Atlanta mayor's race: The sprint to win

By Bill Torpy


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Within hours of learning they would face each other in a runoff, Atlanta mayoral candidates Mary Norwood and Kasim Reed were already back at it.

Norwood hobnobbed with members of the Atlanta Hotel Council early Wednesday morning, promising more help to crack down on downtown panhandlers. Reed woke at 5 a.m., hit the phones, huddled with business executives and later stood at a busy intersection waving to motorists.

There is no rest for either now, not with barely three weeks until a runoff and every vote a scarce and valuable one.

Norwood, the Buckhead councilwoman who for years has maintained a killer schedule of neighborhood meetings and built support in the city’s majority black districts, is stepping up the flesh-pressing intensity.

Reed, the state senator who skyrocketed from single-digit poll numbers two months ago to a “landslide” second-place finish, enthusiastically talks about his campaign’s “trajectory” while trying not to seem cocky.

The sprint is on in Atlanta’s puzzling crossroads election of 2009. For the first time in years, the mayor’s seat is wide open. The city’s population has grown phenomenally and shifted demographically. City hall is in debt. Criminals are brazen. A white mayor, the first in 36 years, is a real possibility.

But with those factors in play, just a quarter of eligible voters bothered to go to the polls last week — and far fewer are expected for the Dec. 1 runoff.

So Norwood and Reed know what they have to do, political observers say: Keep it simple. Don’t get fancy. Get those who voted for you once out to the polls again.

“To use a Southern saying, ‘You hunt where the ducks are,’ ” said Beth Schapiro, a veteran political strategist. That means returning to the precincts where you did well and flooding them with volunteers, signs and phone calls. It’s a basic blueprint for any runoff, but is especially vital when vote totals are so low to begin with, she said.

Changing landscape

But it also means adjusting to a new political landscape.

This mayoral election is different from any in a generation. Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor and a kingmaker for three decades, is dead. The city’s public housing projects, which delivered busloads of voters to anointed black candidates in the past nine elections, are gone. And a lot of new people, increasingly white, with no ties to Atlanta’s political past, live in the city.

Today’s candidates must forge alliances with ad hoc groups, some built around a single issue and existing mainly in cyber-space. And they must present themselves as race-neutral, walking a fine line of rallying those who look like you without appealing to race.

Reed, supported by the remnants of the Maynard Jackson organization, tries to project a balance of respectful connection with his civil rights elders and a post-racial youthful optimism.

Robb Pitts, a Fulton County commissioner who lost a runoff race to Mayor Shirley Franklin in 2001, said race inevitably will be a major predictor of votes, but that both candidates must expand their bases in order to win.

“Norwood’s strategy will be to get her white support back out and hold on to her black base, which is substantial,” he said. The significant black support she drew “didn’t just happen,” he said. “People knew her. She was out there.”

Reed, he said, must get his base of primarily black voters out again and attract more of “the business types who are not happy with Norwood.” About one in five of Reed’s contributions has come from individuals or companies with a stake at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Pitts said business interests may lean toward Reed because many see Norwood as a “neighborhood activist.”

That’s not necessarily bad, he added, because the winner most likely will be the one “who has touched the most people.

“I’d rather have the support of a neighborhood association than a $10,000 contribution from some fat cat,” he said.

100,000 front doors

In an interview Friday, Reed said his ground game is growing. A week ago, he had fewer than 300 volunteers. Now there are more than 450, he says.

It’s a numbers game. So far, he said there have been 50 debates, 150 meet-and-greets, 200 speeches and 100,000 front doors touched by one of his volunteers. He said he has knocked on 3,000 doors himself, trying to go most evenings from 5:30 to 7:30. He planned to be out this weekend doing the same.

Reed’s best showing in last Tuesday’s voting was in southwest Atlanta, where he pulled in nearly 60 percent of the votes. He’s expected to boost that total as voters who backed other candidates look for someone else to support.

“Kasim’s a bare-knuckled campaigner,” said Maynard Eaton, spokesman for fourth-place candidate Jesse Spikes. “He got Lisa [Borders] to talk about him rather than Mary Norwood. He got her goat. She gave him attention. He outworked her and outsmarted her.”

Now, he said, “Kasim has to continue to sound mayoral and keep pointing the finger at Mary Norwood and reminding people that she’s been in city hall for eight years.”

Eaton paused and chuckled, saying Norwood’s campaign pledging “change” has been a stroke of genius: “She’s done remarkably well. She’s run against herself and done well with it.”

