Fresh Loaf

For months now, Councilwoman Mary Norwood has insisted, promised, all but swore on the baby Jesus that if she’s elected mayor, Atlanta’s next police chief would be hired from within the ranks.

Despite her denials, many observers figured she must already have someone in mind. Otherwise, it wouldn’t seem to make much sense to narrow your options like that. Sure, Pennington didn’t work out so well, but it’s considered a best practice for cities of our size to conduct a national search for such important positions.

Still, Norwood repeatedly defended her decision at one forum after another, explaining that she wanted a chief who was already familiar with the local geography. As she told the AJC: “It takes them a long time for them to figure out where Adamsville is, where Moores Mills is and Browns Mill is.” (Psst — that’s why Al Gore invented GPS.)

Well, WABE radio reports that, just yesterday, Norwood flip-flopped and signed a pledge sponsored by a local human-rights organization stating that she’d undertake a national search for the next top cop.

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Buck Man, we don't need your vote

In the final days before next Tuesday’s mayoral election, it seems both Lisa Borders and Kasim Reed have ceded Buckhead to Mary Norwood and are focusing their remaining efforts on Southside Atlanta.

What makes us say this? Consider the evidence:

Last night, both were no-shows at a candidate forum hosted by the Pine Hills Neighborhood Association, a group that includes residents who live south of Lenox Square between Lenox and Roxboro roads.

Also, both have gotten into a war of words over who makes the better choice for Democratic voters, an argument that is unlikely to resonate with a good percentage of Northsiders.

Borders is now taking every opportunity to say she’s a Democrat, from her latest TV ad to ongoing phone solicitations in which callers ask the called to “Vote for Lisa Borders, Democrat.” And those calls are going out to Buckhead.

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These are a couple days old, but I’m just catching up with them. Before I saw the Lisa Borders ad, I heard it described as a dramatization featuring a “group of women talking together in a kitchen whom you’d never see talking together in a kitchen”:

After seeing the ad, I’d have to agree it’s fairly contrived, in the same way that most political ads using actors tend to be. Of more interest is what they’re saying. After the women express their concerns about crime, they offer these choice bullet points:

• “It’s time for these things to change.”
• “We need new leadership.”
• “What we need is a Democrat.”

OK, first the obvious: This ad is clearly aimed at female voters and, judging from the cast, specifically African American women. I assume it’s mainly intended to siphon women away from Kasim Reed. Take note of the line, “My girlfriend, she was out walking her dog, and someone came up behind her.”

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Can’t decide who you’ll vote for in the mayoral election next Tuesday because you’re just not fired up about any of the candidates?

May we suggest you try process of elimination? Sometimes choosing a candidate to support is best approached by determining who wouldn’t get your vote even in the event of ice-skating on the River Styx.

Fortunately, there are plenty of people with Internet access who are only too willing to help eliminate some candidate options through the careful application of innuendo, character assassination and good old-fashioned trash-talking.

As a rule of thumb, you haven’t earned your stripes as a candidate yet unless you’re the target of an anonymous opposition website. So, without further ado, here are selected hater sites:

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What's in it for Mable?

Just yesterday, one of our commenters predicted — jokingly, or so I thought — that former state Rep. “Able” Mable Thomas would endorse Councilwoman Mary Norwood for mayor.

Well, it’s happening. I just got an e-mail alert from the Norwood campaign about an endorsement photo-op scheduled for Friday.

How weird is this? Anyone who’s been around Atlanta any length of time knows “Able” Mable — herself a former Council member who most recently ran against U.S. Rep. John Lewis — to be a career politician and lip-service populist who never gives away what she can sell.

So, the question is, what did Norwood offer her in return? Just askin’.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Tom Houck, state Rep. Ralph Long, and Aaron Turpeau discuss race at Uptown Lounge

Over the past few months, the leading candidates for Atlanta mayor have dutifully taken part in dozens of public forums across the city, giving the impression that no interest group is too obscure or any issue too unimportant to be addressed.

Last week, however, a politically oriented event was held downtown without a single office-seeker in sight. But this was hardly surprising. Most candidates would prefer being waterboarded than to go on the record discussing the evening’s chosen subject: race.

