Clair Muller is running for Council president

Just yesterday, I blogged that “the Council president’s job … seems suited to someone who excells at process and mediation.” Well, one such person has just filed her paperwork.

Now in her 20th year in office, Clair Muller has served on Council longer than any current member save for Jim “40 Winks” Maddox. During that time, she’s become the Council’s reigning technocrat, with an expertise in virtually every aspect of public infrastructure. It was Muller who persuaded then-incoming Mayor Shirley Franklin to put fixing the city’s sewers at the top of her agenda.

Temperament-wise, Muller would fit in well with the list of previous Council presidents, from Lisa Borders to Robb Pitts, stretching back to the days when a young Wyche Fowler presided over Atlanta’s Board of Aldermen. The Council president has typically served as the adult in the room during Council meetings: calm, steady, unruffled, non-reactionary, even a little boring. That’s not to say the Council president couldn’t be a firebrand, but for whatever reason, Atlanta has opted to elect even-keeled types over the last few decades.