The five leading candidates for mayor of Atlanta participated in a debate hosted by Leadership Atlanta Thursday night to gauge who’s the best person to replace Keisha Lance Bottoms next year.
Voters are still trying to distinguish among the candidates because nearly 41% of voters are still undecided days before early voting begins Oct. 12, according to an AJC poll last month.
Channel 2 Action News’ Condace Pressley and “Georgia Gang” host Lori Geary Talbert asked the candidates about public safety and Buckhead cityhood at the two-hour event.
But the audience appeared to resonate most with questions about each candidate’s individual nature, especially in regards to how their administrations would differ from one another.
A mix of laughter and tension filled the air when the candidates addressed concerns about federal investigations amid efforts to fight crime.
“It will not be a dictatorial region of terror,” said City Council President Felicia Moore about her leadership, an apparent jab at former Mayor Kasim Reed.
The AJC poll of 842 likely voters found Moore and Reed in a statistical tie for the lead. In terms of the Buckhead city movement, Moore said that criminals won’t recognize new city borders, and a secession would create more expenses and “constitutional issues” for Buckhead residents.
Reed said he entered the race because he has the mayoral experience to reduce crime while stopping Buckhead’s secession. He said the police clearly need more funding given the city’s homicide rate.
“I may not be the person that you want to have to deal with,” Reed said, eliciting laughs. “But I’m the person that will get you home.”
Reed acknowledged that some call him a “bully,” but said he’s grown to be “far more collaborative” and receptive to others. He also pointed out that his personal attorneys told the AJC that he’s been cleared of wrongdoing in the ongoing Atlanta City Hall corruption probe.
He also said the authorities are not investigating his campaign after the AJC in June reported on a ruling handed down by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which indicated his campaign spending was under scrutiny by a federal grand jury for alleged wire fraud.
Attorney Sharon Gay said she offers “servant leadership model” of governance that will train police in a manner unlike the other candidates who have been in office for years now.
She also responded to concerns about her first campaign ad, which featured her involvement in a redevelopment project in northwest Atlanta that replaced a blighted public housing complex.
Gay served as the outside counsel for the Atlanta Housing Authority when the city set out to replace the Heman E. Perry Homes housing project with the West Highlands mixed-income community. She said she “literally lead” the effort to amend the Georgia Constitution in the legislature to acquire the financing to pay for the redevelopment.
“I couldn’t capture 25 years of work in 30 seconds,” Gay said.
City Councilmen Andre Dickens and Antonio Brown were both grilled for their June 2020 vote to withhold $73 million from the police budget until Bottoms released a policing reform plan.
Dickens, who is calling himself the “jobs mayor” and is proposing to build Atlanta’s first Labor Department, said he wasn’t trying to defund the police. Rather, he said his vote was intended to ensure the police would get racial sensitivity training, which is one of his campaign promises.
Brown stood out among his opponents and said he’s the only candidate who isn’t “pragmatic” and is willing to address the root causes of crime, such as poverty and blight. He said the city is “overfunding police,” and that those dollars would be better spent enhancing nonemergency services.
When asked about the unrelated federal fraud indictment for incidents that allegedly occurred before Brown won office, Brown stressed that he’s innocent and that his case will not affect his leadership if elected.
“I didn’t know this was a candidate roast forum,” Brown said.
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