Fresh Loaf

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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Borders, Norwood and Reed, oh my!

The stage is set. The field is fixed. The race is on.

Although qualifying is still nearly four months away and the election itself not until Nov. 3, few if any political observers expect the next mayor of Atlanta to be anyone who hasn’t already joined the race. In fact, conventional wisdom holds that, come a year from now, the office will be occupied by one of the three apparent front-runners: Council President Lisa Borders, Councilwoman Mary Norwood or state Sen. Kasim Reed.

It won’t take anywhere near that long, however, for the rest of us to be sick of hearing about the mayor’s race. Typically, yard signs for city races start to appear sometime in late summer. You can thank Norwood for kicking the effort off early, peppering Atlanta lawns with her campaign logo last month.

“If you can find a neighborhood in the city where she doesn’t have a yard sign, it’s because someone stole it,” jokes one local politico.

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You’d have to be a hopeless local politics wonk — or a reporter — to even have been aware that Borders was the subject of an ethics complaint. Now that it’s been dismissed, you can return to your state of blissful and well-earned ignorance. You’re welcome, however, to read on if you’re one of the aforementioned hopeless wonks.

Right off the bat, I should mention that Borders wasn’t accused of any of the typical charges against elected officials — missed document-filing deadlines, misappropriation of campaign funds, nepotism, coprophilia, etc. Instead, the allegation was that the Atlanta City Council President engaged in improper lobbying during the 2007 General Assembly on behalf of her then-employer, Cousins Properties.

If the complaint had been found valid, Borders could have been fined. But even worse would’ve been the embarrassment and distraction from her mayoral campaign. As it was, the accusation was dismissed because the only evidence of wrong-doing was circumstantial — although eyebrow-raising to many at the Gold Dome.

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Rumors have been building since last fall that Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders was contemplating her re-entry into the mayor’s race. Well, the rumors are more or less true. She confirms she is “reconsidering” a run for mayor.

In other words, it’s a definite maybe.

You’ll recall that when Borders withdrew from the race last August, she said she needed to care for her elderly, ailing parents. Since then, the circumstances have changed somewhat. Another family member is helping care for her father and Borders discovered a previously unknown health insurance policy that will ensure professional care for her mother.

As far back as last fall, Borders was privately expressing ambivalence over her decision to get out of the mayor’s race and discussing possible routes of re-entry. One such possibility was the chance that Shirley Franklin would receive an appointment in the Obama administration and be forced to leave office early, but that didn’t happen. In recent weeks, Borders says, she has received requests from many supporters asking her to jump back into the race

“I’ll make a decision before the end of the month,” she tells CL.

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Word on the street is that Sen. John McCain will join Sen. Saxby Chambliss Thursday at 6:00 p.m. for a fundraiser at downtown’s 191 Club. The event is hosted by former Georgia-Pacific CEO Pete Correll and Cousins Properties CEO Tom Bell. Cousins HQ is in the same building as the 191 Club, 191 Peachtree.

Chambliss faces a run-off election next month against Democratic challenger Jim Martin. CL’s Scott Henry reported yesterday that McCain and Chambliss will also appear together Thursday at Cobb Energy Center.

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Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders and a former member of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s staff have been named, along with a South Georgia construction firm, in state ethics complaints for unregistered lobbying at the Gold Dome.

Neill Herring, a longtime Sierra Club lobbyist, filed the complaints with the State Ethics Commission last week. (To view Herring’s statement of facts, click here.) The grievances center around alleged unregistered lobbying for SB 200 and SR 309, two pieces of legislation that dealt with the testy issue of  “infrastructure development districts.” The initiative passed both chambers in the General Assembly and was signed into law by Perdue in 2007.

Commonly called “private cities” by their critics, the districts allow developers to issue tax-exempt bonds and levy assessments on property owners to pay for roads, sewers, or even amenities like golf courses. The practice is legal and used in 17 other states. The districts often begin as greenfield projects in cash-strapped counties and offer developers an incentive to pursue a project. Environmentalists, however, say private cities are catalysts for sprawl and grant government powers to a private entity.  The Sierra Club has been at the front of the fight against the concept. Voters will be presented with a referendum on the general election ballot that asks whether such districts should be legal in Georgia.

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The departure of Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders from the Atlanta mayor’s race earlier this week has, by political strategists’ calculation, left behind a large window of opportunity for the right candidate.

Specifically, we mean someone backed by the Atlanta business community – anointed by the Chamber of Commerce, as it were. Borders, a protege of mega-developer Tom Cousins, had been that person, but now she’s out.

Therefore, the buzz of the moment has concentrated on a well-known and universally respected chief executive, a man of unique achievement who’s arguably done more than anyone since Ted Turner to restore the vibrancy of Atlanta’s downtown business district.

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Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders is expected to announce shortly that she will discontinue her campaign for mayor. Borders, one of the favorites in an already-crowded field of hopeful successors to Shirley Franklin, became the first declared candidate in April 2007.

No, her decision has nothing to do with the Atlanta Dream’s terrible WNBA record (she’s a team advisor), or her rumored fling with ex-presidential candidate John “Loverboy” Edwards (OK, we made that part up).

Actually, if we may be serious for a moment, we’re told Borders is stepping aside to spend more time with her ailing parents, Dr. William H. and Gloria T. Borders.

Last December, Borders left her position as senior vice president of marketing and communications at real-estate giant Cousins Properties to head her own consulting firm, LMB LLC and concentrate on her mayoral campaign. She will continue her term as Council president. No word yet on whether she plans to run for re-election or rejoin Cousins.

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