Post-election pledges

Outside the Norwood campaign office Friday, some volunteers busied themselves with tasks that in the end could make a difference in a close election. James Lawrence was stuffing envelopes with absentee ballots to be mailed to supporters; “they have to be put in the envelope in a certain way,” he said.

Norwood planned to attend the UGA football game Saturday on a long overdue date with her husband, and to attend services at two or three major churches Sunday.

Her campaign will tap every means of communication — robo-calls, television ads, church meetings — to get out the vote for her and tamp down any enthusiasm for Reed.

Campaign manager Roman Levit said her campaign pulled in more than $100,000 in pledges the morning after Tuesday’s election, which will replenish its coffers and help keep up a TV advertising blitz.

“What stood out was how well Mary Norwood did throughout the city,” said Levit. She “did not have any place where she finished in single digits.”

Norwood’s strongest showings were in two north Atlanta council districts where she received about 75 percent of the votes cast, and in District 6 in northeast Atlanta, where she beat Reed nearly three-to-one.

The 6th District may signal good news for Norwood. It went for Cathy Woolard eight years ago in a runoff. In 2001, Woolard, who is white, finished second in the general election for city council president, but defeated black candidate Michael Julian Bond in the runoff.

Citywide voter turnout in that runoff dropped by half. But Woolard gained 800 votes more than she did in the general election, while Bond lost 6,000. 

This year’s race for the District 6 council seat between Alex Wan and Liz Coyle is also a runoff, which should keep local voting interest high there.

‘No machine now’

Part of the winning strategy for black candidates since Jackson won in 1973 was to energize women who were the presidents of public housing projects and watch them deliver votes.

But the city has torn down most of the projects, scattering those residents through the metro area.

“The change in public housing is very big,” said Michael Langford, the get-out-the-vote person for former Mayor Bill Campbell in the 1990s. “Fifteen percent of the population lived there. Whoever could go in there and motivate them could win. There’s no such thing as a machine now.”

Instead, “There are several strategic pockets at getting out the vote. It’s connecting with the issues.”

That’s why Reed and Norwood are Twittering, Facebooking and doing whatever they can to catch the eyes of voters.

That’s why both candidates are wooing people like former rival Kyle Keyser, the founder of Atlantans Together Against Crime. Keyser said his group, started this year after a killing near Grant Park, has about 10,000 members on its electronic sites.

“It’s a very politically mindful group; they are obviously frustrated and are uniting for change,” said Keyser, who has not yet supported either candidate.

Endorsements for Reed

Maynard Jackson may be dead but Reed, 40, has tapped into the late mayor’s vast network of associates and supporters.

Jackson’s daughter, Brooke Jackson-Edmund, endorsed Reed before the election and made a radio ad for the candidate that began with Jackson’s rich baritone voice and ended with Jackson-Edmund describing Reed as the “true Democrat” in the race.

Former Mayor Andrew Young endorsed Reed weeks ago, a move that Reed said gave him credibility. Franklin, who was encouraged to run by Jackson, supports Reed’s candidacy.

Reed said he has five more key endorsements he will unveil in upcoming days.

Senior citizens like Dollie Howard, 83, said Reed comes from an old-time mold.

“He’s outspoken, like [Jackson] was,” she said. “He tells the truth.”

Norwood did well with black voters and needs them to return, said Eaton. “The black voters in this town are historic about not going back to the polls.”

There also is peer pressure in the black community, he said. “There’s bickering between black supporters of Kasim Reed and Mary Norwood: How can you do that? Why not support a brother?”

‘Tired of the junk’

Laordice Pryor, a retiree who lives near Mayor Franklin, voted for Norwood in the general election but says she is now undecided because of lobbying from her son, who knows Reed.

She appreciates that Norwood often meets with constituents. “I think people are looking for a person who is honest and who is going to listen to the issues,” Pryor said. “We’re tired of all the junk.”

Buckhead voters, who are white and overwhelmingly supportive of Norwood, “have lost confidence in our city to manage money effectively,” said Yolanda Andrean, a neighborhood activist who last week won the council seat for District 8. That district gave Norwood almost 9,000 votes, almost twice what Reed got in his best district.

She said that district’s voters are apt to return. “There was excitement this time, a chance to have your voice heard at city hall.”

Tim Eberly, Eric Stirgus, Ernie Suggs and Steve Visser of the AJC staff contributed to this report.