College Park Mayor Jack Longino has been reelected to the city’s top job six times, but every time he has faced opposition.
Last year, he beat his opponent — a former chief of the city police force — by just 36 votes to earn another four years at City Hall. With a history of political battles, it's reasonable that Longino, 62, knows he has enemies, but people in the arts community were shocked when hard feelings from the campaign spilled out into regular city business.
In June, Longino cast the deciding vote against permitting the annual College Park Arts Festival and then gave organizers a piece of his mind.
“I think that sometimes the do-gooders in this city need to figure out where you want to be and what you want to be and how you want to be,” he said.
Longino made it clear he was upset about "mean" things that were said about him by supporters of his opponent, some of whom he said were behind the arts festival.
"When you can come to this community and you can say those kinds of things and you want to kick me around and expect me to support you? You got another thought coming. I'm tired of forgiving people who treat people bad," he said.
Longino doubled down on those sentiments in an interview this week with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Read more about it in this week's AJC Watchdog here.
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