Fresh Loaf

A new Insider Advantage poll shows Mary Norwood’s still the frontrunner in the Atlanta mayor’s race with 45 percent support. Kasim Reed trails with 25 percent. Lisa Borders, who until two weeks ago was second in the race, is third with 16 percent. Jesse Spikes is in the low single digits. Eleven percent of the poll respondents were undecided. (Here’s a link to a PDF of the poll’s crosstabs.)

So sayeth pollster Matt Towery, CEO of IA:

“Based on this survey, if the election were held today, Norwood would likely be within one or two percent of winning the race without a runoff. Her barrage of ads and the apparent decline in Borders’ support suggests that white voters are moving to Norwood. That said, Reed now appears to be the African-American candidate with substantial support from the black community.

What’s interesting about the mayor’s race right now: It’s about image rather than platforms.

Borders, Reed and even the Georgia Democratic Party have accused Norwood of being a Republican. Norwood, who invited the criticism after she said earlier this week that she couldn’t remember if she ever voted for George W. Bush, responded with a TV ad. In it, she rattles off the names of Democrats and even Ross Perot, which, in my opinion, might’ve done her more harm than good.

The Reed campaign today issued a statement calling the Norwood spot a “slick and calculated denial of her well-documented Republican past” and a “scheme to trick Atlanta’s Democratic majority into making a false choice on the eve of this election.”

Political wonks take note: Campaign disclosure reports, which’ll tell us how much cash each candidate has to spend in the final days before Nov. 3, are due today at 5 p.m.

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Southeast Atlanta residents won’t want to miss tonight’s mayoral candidate forum.

Candidates Lisa Borders, Mary Norwood, Kasim Reed and Jesse Spikes will field questions from moderators Derrick Boazman and Bishop Matthew Norwood at the Atlanta Youth Academy on Forrest Park Road. (Map here.)

The event, which is sponsored by nine neighborhood and community organizations, is billed as Southeast Atlanta’s first mayoral forum. Discussion will focus solely on the issues that impact the part of the city which includes the Grant Park, Reynoldstown, Benteen Park, Summerhill neighborhoods, among others.

A reception will be held from 6:30-7:00 p.m. The two-hour forum follows. Child care will be available.

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KASIM'S OUR MAN: Reed deserves the edge for his clear-eyed, pragmatic vision of Atlanta’s future

Even as it heads into the final days before the election, the Atlanta mayor’s race remains, as it has for months now, a showdown between three well-funded, skilled politicians, who are followed some distance behind by an earnest outsider. Voters seem largely indifferent and indecisive — perhaps because there’s a tough choice here, but also some easy ones.

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Last night was the couch-sitting public’s first window onto the Atlanta mayor’s race, courtesy of a semi-televised forum by WSB-TV. I say “semi-” because the station inexplicably showed only the first half-hour of a 90-minute event. Apparently, it was deemed more important that viewers be able to see “America’s Funniest Home Videos” than their next mayor.

Anyway, even those who didn’t bother to switch over to radio or the Interwebs to catch the final hour didn’t miss a great deal. No clear winners or losers emerged, but the candidates’ relative strengths and weaknesses do tend to become more visible the longer you see them in action.

Fortunately, last night’s forum was sponsored by the Atlanta Police Foundation, a law-and-order support organization, so the candidates didn’t waste time pandering to special-interest groups, as has been the custom at several previous forums. Instead, they got right down to the first order of business: bashing Chief Richard Pennington.

It usually goes without saying that every new mayor brings in his or her hand-picked police chief, but it didn’t go unsaid last night. Everybody, most conspicuously Council President Lisa Borders, was sticking the boot in Pennington’s ribs, claiming how they would hire a top cop who’s responsive, visible, accountable and doesn’t fancy himself too good to mingle with common beat cops — unlike you-know-who.

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Tuesday’s looking to be one of those days just jam-packed with forums.

While Georgia STAND-UP hosts its City Council candidate forum in Southwest Atlanta, a coalition of transportation advocates will be grilling Mayoral candidates about their stances on transit, bicycles and pedestrian friendly streets — and how mobility options other than automobiles could improve Atlanta’s quality of life and economic potential.

Citizens for Progressive Transit, the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition and PEDS are hosting the 6:30 p.m. forum at the Atlanta Regional Commission. Mayoral candidates Lisa Borders, Mary Norwood, Kasim Reed, Jesse Spikes and Glenn Thomas will give their take on the issues. Longtime business columnist and smart-growth advocate Maria Saporta will moderate the discussion.

For more information about the forum, visit the coalition’s website. For directions, click here. You can also try CfPT’s online transit trip planner. The ARC is convenient to three MARTA stations and Five Points bus transfer center. The coalition’s advocacy team will provide free bicycle valet parking.