It didn’t help that one of the participants in last Wednesday’s panel discussion at Uptown Lounge was Aaron Turpeau, the longtime political operative associated with a controversial memo calling for coordination among black leaders to elect a black mayor.

When the memo surfaced in August, City Council President Lisa Borders quickly denounced it. State Sen. Kasim Reed labeled it “racist.” Even Mayor Shirley Franklin weighed in, dismissing it as “bigoted.”

But like it or not, where the mayor’s race is concerned, race remains the mastodon in the room. Although few have discussed it openly, it’s quite possible that no single factor will have as much impact in determining Atlanta’s next mayor — although not necessarily in ways that seem obvious.

Continue reading “Race looms large in Atlanta’s upcoming mayoral election”

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Apparently, great publications think alike.

In an interesting coincidence, both CL and the NYT ran articles today about how the issue of race is affecting the Atlanta mayor’s race — and we both ended up quoting the same Emory poli sci prof!

Not so coincidental is the fact that we both used that professor’s take on Mary Norwood’s campaign strategy. Here’s the segment from the Times story:

Ms. Norwood has set the tone by relentlessly attacking the Franklin administration’s record on crime and city finances, forcing the other candidates to distance themselves from the mayor.

“When you attack City Hall, you’re also implicitly attacking, to a degree, black politics,” said Michael Leo Owens, a political science professor at Emory University. “And this is a message that in some ways plays well with the white electorate.”

For weeks now, I’d been trying to figure out why Norwood seems to be running against City Hall rather than her opponents. Owens’ analysis, though arguably cynical, makes a great deal of sense.

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Councilman Lamar Willis has achieved national recognition — as an example of how not to run a charitable foundation.

The current issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy cites Willis’ many, many legal and tax woes in a short piece that warns philanthropic organizations of the perils of not following the rules.

This month, for instance, a foundation operated by H. Lamar Willis, an Atlanta city-council member, was fined $25,000 by Georgia regulators because it was not registered in that state, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

This is one instance where it’s probably better not to have one’s efforts acknowledged.

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This is the pits. We’ve gotten word that Peach Buzz columnist Rich Eldredge quit the AJC last Friday after being told he was being reassigned. Here’s the internal memo that went out to the newsroom — somewhat prematurely, it would now seem:

Jennifer Brett joins the Opinion/Insight group as Peach Buzz columnist and blogger. Jennifer will report on the comings and goings of Atlanta’s celebs and VIPs. Jennifer will start Monday.

Rich Eldredge joins the Breaking News group, bringing a wealth of reporting experience and deep local connections. Rich will start Monday.

Oops, maybe not.

This is bad news for all concerned. I’ve argued before that a society/celebrity column has a place in a major daily newspaper and that Eldredge, who took over the gig full-time in 1996, was “easily the best Buzz-er the paper has had in the last 20 years.”

I can attest from experience that being bounced from a comfortable beat can be a jarring, horrendous experience for a journalist. On the other hand, it often goes with the territory. It’s a shame that the AJC management and Eldredge couldn’t work out a mutually agreeable solution. Instead, Peach Buzz loses his wry voice and the paper loses his “reporting experience and deep local connections.”

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Borders with sinister City Hall puppet-master Tom Bell!

Folks, there are scarcely two weeks left before the Nov. 3 city elections. Two damn weeks! It would seem the mayoral candidates are mindful of this because they’ve shifted into attack mode.

Last Friday, City Council President Lisa Borders challenged opponent Kasim Reed to pledge to “end nepotism” in City Hall, while pointing out that his brother works as a contract compliance officer for the city.

Now, the Borders folks told me about this months ago, hinting at some vague conflict of interest. But it isn’t nepotism because, while  candidate Reed is close to Mayor Franklin, he’s never worked for the city. And if he used his influence to help his brother get the job, that’s not illegal or even, I would argue, necessarily unethical.

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Last week, the AJC announced publicly what many observers had suspected for weeks: that it would not make an endorsement in the Atlanta mayoral race  — or any race, for that matter.

