Black people come together, exercise our power, and show that we can take our destiny into our own hands and elect leadership. And that’s what gives me hope and optimism about Georgia’s future. We have to elect a Democratic governor to ensure that Black communities across this state have someone who will advocate to ensure that the legislative maps are reflective of the diversity of this state. We need a governor who’s going to make sure that Black people are not silenced, are not ignored, and are seen in the conversations of what needs to change.
QG: What do you say to people who say politics is not for them?
Jason Esteves: I don’t blame those people. I know those people. I got some friends who are that same exact way. There have been many times where politics and politicians have not delivered for the people who voted them into office. But these policy decisions have an impact on every single thing that we do in our lives. We are paying five, six dollars a gallon in gas because of decisions made in Washington. We’re paying more in groceries because of tariffs. Whoever’s watching, the way you get somebody in office who represents you is by going to the ballot box. And the last thing I would tell you is this: if our vote didn’t matter, then Donald Trump wouldn’t be working so hard to take it away.
QG: Georgia has one of the fastest-growing economies in the Southeast. But that growth hasn’t reached everyone. What does economic justice actually look like in practice?
Jason Esteves: I want a democratic economy, and I’m not talking about a party. I mean an economy where everyone participates. Right now, about 50 percent of consumer spending is done by the top 10 percent of income earners. That math is not good. What I want to make sure we do is build an economy where if you work a full-time job, it doesn’t matter what job you work, you should be able to pay for healthcare, pay for childcare, rent or buy a home in a safe community where your children have access to good public schools. And if you’ve worked your entire life, you should be able to afford to retire.
We can build a state like that in Georgia because we have the resources and the talent. But we have to have a leader that understands that big businesses and billionaires doing well does not mean that everyone else is doing well. In order for our economy to grow, we have to be investing in our families and in our communities. That’s why my campaign is laser-focused on economic issues, economic empowerment, and healthcare.
On Kemp’s Redistricting Push
Since our conversation, the stakes in Georgia have escalated. Governor Brian Kemp announced a special legislative session to redistrict Georgia’s congressional maps ahead of the 2028 elections — a move Esteves called out directly.
“Governor Kemp’s call for a special session to gerrymander Georgia’s maps is yet another display of Republicans’ unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump and a clear maneuver to dilute the voting power of Black voters in Georgia,” Esteves said in a statement. “Brian Kemp and Burt Jones are rushing this through during Kemp’s lame duck year because they know that Democrats are poised to win the governor’s office this November. Republicans want to rig elections because they can’t win on their own policies.”
As governor, Esteves has committed to serving two terms to stop what he describes as Republican attacks on Georgia’s democracy and to pass fair maps that reflect the state’s diversity.
Check out the full interview.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Jason Esteves Campaign
