Atlanta rich in City Council hopefuls

As jobs in politics go, it’s not among the most glamorous.

There are endless meetings, part-time pay for full-time work and constant frustration. You always play second fiddle to a mayor who has all the power and gets all the attention. You typically spend the vast majority of your time running errands for constituents even though your role is supposed to be strictly making policy.

And the problems at Atlanta City Hall are well known.

Atlanta has a shortage of money and a surplus of crime. Services have been crippled in many departments because of budget cuts.

Still, with City Council qualifying not beginning until Aug. 31, Atlanta already has 32 candidates running for its 15 council seats and president. The final number may well top 50 by the time all the incumbents join the races and the final challengers reveal themselves.

That’s unusual in a state with more than 500 cities, many of which struggle to get enough candidates to fill out the ballot, said Amy Henderson with the Georgia Municipal Association.

Anne Fauver, who’s stepping down at year’s end after eight years on the council, said she gives the lowdown on the council’s limitations to anyone who asks, but no one ever seems discouraged. So far, there are five announced candidates for her seat. And, Fauver says, there are at least two more in the wings.

“It takes an incredible length of time to make even small changes,” Fauver said. “That’s been very discouraging to me. Council has very little power in dealing with the administration on the things that affect people every day.”

The issue for the council is clear. They work under a strong-mayor, weak-council system.

The mayor operates as an elected CEO, controlling the staff, the budget and city services. The mayor can choose to make the staff available to meet the needs of the council or not. Council members often have to nurture relationships with officials in various departments to be able to pry out reliable information or get routine things done.

Still, every time Atlanta holds an election, it gets a steady stream of folks like Yolanda Adrean, a first-time candidate for the council in District 8 in north Atlanta. She so far is the lone candidate to replace Clair Muller, who has decided to run for council president.

“I’ve been working as a community activist for 10 years,” said Adrean. “I’ve just become more and more interested in helping the city. You can only advocate for so long before people get tired of hearing from you.”

Adrean’s introduction to Atlanta politics is typical and helps explain some of the city’s historically high numbers of council candidates.

Atlanta boasts a network of neighborhoods, communities and planning districts that tend to work as a feeder system for council hopefuls. Most folks get involved in city politics on a local issue. Then, they take up service on a community association. Eventually, they run for a seat on the Neighborhood Planning Unit, a group that represents a number of neighborhoods on issues that go before the council.

Bob Holmes, a recently retired state representative from Atlanta and political scientist, said that service allows lots of potential candidates to create a record they can run on. And many also get bitten by the political bug.

“You basically show people what you can do,” Holmes said. “It’s a good way for people to judge you.”

And, while a council salary is less than $40,000 a year, Holmes said African-Americans have traditionally seen political success as a way to advance even when it wasn’t financially a windfall. That can be true for other candidates as well.

“There’s still a lot of prestige attached to it, especially in the African-American community,” Holmes said.

And there’s Atlanta’s sheer size. With a population estimated at 537,958, it seems Atlanta should have a lot of candidates.

The average council district is slightly larger than the population of East Point. At nearly 45,000 residents, an Atlanta council district would be Georgia’s 16th-largest city represented by just one district official.

Byron Amos caught the political bug. But now he says he’s cured.

After years of activism in Vine City, Amos ran for the council and lost. He then ran twice for school board but failed to get elected both times. He said people just get caught up in all the activism and find they almost can’t help but run for office.

“Often people who have the desire to lead and want to see change think the only way to do that is through an elected position, when that is not true,” Amos said. “The new political person doesn’t see council service for what it actually is. They think they can single-handedly create change when they can’t.”

Fauver said that has certainly been her experience. She wishes her successor and the next council the best.

“We all start thinking we can accomplish a lot,” Fauver said. “We all discover what we can accomplish is a lot less than we thought.”