Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA — City Councilwoman Mary Norwood and former State Sen. Kasim Reed went into a run-off for the post of Mayor of Atlanta on Tuesday, November 03, 2009, after a bitter General Election cycle in which race and political affiliation became subjects of dispute and accusation.

Norwood received 46% of the vote, reflective of her most recent poll numbers; Reed received 36%. Council President Lisa Borders received 14%. Attorney Jesse Spikes received 2%. Kyle Keyser and Peter Brownlowe each received less than 1%.

Borders conceded Tuesday night after coming in third. Borders had been in second place for several months, only to fall into third place after she made a series of attacks on Norwood, she was implicated in the Black Leadership Forum memo scandal, Atlanta Progressive News analyzed her relationship with Tom Bell, and the Reed campaign ran a television ad blitz, while attacking Borders’s relationship with county commissioner Lynne Riley.

The Norwood and Reed campaigns were courting Borders’s possible endorsement as this article went to press.

“Thank you for all of the support, encouraging words and positive comments you’ve given me these past several months. Hopefully, we’ve raised some issues that will be addressed by the new city administration,” Spikes wrote on his Facebook page. “I said at the beginning that I was not a politician and that I would not become one during this election process. I have remained true to that promise. Again, thank you for your support!”

Keyser did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Several observers noted they thought Spikes and Keyser were good candidates, and that they hope they’ll run again for a lesser office.

Norwood had been hoping to win without a run-off, to prevent an ugly, divisive run-off month, and to avoid the need to raise $500,000 to get back on television. Norwood had spent at least a couple hundred thousand dollars on television ads during the month of October, leaving her campaign with about $250,000 before the election. Norwood also said that she had raised funds earmarked specifically for the Run-off, although it was not immediately clear whether the $250,000 amount included those funds.

Norwood and supporters gathered at the historic Varsity fast food restaurant to watch the results come in. “I’m so delighted y’all are here tonight. It just means the world to me. It’s been a long year and a half. This is a true outpouring of support from every single Council district. Our city can come together. We can do anything when we come together,” Norwood said in her first set of remarks.

“I want to thank you all for your support. This is a great getting-together. It has been fabulous. Wherever we end up, tonight I appreciate your support. We’ve got a lot of work to do. This is Atlanta. We can do anything,” Norwood said in her later remarks.

It is difficult to predict who will win in the run-off, because there are a number of variables at play. If all of Norwood’s voters came back out, and all of Reed’s voters came back out, and no other voters came back out, Norwood would win 56% to 44%.

However, turnout was relatively low for the General and is expected to be even lower for the Run-off. Typically, Black voters tend to vote less frequently in Run-offs, and while Reed’s campaign is confident in their “get out the vote” machine, this general trend does not bode well for Reed.

At the same time, the election is being held the weekend after Thanksgiving, when a lot of people–including many White voters in the Buckhead area with more disposable income to do so–may be going out of town. That is why the Norwood campaign is pushing many of its supporters to take out an absentee ballot.

Norwood’s campaign is also being sensitive to the aftermath of the Democratic Party of Georgia mailer scandal, in which, as previously reported by APN, the DPG attempted to falsely portray Norwood as a Republican. In response, Norwood released a commercial emphasizing her support for Democratic candidates for President; this may have been a turn-off for some of her more Conservative supporters.

Days before the election, a robo-call went out targeting White voters all over the state criticizing Norwood’s efforts to distance herself from the Republican label; however, the state Republican Party denied sending out the call and the Reed campaign is believed to be responsible for trying to play both sides against the middle, as it were. The Reed camp is also suspected of indirectly being responsible for the DPG mailer.

All things considered, it is reasonable to expect that turnout will drop off across the board. If Norwood’s voters and Reed’s voters drop off equally and no other voters participate in the Run-off, Norwood will still win 56-46. Much of the outcome will hinge of the effectiveness of each campaign’s get out the vote efforts. Norwood, who previously was an entrepreneur in the robo-call business, has also employed “Ambassadors” throughout Atlanta’s neighborhoods, to call and remind Norwood voters to get back out in December.

Another variable is what will happen to voters who selected one of the other candidates, particularly Ms. Borders. With Borders having fallen into third place in the weeks before the election, one could assume that if voters wanted to pursue a Black-mayor-first strategy–as outlined in the BLF memo–they would have coalesced behind Reed. In other words, if they thought Reed was good enough, they would have already voted for Reed.

Thus, while some will suspect that the racial divide in this campaign may push Borders’s Black supporters to back Reed based solely on their similar skin tone, it is just as plausible that they will give Norwood a second look, or even stay home.

It is worth noting that Norwood also received significant Black support all over the city. According to a report today in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper’s website, “Norwood did better in predominantly black council districts than Reed did in white council districts. She won 23 percent of the votes cast in black council districts, beating Borders- 15.5 percent there.”

“Norwood won more than 58 percent of her vote from three predominantly white council districts – on the north and northeast sides of the city. Reed won 57 percent of his votes from five predominantly black council districts – on the east, west and south sides,” the AJC reported.

“In mixed-race council districts, the two candidates battled more or less to a draw, with Norwood getting about 40 percent of the vote, compared with Reed’s 37.5 percent,” the AJC reported.

“Turnout in white areas was about 10 points higher than in the black areas, but turnout everywhere was low (only about 30 percent).”

In the days leading up to the election, Atlanta Progressive News exclusively reported on a black SUV–apparently belonging to Reed’s Canvassing Director, Patrick Meredith–with a stack of Mary Norwood for Mayor yard signs trashed in the back seat.

When APN first contacted Reed’s spokesman, Reese McCranie, McCranie vowed to fire the person who owned the vehicle if it turned out to be a staff member, adding that it is not something the campaign would condone.

When APN notified McCranie that an inside source had identified the vehicle’s as Meredith’s, McCranie promised to investigate and respond to APN the next morning. McCranie instead did not respond, did not take APN’s calls or return a voicemail, and, according to two sources, avoided media calls all day, hanging up on one reporter who asked about the yard signs.

According to two sources now, the vehicle does belong to Meredith. It is also safe to assume that if it was not Meredith’s vehicle, Reed’s campaign would have demanded a retraction by now.

Meredith was apparently still working for the Reed campaign after the second APN story came out.

The reason this is deeply troubling is not only that it smacks of dirty, sleazy campaign tactics, but Reed’s campaign apparently lied to APN.

If this is how Reed is running his campaign, it raises the question, if he is elected and one of his City Hall staffers is accused of theft, would he fire that person or just try to avoid the issue and hope it goes away again?

In any event, check back to Atlanta Progressive News tomorrow for our round-up of the results of Tuesday’s City Council elections and stay tuned to APN’s homepage for in-depth news and analysis of the Mayoral Run-off.

About the author:

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

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