Voter discontent is key in mayoral election

By Eric Stirgus

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Rev. Timothy McDonald looked around the Park Tavern stage Wednesday and saw several familiar faces.

In 1989, many of them supported Maynard Jackson’s third successful bid for Atlanta mayor. A generation later, here they were again, united behind the mayoral candidacy of Kasim Reed, promising to help him win the Dec. 1 runoff against City Councilwoman Mary Norwood.

Since Jackson’s first mayoral victory in 1973, the first time a black candidate won the job, most African-American residents have looked at the city’s black leadership as a vital cog that has opened the doors to higher-paying jobs and fostered a better quality of life.

Over the years, a small minority has questioned the effectiveness of the city’s African-American leadership, but those voices are growing this year and could tip the scales to Norwood and make her the city’s first white mayor in 36 years.

Norwood won nearly one-quarter of all votes in majority black precincts on Nov. 3, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of election results shows. That support helped her capture nearly 46 percent of the vote citywide, besting the five other candidates on the ballot but still not enough to win the election outright.

The AJC analysis shows, however, that Norwood won or tied in just five of the 102 precincts in which African-Americans are the majority of all voters. Reed won or tied in 99 of those 102 precincts. Still, Norwood’s showing was better than most white mayoral candidates have fared among black voters.

“There is a component of Atlanta that feels neglected,” McDonald, the pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in East Atlanta and a former president of Concerned Black Clergy, said at former mayoral candidate Lisa Borders’ announcement at Park Tavern that she would endorse Reed. “Kasim has to make an effort to address their concerns.”

The disaffected African-American voters are people such as Ora Cooks, a retired Clark Atlanta University professor who is active in civic affairs and is troubled by how city money has been spent. She is supporting Norwood, saying the candidate has been present for years in her community and backed its residents’ battle against a church that tore down a building in their neighborhood.

“In the South, we like face time. We like for folks to show up, and she’s been there,” said Cooks, 68, who lives in Oakland City.

Reed said he is aware of discontented black voters and recognizes he needs a larger percentage of their support to win the runoff. The former state senator said he needs to show black voters across the city the “personal attention” people such as Cooks demand.

“I think they’re coming [around to support me],” Reed said. “I think you will see a substantial shift the more I have an opportunity to campaign for them.”

Reed has told voters he will reopen 22 recreation centers closed due to budget cuts, hire 750 police officers in his first term and push for small loans for startup businesses.

Much of Norwood’s most vocal African-American supporters are people like former state Rep. “Able” Mable Thomas and current state Rep. Ralph Long, who are frustrated about violent crime, dilapidated buildings and the lack of economic development in their neighborhoods. Norwood has campaigned on these issues and held most of her news conferences in predominately African-American communities, where she has focused on problems such as a burned-out building in the Sylvan Hills neighborhood residents said has been that way for years.

Atlanta’s poverty rate is about 25 percent, higher than big cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and New York. The economic recession has pushed the city’s unemployment rate over 11 percent. The crime rate is higher in predominately African-American areas.

Long, a Democrat, sparked an intense debate among some African-American civic leaders and political junkies when he hit the send button on an e-mail decrying the crime and blight in some black neighborhoods and wondering why more elected officials aren’t siding with his mayoral candidate. He stuck to his guns in an interview last week.

“I think people are feeling disenfranchised,” Long said. “I think people are venting that frustration, and the polls reflect that.”

Efforts to reach Norwood for comment were unsuccessful.

Some of the strongest e-mail rebuttals have come from those who loved and revered Jackson the most. His first wife, Bunnie Jackson-Ransom, said she will work for Reed to “wake up those African-Americans who have become bamboozled into believing a moderately-educated, southern white woman will do something for them.” She said she regretted the remarks, according to Maynard Eaton, a longtime Atlanta journalist who worked on the campaign of former mayoral candidate Jesse Spikes.

Other Jackson relatives, family friends and former business associates have lined up behind Reed, prompting conversation that the so-called “Jackson machine” is working for the candidate. Reed has sidestepped talk that he is the political heir to Jackson, who died in 2003.

Jackson’s daughter, Brooke Jackson-Edmund, endorsed Reed a week before the election, and the campaign unveiled a dramatic radio ad with father and daughter on it.

“Kasim Reed is the true Democrat in this race and the only candidate to whom this torch should be passed,” Jackson-Edmund said in announcing her endorsement.

For many longtime black residents and “Grady babies,” Maynard Jackson is still revered for opening the doors of City Hall to help more African-American business owners get city contracts. Critics argue the doors have stayed open to a new generation of political patronage that has included the Jackson family.

Kelley Bass Jackson, Maynard Jackson’s former daughter-in-law, is worried his legacy is being tarnished by some angry and disaffected voters who have forgotten what he did for the city.

She said his legacy includes the expansion of the city-owned Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, hich created thousands of jobs for Atlantans; his efforts to help bring the 1996 Summer Olympics to the city; and the creation of the Neighborhood Planning Unit system.

“The problem I have is when people talk about the Jackson political machine, they are using it in a pejorative sense that is patently unfair,” said Bass Jackson, a speechwriter for Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker. “There has been no Maynard Jackson gravy train for the Jackson family. Brooke worked hard. Bunnie worked hard. Maynard taught them about entrepreneurship. That’s the Jackson legacy.”

Cooks said regardless of which candidate wins the election, neighborhoods like hers will get more attention from City Hall.

“We expect to because we plan to hold people’s feet to the fire,” she said.