Clair Muller is running for Council president
April 1, 2009 at 2:14 pm by Scott Henry in NewsJust 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 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.
If you’re unfamiliar with Muller, it’s likely because she rarely says much that makes headlines. A former North Buckhead neighborhood activist who cut her political teeth opposing the Georgia 400 extension, Muller has quietly been a Council workhorse. Long the Chairwoman of the Council’s City Utilities Committee, she now chairs the Transportation Committee and sits on the Utilities and Finance committees.
In a side note, seeing as we’re already halfway through Hump Day, I’m guessing that Lisa Borders will drop her coy public facade to make her mayoral announcement sometime tomorrow, a day when the General Assembly isn’t in session.
April 8th, 2009 at 12:42 am
40 winks is right. Maddox needs to stop sleeping!