In Atlanta, A Long Line Of Black Mayors May Be Broken

Since 1973, this Southern capital has elected a succession of black mayors. However, the current race to succeed Mayor Shirley Franklin in the November 3 election has upended normal expectations here in what comedian Chris Rock, in his new documentary, “Good Hair,” calls “the city where all major black decisions are made.” The front-runner, Mary Norwood, is one of Buckhead’s own, a white Junior Leaguer running as a populist outsider.

Candidates have maintained that Atlanta has moved beyond using race as a qualification for public office. However, the ascendancy of Ms. Norwood may also reflect the decline of the city’s black majority and the recession’s sour effect on the mood of the voters. The city has changed significantly since Mayor Franklin squeaked to victory without a runoff in 2001. It has grown by more than 100,000 people since 2000, and the influx of many whites and Hispanics has narrowed the black majority to 56% from 61%. Atlanta is still a draw for black professionals, and the percentage of blacks in the metropolitan area has grown slightly, but in the city the pool of likely black voters is estimated at just barely a majority. Many of the city’s public housing projects, where black votes once could be marshaled in a bloc, have been demolished.

Ms. Norwood, who has held an at-large City Council position for eight years, has galvanized white voters and attracted significant black support. Though she has often voted in Republican primaries in the heavily Democratic city, some polls about the six-way race show her with more black support than either of her two top opponents, who are both black: Lisa Borders, the president of the city council, and Kasim Reed, a lawyer and former state lawmaker who resigned his office to run for mayor. Many analysts say the election will probably result in a runoff between Ms. Norwood and Mr. Reed or Ms. Borders, although Ms. Norwood is so far ahead that there is talk she could win outright.

“It would be a major game change in this town if a Buckhead Betty became mayor,” said Tom Houck, a former newspaper columnist here, who is white, using a mocking term for the well-heeled white women of the north side. “Atlanta is a symbol for black Americans, more than Los Angeles, more than Chicago, more than Baltimore.” Mr. Houck spoke recently to a primarily black audience at a forum about race in the campaign, where some of those present were intent on electing a black mayor and others asked what good had black leadership done the city.

Ms. Norwood has addressed the race question only obliquely, though her campaign photographs and videos emphasize her interactions with black voters. “Dr. King said we should be evaluated on who we are, not what we look like,” she said. “I’m focused on public safety, city service delivery, quality of life issues and growing the city. That’s what the citizens of Atlanta are interested in.” Ms. Norwood has set the tone by relentlessly attacking the Franklin administration’s record on crime and city finances, forcing the other candidates to distance themselves from the mayor. “When you attack City Hall, you’re also implicitly attacking, to a degree, black politics,” asserted Michael Leo Owens, a political science professor at Emory University. “And this is a message that in some ways plays well with the white electorate.”

At a time of high anxiety over taxes and crime, it also resonates with voters of all races. The candidates have spent the bulk of their time debating over who has the experience necessary to fix the city’s money problems and who has the best public safety plan. Some voters, particularly younger ones, argue that race should not be a factor at the polls. “This is a majority white country and Barack Obama’s president,” said Tyronia Morrison, a black 30-year-old lawyer, after a candidate forum. “We need to rise above that and get back to the issues.”

Ms. Borders and Mr. Reed disavowed racial politics after a memo from an ad hoc group, the Black Leadership Forum, surfaced in August, suggesting that blacks unite behind Ms. Borders, whom the memo described as the most electable black candidate. Mr. Reed was the first to condemn the memo, and Ms. Borders joined him, saying, “We have had two Atlantas for far too long.” Steve Suitts, an Emory lecturer, argued in an op-ed article yesterday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the memo obscured that “[w]hite voters, not black voters, end up voting most often for a candidate of their own race in the South.”

This mayoral election is the first for an open seat since the death of Maynard Jackson, the city’s first black mayor and a political kingmaker, in 2003.