Tuesday was a bright day in DeKalb County, a day when the constant stream of bad news about corruption and divisiveness and incorporation movements was forgotten. At least for a while.
On Tuesday, the voters of DeKalb, north and south, east and west, black and white, all agreed on an issue vital to the county’s future – that Vernon Jones should have no part in it.
This year, Vernon, DeKalb’s erstwhile Mr. CEO, donned a Stetson and asked the county’s residents if he could be their sheriff. Voters, to their lasting credit and sense of decency, loudly told him For Crying Out Loud Would You Get Lost Already?!
The electoral spanking — 76.3 percent to 23.6 percent — was almost embarrassing for the unembarrassable Jones. One would like to think it’s the end of the road for his racial politics, that a wooden stake has been pounded through his political heart.
Jones has lost badly in two other elections in DeKalb since leaving the CEO’s office in 2009, primaries for the U.S. Senate and Congress. One might think the message has been clearly delivered — punctuated with an exclamation point, even — although my guess is that Jones blames this most recent lopsided defeat on an unfair press, bigoted whites and self-hating blacks.
This time around, he employed a time-honored guerilla campaign to appeal to South DeKalb’s black population, that they were getting screwed by The Man. That the current sheriff was named Jeff Mann needed no further proof of the conspiracy.
That Mann also is black did not matter. Jones’ campaign put out a last-minute flier of a dangling puppet (Mann) being controlled by white hands from North DeKalb. He also told a Pine Lake City Council member, George Chidi, who is himself black and something of a rabble rouser on his blog, that he was “drinking Clorox.” You know – acting white.
'People are tired of it'
David George, a retired Greyhound driver and longtime county resident, summed up a commonly held feeling that people had in dispatching Jones.
“People are tired of it. I hope this is a turn in the right direction for DeKalb County, a chance to leave behind many of the embarrassments we’ve had in recent years,” said George, a founder of the newly formed South DeKalb Improvement Association. “We have to change the image of the county.”
Tom Brown has been a fixture in DeKalb government for decades, including the last 13 years as sheriff (and was a key supporter of Jeff Mann). “There is so much disgust with the perception of what DeKalb is today versus what it was in the 1980s under (former CEO) Manuel Maloof that any attempt to divide the county is an automatic ‘no’ vote for you,” Brown said.
Jones was elected the county’s first black CEO in 2000 and even seemed as if he could be a bridge builder. But his administration discriminated against white employees and engaged, Brown said, in some hinky antics.
I reached out to Jones, but he has steadfastly refused to talk.
Jones is the patron saint of the incorporation movement in the county, Brown said.
“We would not have the city of Dunwoody if Vernon Jones was not CEO,” Brown said. “That blood is on his hands.”
He said developers are waiting and watching to see what happens in the next nine months before deciding to invest in the county.
What if Jones had won? Brown thought for a few seconds before saying, “I think a lot of people would have given up” on DeKalb.
'A little act of sanity'
Electing a bland and non-controversial candidate like Mann was “a little act off sanity in what has been a bad situation for several years,” said state Rep. Tom Taylor, one of Dunwoody’s founders. “From an economic standpoint, electing (Jones) would draw the wrong kind of attention to DeKalb.”
The common narrative has been that the incorporation movement is a white thing, a move to get out from under black leadership. And there is a certain amount of truth to that.
The area around Stonecrest Mall, however, is surrounded by black neighborhoods, and many of those residents were also looking into creating a city.
Jason Lary, a leader of that movement, said people sent Vernon packing because “we’ve just gotten tired of it. It’s gotten us nowhere.”
The election “was a moment of awareness. People want to go in a different direction and this pretty much proved it.”
Lary knows Jones and enumerated his good points: charismatic, smart, consummate politician.
I asked Lary whether he supported Mann, and he wavered, worried that he might anger Vernon and invite reprisals, such as the demise of his cityhood movement.
But perhaps Vernon is no longer a factor, I suggested.
Lary laughed at the notion. “Yes, I supported Mann,” he said.
DeKalb voters have come through again.
They ousted corrupt Sheriff Sid Dorsey.
They ran off Cynthia McKinney. Twice.
And squashed Vernon again.
Maybe in DeKalb County there is hope.
