Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA — On Wednesday, December 09, 2009, City Councilwoman Mary Norwood conceded the Mayoral Run-off Election to former State Sen. Kasim Reed. After a recount was held, the vote margin between Norwood and Reed only changed by 1 vote. Reed won by 714 votes, or less than 1%.

According to the recount results, Reed won 42,549 votes, while Norwood won 41,835.

Since then, Mayor-elect Reed has been beginning his transition into the role of Mayor of Atlanta. He will be officially inaugurated in January 2010.

Previously, APN reported that a group of Norwood supporters had questioned what appeared to be a list of over 1,300 voters from Atlanta’s former public housing communities, thus with invalid addresses.

However, Secretary of State Karen Handel’s office found in an investigation that the list, which had first been obtained by Maceo Williams, was apparently misread by Williams. Specifically, the list provided to Williams was a list of registered voters with information regarding which elections each voter had voted in.

APN had requested to see the list from Williams and from Norwood’s supporters prior to writing about the investigation. However, Williams said he had turned the only copy of the CD over to Norwood’s campaign. Norwood’s supporters, in turn, had given their only copy to Handel’s office. Thus, APN was never able to independently review the information.

Handel’s office said only about 40 voters with invalid addresses had voted in the General Election, not enough to change the election outcome in any case.

Meanwhile, having had a few days to get some rest, Norwood sat down for a lengthy telephone interview to discuss her thoughts about the race and her plans for the future.

“We came so close to winning and we lost. It just breaks my heart,” Norwood told Atlanta Progressive News.

“I took on the entire political establishment. You [APN] know what that’s like: you’ve tried to take ’em on,” Norwood said.

NORWOOD TO LAUNCH COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION

“I will start a citywide coalition the first of the year and keep working for the issues that matter, that’s my game plan right now,” Norwood said.

“I was a community advocate for years before going into City Council. Being a community advocate is something I love doing,” Norwood said.

“The issues didn’t go away because we elected a new Mayor,” Norwood said.

“I’m moving forward with a coalition of people that care tremendously about the city,” Norwood said.

“We’ve got to put the structure together. It will certainly be neighborhood issues, infrastructure issues,” Norwood said.

“I’m packing up boxes and boxes of knowledge so I don’t lose the institutional knowledge and work at City Hall [from having served on Council]. We’ve got 16 file drawers full of information. Those will be boxed up and stored. When we start the organization, it will be a great repository of knowledge and information for citizens,” Norwood said.

Norwood said she wants to use as a model two former organizations which used to fulfill similar functions. “There used to a citywide League of Neighborhoods… There was [also] an Election Coalition of Atlanta Neighborhoods.”

“There have been these citywide groups that have existed over the years and there’s not one now, outside of APAB,” Norwood said. “I would certainly before starting any group, would be reaching out to NPU Chairs and members of APAB… so they understand this is not meant in any way to diminish their role in Atlanta.”

Norwood says her message to supporters is “to stay engaged, to stay involved. I am so grateful to everyone who supported my message for change and message for new direction of Atlanta. I encourage them to email me at mary@marynorwood.com and to stay in touch.”

When asked whether running for Mayor or for her old Council seat–which will soon be occupied by Aaron Watson–in 2013 was on the table, Norwood replied “I just don’t think in the first two weeks after conceding it makes sense to think about what I would do 4 years from now.”

“What I do want to do is, so many people got so engaged, it’s so important for us to continue the momentum. We connected people all across the city in ways that had never been done and I don’t want to lose what’s so wonderful about that,” Norwood said.

THE CHALLENGE OF FUNDRAISING

“The real deal there is I got frozen out for money,” Norwood said.

“I literally had to make thousands and thousands of phone calls. I was on the phone over a year nonstop asking for money,” Norwood said. “That’s different than walking into a fundraising dinner where people are lined up waiting to write you checks.”

“Usually–my guys told me–you do well enough and then people that care about who the next Mayor’s gonna be, give you some money,” Norwood said.

“That didn’t happen for me for months and months,” Norwood said.

“He [Reed] raised money all over the country. He had the entire political establishment behind him. And I would say, go look at the difference in the disclosure reports. Our donations were Atlantans, 98% inside Georgia, 85% inside the city,” Norwood said.

“There were very different financial disclosures. We were the grassroots candidate with contributions from every single zip code in the city,” Norwood said.

As previously reported by Atlanta Progressive News, Reed received more donations from real estate and developer interests than any other candidate in the race, including Council President Lisa Borders. Norwood had received fewer than half the real estate and developers dollars that Reed did.

OTHER CHALLENGES

“The idea of debating without formal training and the blogs just beating me up all the time… the drama of the stark terror of debating, and we still almost won,” Norwood said.

“They [Reed’s campaign] had an amazing group of people representing their group on the blogs every day,” Norwood said. “I read them to know what was coming at me next.”

One source formerly inside the Reed campaign told APN that several paid campaign staffers were tasked with commenting on blogs like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper’s Political Insider blog. Paid commenters included Tharon Johnson, State Rep. Rashad Taylor, Reese McCranie, and others, the source said.

“You could tell the people that were [commenting] over and over again, even with different pseudonyms,” Norwood said.

“We got better with social media toward the end. We had a wonderful volunteer who came in,” Norwood said.