In a now-classic example of craven, CYA weaseling, the paper’s “editorial board” explained:

We have heard from readers — and we agree — that you don’t need us to tell you how to vote.

(If you follow this position to its illogical conclusion, it suggests that editor Julia Wallace thinks predecessor Ralph McGill was an insufferable bossypants.)

The board also promised it “will provide readers with clear, concise information about candidates’ positions and records,” to appear, in edited form, in the Oct. 25 issue of the paper.

Here’s how they’re doing it: Last week, the editorial board — which, you’ll recall, is now composed mostly of newspaper execs, rather than reporters or editorial writers — invited the leading mayoral candidates to meet with the board individually next week. But it was made clear that no endorsements would be given.

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OK, I like pirates as much as the next guy. Who among us hasn’t been tempted to silence some blowhard by snarling, “Avast ye, scurvy dog!”

But a pirate museum in downtown Atlanta? That makes about as much sense as us getting a cowboy heritage center or a monument to Arctic exploration.

Unless, of course, your goal is make a quick buck by turning Centennial Park into a theme park with cheesy attractions geared toward unrelated cultural fads. Hmm, now that’s an idea. What about opening the Buffalo Wing Museum? Or the Center for Cell Phone App Research? Or a meercat habitat? (Oops, I forgot Zoo Atlanta recently did that already.)

UPDATE: I was just reminded by a doctor of cultural anthropology I know that pirates were the major force behind the North African slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. Maybe the museum could offer a two-for-one admission deal with the planned Center for Civil and Human Rights.

(Image stolen from Snorg Tees)

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Vote early, vote often!

As you may have noticed, we at CL offered our City Hall endorsements this week — but only for four races: mayor, Council prez and two of the three at-large seats. Frankly, the reasons for being so selective were more practical than anything else. I mean, have you seen how many people are running for some of these seats? It wasn’t feasible to bring in 20 or 30 candidates for individual interviews. As it was, we ended up meeting face-to-face with a dozen candidates.

Does this mean we’re blowing off the rest of the Council races? We’re glad you asked, because the answer is no! In each of the contested district races, we asked the candidates to answer a questionnaire that we’d then post online to help educate voters. (Links to candidate responses are below the jump.)

You may recall that the Metro Atlanta Chamber (dba Committee for a Better Atlanta) does the same thing; we’d encourage you to read both sets of questionnaires — and visit the candidates’ websites, and watch forums, and attend meet-and-greets, etc. — in order to get a more complete idea of the choices facing you in the Nov. 3 election.

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Man, Jimmy Carter must be pissed!

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It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for Atlanta Councilman H. Lamar Willis, who stands for reelection in a little more than three weeks. First, the AJC reports that he owes nearly $44,000 in back taxes. Then, Secretary of State Karen Handel trumpets the fact that Willis just got socked with a $25,000 court fine due to his squirrely scholarship foundation.

The most recent AJC story mentions, for good measure, that the state filed yet another lien against Willis in late August to recover about $1,500 in unpaid sales taxes relating to a car he bought four years ago.

So today Willis released a statement trying to put his many financial missteps into, um, context. Here’s a taste:

The [$25,000] fine is related to a failure to properly register as a charity as required by Georgia law. The Court specifically found that there was insufficient evidence that the Foundation had used any artifice or scheme to defraud contributors. The Court also found there was insufficient evidence that the moneys’ [sic] raised were misappropriated. In fact, not a single contributor was called as a witness by the Secretary of State in support of the allegations put forth in her complaint. I did not use any contributions for my personal benefit.

Certainly, it should come as a big relief that “there was insufficient evidence that the monies raised were misappropriated.” Doesn’t that make you breathe a little easier?

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What does Atlanta’s much-maligned downtown central library — a building that’s been described as a giant cinderblock with windows — have in common with the ruins of Machu Picchu, a 17th-century Dutch fort in Sri Lanka and a group of pre-historic burial stones in a Jordanian valley?

Well, they are all among the dozens of structures, historic sites and geological formations included on the World Monuments Fund’s 2010 Watch List of the planet’s most endangered places.

