It’s official: Borders is off and running
April 2, 2009 at 7:22 pm by Scott Henry in NewsShortly before noon, in front of Old City Hall (the Mitchell Street side), Council President Lisa Borders jumped back into the Atlanta mayor’s race with both feet and a couple dozen well-wishers.
Her first order of business was to address why she’d changed her mind after leaving the campaign trail seven months ago. As Borders delicately explained, it seemed at the time that her parents’ failing health would demand so much of her time that she couldn’t continue her mayor campaign. Since then, she said, her family situation had “stabilized,” enabling her to rejoin the race. To underscore her point, both her parents were at her side during the announcement.
Borders’ family connections are a substantial part of her appeal for many older Atlantans. Her grandfather, the Rev. William Holmes Borders, was an influential pastor at Wheat Street Baptist Church who, in the pre-Civil Rights era, successfully helped push the city into integrating its police force and public transportation system. The Council president also name-checked late Mayor Maynard Jackson as having “inspired me to serve.”
But Borders’ main political asset is her close relationship with the Chamber of Commerce crowd. A Council member told me as an aside that, at a business breakfast he attended this morning, people came close to cheering when it was announced that Borders was getting back into the race.
The defining issues in the mayor’s race are likely to be public safety and the city’s financial management, which, Borders conceded, was “broken.” She criticzed Mayor Franklin’s decision to initiate police furloughs as a cost-cutting measure, but stopped short of saying how she’d come up with the money to end them.
“We should leverage all available resources before we raise property taxes,” she said. “But we shouldn’t take that off the table.”
Judging by the lapel pins her folks were wearing, Borders’ campaign theme seems to be “Believe.” As the rally ended, the 1998 Cher dance song of the same name came blasting out of the loudspeakers. Borders’ revived campaign wasn’t two minutes old and already she was pandering to gay voters.
See the photo gallery of the rally.
(Photo by joeff Davis)
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:03 am
Her re-entry should make this race interesting.
Borders and Norwood clearly have more name recognition than Reed, Thomas, and Spikes. However, these three have the opportunity to establish their records whereas Norwood and Borders will have to defend theirs. I’m interested to see how Norwood and Borders try and defend their years on the council. Norwood has tried to push several pro-neighborhood pieces of legislation with minor success. I’m not quite sure what Borders has done. It should be interesting to see how see tried to spin it.
Also, Reed, Spikes, and Thomas will have the pleasure of Monday morning quarterbacking everything the council and mayor do with the 2010 budget. If Norwood and Borders were smart, they would try to make the process as peaceful as possible. I think voters will be out for their heads if it gets too ugly.