When asked whether her campaign should have taken a more active role in shaping her public image, informing Atlantans about her legislative record, and responding to attacks, Norwood said, “Hindsight is 20/20 vision.”

“We operated frugally,” Norwood added. “We ran up very little debt. We raised $2 million without the benefit of the political machine at work for us. And we lived within our means. We didn’t ratchet up hiring people we couldn’t afford. So we ran a very responsible and resourceful campaign.”

NORWOOD SOUGHT DIVERSE SUPPORT

“A lot of people thought I was eyeing the Mayor’s seat long before I was,” Norwood recalled. “I really didn’t consider running until it bubbled up in 2008.”

“And that’s when I put the exploratory committee together, and I spent months assessing whether I could run a campaign that wouldn’t be… racially divisive, so we started with the citywide coalition and we kept it all the way through the General and the Run-off,” Norwood said.

“And [we] came close to winning against the entire political establishment,” Norwood said.

“The morning after the elections, I was not as interested in the total numbers as I was in the district numbers, and did we hold on to our base and the answer was yes, and we got a portion of the new voters,” Norwood said.

WAS IT WORTH IT?

“I think it was absolutely worth it. We engaged this city in ways that hadn’t been done in 20, 25 years,” Norwood said. “I’ve not seen this city this so engaged… people were saying go and vote,” Norwood said.

“That more voted in the Run-off [than the General], that’s unheard of. I think it was good for the citizens for Atlanta,” Norwood said.

“When someone said well Mary, what about this divided city, I said the city isn’t divided, people had different opinions as to who they thought would be the best Mayor. But we had votes from all over the city,” Norwood said.

“We had yard signs in every single part of the city, every single council district,” Norwood said.

“I think it was a wonderful statement to Atlanta, that we ran a post-racial campaign. And all you have to do is look at any of our pictures, any of our information [to see that],” Norwood said.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

“I learned that being on my feet debating 60 times was a lot, over and over and over and over again,” Norwood said. “We should’ve had better ground rules going in, that there shouldn’t be 60. It took up a lot of time.”

“Secondly, I learned that what I did when I ran for Council–to get commitments up front–that having 20% of the funding up front was not good enough [to run for Mayor],” Norwood said. “I was literally raising money until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, from the 15th of November 2008 until November 25th 2009, that is over 365 days.”

ROLE IN REED ADMINISTRATION?

“I have not heard from him [regarding a role in the Administration] despite news stories to the contrary,” Norwood said, adding that she provided Reed with her cell phone number during the brief conversation in which she conceded.

“He didn’t give me his,” she said. “But he’s busy, I don’t expect him to have called.”

“I wish him well, I wish him all the success in the world,” Norwood said.

“I have no idea at this stage even what that means [as for a possible role in his Administration]. I would certainly be willing to sit down and talk with the Mayor-elect,” Norwood said.

REGRET FOR COMMERCIAL REGARDING PERSONAL VOTING RECORD?

Some political analysts have said that Norwood may have alienated some Republican voters in the northern part of the city with her commercial stating that she had voted for US President Barack Obama, US Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Vice President Al Gore, President Bill Clinton, and independent candidate Ross Perot.

“The campaign made the decisions they made. And what we know is that I was portrayed in a light that was not flattering and not accurate and I responded to that and I came in first [in the General]. I had 15,000 votes from Buckhead; 8,000 from Northeast Atlanta. Did I lose some votes? Probably, but I came in first place,” Norwood said.

Meanwhile, Norwood said she was displeased with a mailer sent out by the Democratic Party of Georgia claiming that she was a Republican.

“I think it was a nonpartisan race and I am sorry that a party, whether one or the other, would interject themselves into a nonpartisan race,” Norwood said. “I know people who say, next time they [DPG] ask for money, I’ll tell them how I feel about them.”

“There is a backlash [against the DPG] that has happened that is broader than many people realize,” Norwood said. “One person got their check back from DPG and wrote it over to me.”

A POLITICAL SHIFT?

APN noted that earlier in the campaign, Norwood described herself as a moderate. However, later on, especially in the Run-off, Norwood and her campaign described herself as a progressive.

When asked whether that had signaled a political shift to the left, Norwood said that it is difficult to label her.

“City issues are different from national partisan issues. City issues are: city services, public safety, do you feel safe, are you getting good value for your tax dollars, are we looking to a sustainable future, how will we do redevelopment, how will the city grow and thrive? Those are not partisan issues, left or right,” Norwood said.

“I have said forever, I am fiscally conservative, socially responsible, and personally accountable,” Norwood said.

“I never was involved in partisan politics, the labels don’t mean that much to me. If you asked me whether I was progressive, I should have asked you what does that mean to you?” Norwood said.

One stance where Norwood’s campaign described her as progressive was regarding same-sex marriage. “Something as important as equality for everyone, it really means to me equality for everyone.”

Norwood also refined her position on at least one issue over the course of the campaign, in response to concerns raised by Atlanta Progressive News in our analysis and endorsement write-ups. Specifically, Norwood had previously championed a work program for homeless people where they would earn money by picking up garbage in Atlanta’s city streets.

Weeks after discussing the issue further with APN, Norwood expanded her idea to include several other types of employment. In a recent interview with WRFG radio’s Adam Shapiro, Norwood said she envisioned a program providing a wide array of work opportunities including construction and landscaping.

About the author:

Matthew Cardinale is the News Editor of Atlanta Progressive News and is reachable at matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

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