(I have to admit I wasn’t familiar with the WMF, which bills itself as the “leading private organization dedicated to saving the world’s most treasured places.” Glad they made the distinction of being private, because I’m quite familiar with UNESCO, the kick-ass, Paris-based UN offshoot that fulfills that role in a public capacity.)

As you may recall, the central library building was one of the last designs by world-famous architect Marcel Breuer, who also designed the similar Whitney Museum in Manhattan. Last fall, Fulton voters approved a $275 million bond referendum that included funds dedicated to relocating the central library to another site. The Breuer building would be sold, presumably to a private developer who could decide to renovate it or tear it down.
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Michael Gidewon

After four hours of public comment from the largest crowd seen before the city’s License Review Board in several years — and another half-hour of see-saw deliberation by the five board members — Michael Gidewon’s proposed lounge and nightclub now heads to Mayor Shirley Franklin with a recommendation for approval.

“I’m really torn on this,” announced LRB member Will Lobb at the start of the board’s final discussion, seemingly echoing his colleague’s feelings. “I support the idea of the club … but this looks like it’s going to change the nature of the neighborhood.”

In the end, Lobb was one of two votes against the clubs; Peggy Harper also voted to deny after first suggesting the board send the matter to the mayor with no recommendation.

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Lamar Willis

Last Monday, the AJC reported that Atlanta Councilman H. Lamar Willis owed the state about $44,000 in back taxes and fines.

Today, Secretary of State Karen Handel sent out a notice alerting the press that Willis has been hit with a $25,000 fine by a Fulton Superior Court judge for misrepresenting his scholarship foundation as a nonprofit charity when it was not.

I’m guessing none of this is going to help Willis get reelected next month.

You may recall that, two years ago, an AJC investigation indicated a number of financial improprieties on Willis’ part, many of them centered on his foundation. If the article’s allegations were correct, Council observers mused at the time, then Willis could end up being charged with tax fraud by the feds.

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Back in May, I used the word “ghetto” in a headline to describe an impoverished,  crime-ridden stretch of road in central Atlanta. As a result, I learned the hard way that the word carries so much baggage that readers are turned off merely by seeing it in print, no matter how technically accurate its usage seems to be.

But, as the AJC’s Jim Galloway points out, when a white Georgia Congressman uses the word “ghetto” in a casually dismissive reference to folks who are poor, elderly and presumably black during a campaign stop before an overwhelmingly white audience — well, you’ve got the makings of a Macaca moment.

Congressman Nathan Deal

Just as in the case of now-ex-Virginia Sen. George Allen, who was videotaped making a casually dismissive taunt aimed at the Southeast Asian man holding the video camera, Rep. Nathan Deal was recorded by his opposition telling a Cherokee County crowd about his approach toward requiring proof of citizenship for federal or state health care benefits:

“We got all the complaints of the ghetto grandmothers who didn’t have birth certificates and all that. We wrote some very liberal language as to how you can verify it. My mother was born in 1906 and she didn’t have a birth certificate. They didn’t give birth certificates back then. But we got her one, because you can do it under the proper procedures of your state.”

A video of Deal’s bone-headed statement has been posted to YouTube by the campaign of Secretary of State Karen Handel, who’s running against Deal for the GOP nomination for governor. On Galloway’s blog, the clip has attracted nearly 300 comments, many from readers who characterize Deal’s choice of words as bigoted.

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Looking at the results of the three polls conducted on the Atlanta mayor’s race by Insider Advantage, one thing had me confused: the percentage of undecided voters seemed to be growing as the election draws closer.

For instance, the poll released Sept. 4 showed undecideds at 12 percent. That number had risen to 23 percent by Sept. 11 and crawled up slightly to 24 percent in a poll released yesterday.

That seemed counter-intuitive; the rule of thumb is that the undecided column should shrink as voters find out more about the candidates. So I called a couple of veteran pollster/politicos to see why we might be seeing these results.

Rusty Paul, a former state GOP head and campaign consultant, says he’s seen this phenomenon before. Voters can favor a candidate early on simply because of name recognition, he says, and then grow more uncertain about their choice as they learn more about all the candidate.