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According to the tirelessly self-promoting pollsters over at Insider Advantage, Council President Lisa Borders has moved up in the estimation of registered voters, while Councilwoman Mary Norwood is maintaining her lead. Here’s the lowdown:

An InsiderAdvantage survey conducted the evening of Monday August 17 among registered voters who said they were likely to vote in the November race to replace outgoing Mayor Shirley Franklin showed City Council Member Mary Norwood continuing to lead the race, with 30% saying they would vote for Norwood. But statistically tied with Norwood was City Council President Lisa Borders with 28%.

Lagging behind the two women were state Sen. Kasim Reed with 8% and attorney Jesse Spikes with 2%. The rest said they were undecided.

Borders was quick to send out a press release:

“We’ve almost tripled our support in just three months. That’s tremendous,” Borders said. “Everywhere that I’ve gone in the City, Atlantans have been eager to hear solution-based answers to how our next mayor will get Atlanta back on track. They want a plan for enhancing public safety, and they want to know where the funds will come from. I hear the need for a budget that gets our money’s worth and responsible government that cares for our community. Atlantans want a city that works. I welcome this news and look forward to speaking with more citizens about solutions to the challenges that we face.”

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In mid-July, the citizen coalition Campaign for Atlanta held a two-day series of forums with Atlanta mayoral candidates Lisa Borders, Mary Norwood, Kasim Reed and Jesse Spikes at the Carter Center.

Topics covered during the events included Department of Watershed Management issues, creating and maintaining a competent city bureaucracy, and police and fire issues. Candidates were grilled by civil engineer Bob Bunker, Georgia Tech Professor Jim Martin, former Fulton County Manager Sam Brownlee, former Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Lou Arcangeli and former Atlanta Fire Chief David Chamberlin.

All 32 videos of the event, grouped by candidate remarks and responses, were made available today on Campaign for Atlanta’s website. We’ve uploaded each candidate’s opening remarks after the jump.

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Last night, the four leading candidates for mayor — Council President Lisa Borders, Councilwoman Mary Norwood, state Sen. Kasim Reed and attorney Jesse Spikes — semi-debated each other at a forum at GSU sponsored by the city’s police and firefighters’ unions.

Not surprisingly, in an auditorium polpulated largely by cops and firemen, all of the candidates voiced strong support for full funding of both departments and competitive compensation for public-safety employees. And they all supported the idea of hiring the next fire and police chiefs from within the ranks — while still saying they’d launch a national search to find the best candidates.

But a few stray ideas did rise from the fray, helping set the candidates apart. Here’s a sampling:

• Reed would push for a special public-safety tax district to generate additional revenue — mostly through property taxes — that would be dedicated to enhancing public safety in Atlanta. He’d proposed something similar during the recent General Assembly.
• Borders wants to raise funds by offering the services of Atlanta’s public-safety training facilities to other jurisdictions.
• Reed wants to give police more time to write citations, which, in turn, generate revenue through fines.
• Both Borders and Reed aim to offer housing incentives to make it affordable for cops to live inside the city limits. Reed wants to go a step further and exempt cops from city property taxes.
• Reed wants to overhaul the city’s worker’s comp program, which he indicated could be more fair to employees.
• Norwood wants to create a WPA-style work program for Atlanta’s homeless and says the city could raise revenue by arresting aggressive panhandlers. Swear to God. I don’t understand how you make money from locking up guys who are flat broke.

If I’ve left out Spikes it’s because his answer to nearly every question was a variation on: “We have to get the city’s financial house in order.”

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Who is Jesse Spikes, you ask? Well, here’s your chance to find out.

Spikes is a former Rhodes Scholar and a senior partner with McKenna Long & Aldridge, one of the city’s largest law firms. He’s also running for mayor, having announced his candidacy a little more than a year ago, just before City Council President Lisa Borders — temporarily — dropped out.

Over the past year, I can’t say that Spikes has made many waves in the mayor’s race, but I’d comfortably rank him first among second-tier candidates. At the end of the last disclosure period, he had about $125,000 in his campaign war chest — far short of the amounts being raised and spent by the three first-tier candidates: Borders, Councilwoman Mary Norwood and state Sen. Kasim Reed. In fact, in the first quarter of 2009, Reed raised more in a week than Spikes raised in three months. The next round of disclosures should be out in early July.

Anyway, if you like underdogs or are simply not satisfied with the folks leading the field, you can check out Spikes this Saturday at his official campaign kick-off. The event begins at 11 a.m. in front of the large pavilion on the west side of Grant Park near the entrance on Boulevard. The speechifying is scheduled to begin around noon. You can study up on Spikes beforehand at his campaign website.

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It’s been known around City Hall for a week or so that Councilman Ceasar Mitchell would switch from the mayor’s race to that for Council president. Yesterday, he made it official by filing the necessary paperwork.

The move seemed likely as far back as the beginning of the year, if only because Mitchell hadn’t raised nearly as much money as the two mayoral front-runners, Councilwoman Mary Norwood and state Sen. Kasim Reed, or even Jesse Spikes, a well-connected attorney with little name recognition. When City Council President Lisa Borders jumped back into the race last week, Mitchell’s change-up probably became inevitable.

