A grueling week ends: After upsetting Martin King at the polls, the Sandy Springs lawyer unwinds at home with his wife and children.
Mitch Skandalakis, the new chairman of the Fulton County Commission, was in the kitchen going through his umpteeneth interview of the day when a clamor arose upstairs. His preschooler daughters had heard him drive up in the Volvo station wagon and were crying for a goodnight kiss. Daddy excused himself and started up the stairs. Soon he returned, a sour expression on his face, and looked pleadingly toward his wife, Kay.
"Honey, I'm in the middle of this interview, and I wonder if maybe you'd go upstairs and change a diaper."
Cleaning up waste in county government is one thing; cleaning up waste in the girls' room is quite another.
Fulton's new first family is like a lot of young families in Georgia's most populous county. At the Skandalakis home, a four-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath white frame house on a cul-de-sac in Sandy Springs, life revolves around the kids - two dark-haired, doe-eyed girls: 3-year-old Joanna and 5-year-old Angelique. What really matters is getting them to soccer. Getting them to prekindergarten classes at St. Anne's Day School. Getting them bathed and tucked into bed. Judging from the videos and kiddie books in the den, Barney has left more tracks than any politician.
But there are reminders of county government concerns, too: the home security system to guard against crime, the rezoning sign down the street, the white noise of nearby traffic always audible from the front yard.
Greek roots define couple
It was a giddy, grueling week for the Skandalakises. Sitting in his breakfast room on the night after his election, a little punchy from lack of sleep, the 36-year-old Republican lawyer claimed not to have been surprised by what everyone else found a stunning upset over Martin King.
Another indication of the family's expectations came from his wife. "Your Uncle Nick called from Greece, " Kay Skandalakis told her husband. "When I told him you were running against Martin Luther King's son, he said, 'What! And he beat him?' "
"I feel real bad for this guy, " Skandalakis said of King, as he unboxed a dinner of Varsity chili dogs. "Here he is, with the biggest burden of any young man in history, trying to establish himself as something more than 'Marty.' He seems like a nice guy."
Skandalakis can afford sympathy for his opponent now. But a few days ago, he was referring to him on the radio as a "mama's boy."
By his own admission, Skandalakis isn't a prince of diplomacy. Friends and enemies alike describe him as plain-spoken and occasionally abrasive.
"Mitch is a very quick-witted person, and he can offend you before he knows it, " said his cousin, Pete Skandalakis, a Coweta County prosecutor who grew up near the family in Atlanta. "My wife has known him only three years. Sometimes he'll make a remark, and she'll say, 'Is he being offensive?' "
That bluntness, Pete Skandalakis says, comes from their fathers: hard-working Greek immigrants who always spoke their minds.
The Skandalakis brothers came to Georgia in the early '50s after the turmoil of the Greek civil war. There they fought against the Communists, who executed one of Mitch's great uncles by cutting off his limbs. Mitch's father, John, and mother, Mimi, a first-generation Greek-American who had grown up in Marietta, met and married while she was visiting Greece.
Their Greek roots still define Mitch and Kay Skandalakis. They married in 1986, but their families had known each other for years in the old country. The daughter of a Greek hotel owner in Wilmington, N.C., the former Kay Saffo still speaks Greek, as does her husband. They attend the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, where she teaches Sunday school.
Kay has a degree in early education from Youngstown State University in Ohio, but since they've married, she has worked only for a time in a doctor's office. Because of the children, she wasn't able to spend much time on the campaign. With a quick wit of her own, she's a worthy match for her husband.
The new chairman was born Demetrios John Skandalakis, the youngest of three children. His father, Dr. John Skandalakis, practiced medicine at Piedmont Hospital and taught at Emory University. Now semi-retired, he was chairman of the Georgia Board of Regents during the '80s. His other two children, Lee Skandalakis and Vickie Scaljon, followed him into the medical profession.
Skandalakis grew up off Mount Paran Road in northwest Atlanta. The family was well-to-do and able to send him to the private Westminster Schools from first through 12th grade. He was not an honors student.
'I was known for cutting class'
"I was known for cutting class, " Skandalakis said, illustrating the point with a story. An instructor once asked him to stand up in front of the class at the beginning of a quarter. "This is Mr. Skandalakis, " he announced. "Take a good look because this is the last day you'll see him."
Skandalakis pursued extracurricular activities more diligently than class. He played soccer and Little League baseball, sang in the glee club, was a cheerleader, worked summers pumping gas. For a while he fronted a rock band, singing Elton John songs while sporting flashy "Captain Fantastic" glasses.
After graduating from Westminster in 1975, Skandalakis spent a party- filled year at the University of Georgia. Then he returned home to Emory. It was there, during his sophomore year, that he experienced a political awakening.
"I couldn't believe Jimmy Carter had been elected president, " he said. "My family was always conservative. Growing up, Dad always talked back to the TV during the news. He really disliked John F. Kennedy. All of that sunk in."
At Emory, Skandalakis organized a chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative organization co-founded by William F. Buckley Jr. Skandalakis soon became the group's regional director. At its convention that year, he got to meet his hero, Ronald Reagan. (Skandalakis recently borrowed a copy of Reagan's autobiography from his father to read in preparation for his new job.)
But it would be several years before Skandalakis pursued politics himself. After graduating from the University of Georgia law school in 1982, he joined the law firm of Pat Swindall, the 4th District congressman who was later convicted of perjury. Skandalakis said he was not active in the Swindall campaigns.
He worked for several other law firms, handling personal-injury cases and insurance defense work, before opening his own practice in 1989. That year, he ran for office, trying to fill the state Senate seat vacated by Paul Coverdell when President Bush appointed him Peace Corps director. Skandalakis finished third in a field of seven.
"I was crushed, " he said, adding that the only good thing to come out of the experience was that he heeded his advisers and shaved off his mustache. "It made me look like Pancho Villa."
Soon Skandalakis found the issue that would make his name.
In late 1990, when the county started a massive property reassessment, the Skandalakises were living in a ranch house on Windsor Parkway. Their valuation went from $96,000 to more than$180,000 (the house sold within a year for $131,000). As scores of neighbors got similar assessment notices in 1990 and '91, a tax revolt was born. Skandalakis began organizing property owners, speaking at civic groups, collecting signatures for a petition drive to recall Commission Chairman Michael L. Lomax.
"He was putting so much time into it that his income from practicing law went way down, " said Bob Proctor, a friend who is forming a law partnership with Skandalakis.
The recall drive failed, falling 9,000 signatures short of the 99,000 needed. Skandalakis again turned his attention to the Legislature, winning a House seat last fall. He entered the commission race when Lomax resigned to run for mayor of Atlanta.
Last week, as Skandalakis moved into the chairman's office, he savored his belated victory with a touch of taxpayer's ire.
"I had never been in Lomax's office before, " he said, quickly correcting himself that it wasn't Lomax's office anymore. "It's incredibly palatial, obscenely palatial. He had his own balcony up there."
Between the recall drive and election campaigns, the Skandalakises have had little time in recent years for anything but family. They like to go to the beach; he plays a little golf. They both love to read; a big night out is a browse through Oxford Books. But their true passion is movies. The basement walls are covered with old movie posters. The den bookshelves overflow with videos.
Now there's a new one, and it's bound to be a family favorite. "Election Night '93" reads the label on the cassette case.
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