Beth Shapiro, a Democratic pollster, basically agrees, but doesn’t believe that’s what’s going on with the mayor’s race. Instead, she says the Sept. 4 result is likely an anomaly. In other words, it’s wrong. That’s the only way she can make sense of the later results that show undecideds hanging at about a quarter of the electorate.

“I think voters are still kicking the tires,” she says, comparing the mayor candidates to used cars — and fairly uninspiring ones at that.

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Michael Gidewon

“Midtown’s future hangs in the balance.”

So claims a letter by the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance that urges Mayor Shirley Franklin and the city’s License Review Board to deny a liquor license application by nightclub impressario Michael Gidewon.

As you’ll recall from our Sept. 7 cover story and other news coverage, the Gidewon family is seeking to open a pair of 10,000-square-foot clubs on Peachtree Street in the shadow of the Loews luxury hotel now under construction and catty-corner from the 1010 Midtown condo tower.

Joined by older brother Alex and three siblings, Gidewon has been the force behind the mega-clubs Vision, Compound and the Velvet Room.Many surrounding neighbors and business owners have loudly denounced the new clubs for weeks now, persuading the Midtown Neighbors’ Association and NPU-E to officially oppose them. The final showdown comes Tuesday, Oct. 6, before the License Review Board. If the LRB recommends denial and Franklin confirms that stance, then the Gidewon’s only recourse would be a lawsuit — which, I believe would be very difficult to win.

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Have you been wondering which city candidates were most likely to be anointed by powerful northside CEOs? Well, wonder no more, because the Buckhead Coalition has spoken — by putting a not-inconsiderable sum of money where its mouth is.

Like the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the Coalition doesn’t do direct endorsements. Unlike the Chamber’s questionnaire process, the Coalition makes its picks known with sizable campaign contributions through a PAC.

So here’s who got the cash:

• In Council races where an incumbent faces opposition, the Coalition gave the incumbent the $2,400 maximum contribution.
• In contested races without an incumbent, the $2,400 max went to Yolanda Adrean for District 8, Michael Bond for at-large Post 1 and Ceasar Mitchell for President. For reasons not made clear, the Coalition made no contributions in the races for District 6, District 11 and at-large Post 2.
• The Coalition split its donations in the mayor’s race, giving Mary Norwood $1,344 (56%), Kasim Reed $528 (22%), and Lisa Borders $528 (22%).

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With Mayor Shirley Franklin closing in on her final three months in office, community tributes celebrating her tenure have begun. The first is an event tonight launching the “Shirley Franklin Legacy Fund,” which boasts high-powered co-chairs in ex-Mayor Andy Young and Falcons owner Arthur Blank.

The minimum donation to attend tonight’s event is $100, with the money going to “support efforts to address homelessness” and to advance quality education, according to the invitation. The fund is being administered by the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta.

The invitation, which came from the “Friends of Shirley Franklin,” is extended to those who wish to “thank her for 8 years of making us proud,” which, you may recall, was Franklin’s campaign promise.

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Well, now we know that simply getting tax allocation district funding doesn’t guarantee a project’s success.

Renaissance Walk, a 161-unit condo complex located smack-dab in the Auburn Avenue historic district, went belly up last week after lenders rejected a restructuring plan.

The 27,000-square-foot development was one of seven projects in the Eastside TAD that was approved in 2005. The product of a partnership between the Integral Group and Big Bethel AME Church, Renaissance Walk cost $48.5 million to build and received $4 million in TAD funding.

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As the AJC reported this morning, city prosecutors and lawyers for the Atlanta Eagle were in Atlanta Municipal Court bright and early this morning to face off over a set of misdemeanor charges against eight of the gay bar’s employees and dancers stemming from a now-notorious Sept. 10 police raid.

Not much happened. A January trial date was set, but that’s unlikely to happen. Chances are, the case will be resolved before the Nov. 3 arraignment, when the city is scheduled to file formal charges.

There had been rumors that the city would simply dismiss all charges as a way to avoid prolonging the public-relations headache caused by the heavy-handed, commando-style raid. The fact that this didn’t happen suggests that police don’t want the added embarrassment of going away empty-handed, but instead are holding out for a plea bargain.

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