Keisha Lance Bottoms brought her campaign for Georgia governor to Augusta on Sunday, then spent part of the afternoon at Regal Suites and Spaces on Washington Road in Evans, where she said she wants to help small businesses survive across the state.

Bottoms is one of seven Democratic candidates competing for governor in Georgia, a field that includes Jason Esteves. Her stop in the Augusta area put her message in front of business owners and voters in a region that has been pressed by rising costs and tight margins, even as campaigns across the state sharpen their pitches before the race moves deeper into the year.

At Regal Suites and Spaces, Bottoms centered her remarks on small business survival, a theme that gives her campaign a direct economic focus as she seeks to separate herself from rivals in a crowded primary. The visit also underscored how candidates are using local stops to make statewide arguments in familiar settings, with neighborhood businesses serving as a backdrop for broader promises about jobs, growth and stability.

The tension for Bottoms is that the message has to travel beyond one afternoon in Evans. She is reaching for voters who are likely to hear versions of the same economic argument from six other Democrats, including Esteves, and the contest will turn on who can turn those stops into a clearer case for why their plan, and not someone else’s, best fits Georgia.

For now, the Augusta stop showed exactly where Bottoms wants to plant that case: in front of small businesses, with the race already crowded and the competition for attention only getting tighter.