Election 2009: It Ain't Over In Atlanta

While most of the attention has been given to the governors races in VA and NJ, and the upstate congressional race in New York, down here in the merry old south we have our own little election going on for the mayor of Atlanta that is now headed for a runoff.

What is making this race interesting is the way it is being played out and the hyped up attention being paid to one of the candidates.

The stage has now been set for a runoff between Mary Norwood and Kasim Reed. The election is one of those so called non-partisan races, meaning the candidates do not have to declare a political party, but trust me all the candidates for mayor this year were Democrats. Atlanta may like to say they are the "city that is too busy to hate", but I dare you to display any sort of GOP accoutrement. You can count the time until it gets vandalized with a stopwatch. So why bring this up?

In the closing days of the campaign Mary Norwood who is a white women, and indeed earlier in the campaign statements were made about not letting the white women win, came under attack for being a Republican. The charges were completely false but timed to come out in the final days of the campaign leaving her very little time to set the record straight. Using this tactic was not designed to win the race for the Reed camp, who appear to be the ones behind the charge, but rather to force the runoff.

In Atlanta you must get a majority, 51%, to declare victory.

So now we have to endure yet another month before the runoff election. All of the attention will no doubt be concentrated in the southwest portion of Atlanta which is filled with people whose education must have stopped at the letter D in elementary school. The other big challenge here is keeping the voters alive long enough to vote. Southwest Atlanta is like the wild, wild, west and every morning the news is filled with latest shooting, robbery, or act of gang violence.

Kasim Reed worked this area of town effectively promising them more recreational facilities. The only thing that does is give the gang bangers a government paid clubhouse.

So while the majority of the residents of Atlanta are black, they have found a unique way to get around being accused of being racists by instead painting the front runner as a Republican.

The blacks believe that the position of mayor of Atlanta is theirs alone, like some sort of fraternity legacy pledge, and a lot has been made out the fact that Ms Norwood could be the first white mayor of Atlanta since 1973 and there are powers that simply can not allow that to happen.

Full disclosure. I do not live in the city of Atlanta so I don't have a dog in this fight, but I am close enough to it that what happens in Atlanta affects me.