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Sunday, August 12, 2007
Voting with their feet: Rivers of new people creating their own revolution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Never mind what the civic do-gooders say. The most important political statement an individual makes doesn’t have to involve the mouth or the ballot.
For many, it’s all about the feet.
Numbers turned up last week showing metro Atlanta in the midst of a revolution by moving van. The city of Atlanta, from the spring of ‘06 to the spring of ‘07, gained 12,600 new residents — its largest spurt of growth in 30 years.
A good number of the Atlanta newbies are probably not African-American.
Another, separate set of numbers showed that, over the last six years, the Republican bastion of Gwinnett has edged closer to becoming a county in which a formula of black, Hispanic and Asian residents form the majority. Whites made up 67 percent of Gwinnett’s population in 2000, and as of 2006 comprised 52.5 percent.
The implications aren’t lost on anyone, whether Democrat or Republican, white, black or something else.
Last November, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon, was easily elected to his 10th term in Congress. What many didn’t notice was the fact that white voters cast 51 percent of the ballots in the contest for the 5th District, which covers Atlanta, a bit of Clayton County and a slice of west DeKalb.
“It’s not spoken about much, but there are concerns that we will lose, as African-Americans, our political base, which has largely been the city of Atlanta for major leadership within the state,” Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said this summer.
Many white Republicans feel Franklin’s pain, and struggle with it. And not just in suburban Gwinnett.
Woody Thompson is a quiet, blue-eyed real estate man of short and stocky build. Until 2004, he was a two-term Republican county commissioner representing the southwest corner of Cobb.
Thompson was defeated by Annette Kesting, an African-American and Democrat who tapped a growing number of black voters who have moved into an area once famous for its support of segregationist Gene Talmadge.
So you could call Thompson a casualty of the moving van revolution. But he’s not ready to be declared roadkill. He wants another go at Kesting. Last month, the lifelong, 60-year-old Republican joined the Democratic party. He’ll challenge her in the July primary.
“Obviously, the constituency out here has changed considerably,” Thompson said over coffee in a local shop. “I want to be able to identify with folks and get them to listen to me. I know what people are looking for. Basically, they’re looking for responsible leadership.”
Efforts to catch up with Kesting last week were unsuccessful. Let’s assume that she would call Thompson opportunistic.
But it is significant that Thompson was welcomed into the fold by David Wilkerson, the first African-American chairman of the Cobb County Democratic party.
While Mayor Franklin in Atlanta worries about the future of her city, it has fallen to Wilkerson, a 38-year-old certified public accountant, to prepare his party to take control of once thoroughly Republican Cobb County. Not next week, not next year, but soon.
By the numbers, Cobb is now 40 percent Democrat. Democrats won a second district seat on the seven-member county school board last year. Wilkerson wants to add a third next year.
By 2012, a presidential cycle away, Wilkerson thinks Democrats will be ready to compete countywide.
People ebb and people flow, and power follows them. Metro Atlanta has broken away from the black urban/white suburban political structure that defined it for so long. But this is still the South. And if the geographic boundaries are fading away, others remain.
“You can’t avoid the race issue. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way things are. It’s fact,” said Woody Thompson, the new Democrat. “Sure, some people are going to get a vote because they’re one color or the other. It’s just an issue I’m going to have to deal with.”
