Nkromo Withdraws from Atlanta School Board Race (UPDATE 1)
(APN) ATLANTA — Kwabena Nkromo, a candidate for the Special Election for Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education District 2, has withdrawn from the race.
Previously, Atlanta Progressive News reported that Nkromo did not live in District 2 from at least November 2010 to April 2011 because he lived with his ex-girlfriend in the Poncey-Highlands neighborhood.
APN also reported that Nkromo widely distributed a copy of a privately filmed sex tape that he filmed with the ex-girlfriend, after breaking up with her. The ex-girlfriend had threatened APN with a libel suit for reporting the information.
APN has a pending Open Records Request with Council Members Ivory Young (District 3) and Cleta Winslow (District 4) for copies of emails from Nkromo to Young and Winslow distributing the video as well as photographs. APN has no intention of publishing any of these, and has since confirmed with more than one City Hall employee that Nkromo indeed sent the graphic materials to Council Members.
However, to the extent that the City of Atlanta has failed to adhere to the Georgia Open Records Act and apparently needs training on the law, APN is continuing to pursue the request.
In his withdrawal statement, Nkromo said that his ex-wife had begun allowing him to spend time with his children again, and because of that, he wanted to focus on spending his time with his children rather than serve on the School Board.
“Sometime in the middle of last week, I received a message from my ex-wife saying that she was willing to allow me unfettered visitation with our children that following Thursday evening,” Nkromo wrote on his personal blog.
“It truly takes a village to raise a child and I feel responsible for the welfare of all children within my community. However, my inscrutable and preeminent calling is to focus on the charges that are closest to me. While I have always maintained this clarity of purpose (albeit imperfectly), it was not clear until I received the cooperation from my children’s mother that being a full and present father would be possible in the short term,” Nkromo wrote.
“This blog posting constitutes my official public withdrawal as a candidate from the Board of Education Special Election for District 2, but hardly my retreat as an advocate for quality education in Atlanta Public School,” Nkromo wrote.
Nkromo claimed he was recruited to run by Khaatim El, the former Chairman of the Board and District 2 representative who recently resigned. El did not immediately respond to a message on Facebook seeking comment.
The remaining five candidates include Byron Amos, Angela Brown, Dwanda Farmer, Michael Jeter, and Donald Walker.
Prior to entering the race for School Board, Nkromo had told APN he was running for Winslow’s District 4 seat. In his recent blog post, he implied he was still planning to challenge Winslow in 2013.
(END / 2011)
EDITOR’S NOTE: On January 04, 2012, this article was updated to remove the name of Nkromo’s ex-girlfriend. As already noted, her identity was not relevant to the story, except insasmuch that APN had received a joint press release purportedly from the ex-girlfriend and Nkromo. As already noted, APN had already issued a correction to note that the ex-girlfriend stated she did not author the press release; however, despite her statements to APN that she was satisfied with this correction, she proceeded to have her attorney send a letter threatening a libel lawsuit to APN. Originally, this article contained the name of the ex-girlfriend.
In APN’s history of nearly one thousand original full-length news articles, APN has never removed the name of a person from an article, despite requests to do so from the affected individuals. This has included persons arrested who did not want their names in print, or persons who ran for office and later regreted it and wanted it scrubbed from the Internet. APN’s Board of Directors discussed the present matter and decided that the name could be removed, but only because of the unique circumstances of this case. Specifically, if Nkromo had not issued the apparently false press release, the name would not have been reported in the first place. Because the ex-girlfriend stated that the two articles were causing negative impacts on her professional career, as APN’s Editor, I decided to use my discretion to err on the side of protecting a person who had been victimized by Mr. Nkromo; and not because there was any legal merit to her attorney’s claims of libel.