As of now, the president’s race is a two-way contest between Mitchell and Councilwoman Clair Muller, but it likely won’t remain that way. State Sen. Vincent Fort is an oft-rumored possibility, and there may be others as well. (more…)

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If you happen to see a crowd on the steps of the state Capitol at midnight this Friday, relax – you haven’t missed the release of the newest GameBoy console.

Instead, it’s what I consider to be the starting whistle of the Atlanta mayor’s race. Just after the stroke of midnight will have brought the 2009 General Assembly to a merciful close, state Sen. Kasim Reed, D-Atlanta, is scheduled to convene a campaign rally on the steps on the Capitol.

At that moment, all three (or four, depending who’s counting) of the leading candidates will be firmly in the race:

• City Council President Lisa Borders will have just announced her return to the race a day or two earlier (we’ll let you know when it happens…)

• Councilwoman Mary Norwood undoubtedly will have conducted her 5,712th community meet-and-greet that afternoon

• Reed will be done with the legislative session and able to raise funds again, assuming he doesn’t get mugged this Friday on the Capitol steps (hey, that can be a rough neighborhood after dark)

• and attorney Jesse Spikes will, presumably, still be trying to tell Atlanta who he is

Frankly, with Borders about to re-enter the race, I don’t see any more room for  Johnny-come-lately candidates. That includes such folks as Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts, who would have to share whatever constituency he still has with Borders (the business community); Norwood (Buckhead residents); and Reed (people who want to vote for a black man).

No, my guess is that the field that hits the campaign trail this weekend is what we’ll see on the November ballot, minus whoever drops out along the way.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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The rule of thumb when looking at a political poll is to consider who paid for it. That’s because every successful pollster knows that, besides providing useful information, a poll is a campaign marketing tool – and the folks writing the check expect to get their money’s worth. In short, you never see a candidate release a poll that shows he’s getting his butt kicked.

With that in mind, we turn to a recent poll released by Atlanta Councilwoman Mary Norwood which indicates that – surprise! – Mary Norwood is leading the 2009 mayor’s race.

Last month, Norwood’s campaign disclosure showed she had raised more cash in 2008 than her opponents – just over $500,000, compared to $423,000 in contributions to state Sen. Kasim Reed (although Reed had more cash on hand as of Dec. 31).

Now, the poll by Washington, D.C.-based Lake Research Partners shows that, as of early February, Norwood has far better name recognition than Reed or the other two major candidates, Councilman Ceasar Mitchell and attorney Jesse Spikes. All three men are lawyers.

Not a surprising outcome, given that Norwood has been informally campaigning across the city for the past couple of years. More significant, perhaps, are the candidates’ favorable ratings. Among the 400 Atlantans who took part in the telephone poll – and who had opinions – Norwood’s score was 61 favorable to 9 unfavorable. Reed scored 21 to 5; Mitchell was 21 to 8; and Spikes was 8 to 4 – although many more people either had never heard of the trio or had no opinion.

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OK, I’ve covered Franklin’s speech. Now for the dish, Peach Buzz-style.

Former mayors Sam Massell and Andy Young were both seated at the front table. Ex-jailbird Bill Campbell, however, freshly released from his stint in a Florida halfway house, was nowhere to be seen — probably because the Omni doesn’t have craps tables.

Norwood harshes Shirley's buzz

Cobb Commission Chairman Sam Olens and new DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis were also present, as was former CEO Liane Levitan. Ellis told me he’d received a surprise message from his predecessor, Vernon Jones, apologizing for missing his swearing-in ceremony this past Monday. (Apparently, Vernon was out of town and didn’t want Ellis to take his absence as a dis.)

Of course, the event was packed with movers and shakers from the business community, from Coke CEO Muhtar Kent to Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce President Sam Williams and all the usual suspects.

The mayor even took a moment to acknowledge her adult children, son Cabral and younger daughter Kali, adding that for all her supposed power and authority, they still treat her like “just mom.”

Finally, all of this year’s mayoral candidates were working the Omni ballroom like bears in a salmon spawn. Sighted were Sen. Kasim Reed, attorney Jesse Spikes, and Council members Ceasar Mitchell and Mary Norwood, as well as Council President Lisa Borders, who has dropped out of the race, but you never know…

Ever the omnipresent gadfly, Norwood had just come from Grant Park and the pre-dawn vigil for slain Standard bartender John Henderson, where she publicly implied that the murder was a result of Franklin’s budget-driven cutbacks in police man-hours.

As soon as she got back to City Hall, Franklin e-mailed out a response:

Councilmember Norwood has never sought to discuss the budget recommendations with me and I find her remarks today to be ludicrous and irresponsible.

And thus was the mayor’s good mood irretrievably squashed.

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