Fresh Loaf

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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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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The CEOS and muckety-mucks behind the Buckhead Coalition have decided to use their considerable civic clout in demanding that the state honor its two-decade-old pledge to dismantle the toll plaza on Ga. 400 when the road construction bonds are paid off in July 2011.

“We’d all promised — the City Council, the state, the Buckhead Coalition — that if voters approved Georgia’s first toll road, then the toll would go away once the debt was retired,” explains BC president Sam Massell, whose group helped lobby for the toll as a funding mechanism for the then-proposed Ga. 400 extension, which runs from I-285 through Buckhead to I-85.

“Just once, I’d like to see politicians keep their word,” the former Atlanta mayor says.

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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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