We hear candidates say all the time, “This is the most important election in my lifetime.”
In reality, elections are fleeting for candidates — they win or they lose, and maybe they move on with life.
But the effects of elections can be permanent for the places candidates want to lead, for better and for worse. In many ways, Tuesday feels like the most important election of Atlanta’s lifetime.
The mayors of this city have seen it through segregation and the Civil Rights movement. They’ve positioned it as the physical center of the South, with its ribbons of roads and international airport. And they’ve made it the commercial capital of the South, with its face toward business and its growing, diverse workforce.
It’s no accident that Atlanta grew faster, higher and stronger than its neighbors in Birmingham or Nashville or Charlotte.
But the city doesn’t run on autopilot. It has more than 8,000 employees and a $2 billion budget. And whoever wins the race for mayor this year is about to inherit a post-pandemic Atlanta that feels like it’s at the crossroads of progress and disaster.
To get a sense of what the biggest challenges and to-do items will be at City Hall, I spoke with people with experience inside and outside the city. I asked what’s at stake for Atlanta in the next mayor’s race-- and what might be around the corner for the city’s next leader.
The consensus was that the most immediate crisis will be the possibility that the new mayor could end up with a city literally divided if the Buckhead cityhood effort moves forward in 2022.
“The City of Buckhead, and all that entails, is an emergency issue that will have to be triaged because it will have implications not just for the entire city, but for the state,” said Ceasar Mitchell, the past City Council president. “It could even have national implications.”
On the Wednesday after Election Day, the Georgia General Assembly will begin meeting for a special legislative session that will include hearings on a stand-alone Buckhead City.
While it may be financially possible for the wealthy neighborhood to become a city on its own, it will be up to the new mayor to convince the legislature and voters that Atlanta is worth keeping whole — or manage the fallout if that doesn’t work.
A City Hall insider also warns that a mayor will have to balance any outreach to Buckhead with equal attention to the rest of the city that will still be here, even if Buckhead goes.
Mitchell also pointed to crime as the city’s other emergency to be handled on Day One.
“The crime wave cannot be allowed to morph into a culture,” he said. “And as a community, how do we rethink the relationship between the city and the criminal justice system?”
Like other big cities, rising prices are worsening housing affordability and threatening to change the fabric of Atlanta as longtime residents struggle to stay. The future of the Atlanta City jail needs to be resolved. TSPLOST funding will need to be renewed in the spring.
Several leaders, including Central Atlanta Progress President A.J. Robinson, said that basic city services, including many interrupted by COVID, will need attention, too.
“The city needs a new simple, big vision of where we’re going, and then you’ve got to come through on these little things that affect everybody’s lives on a daily basis,” he said. “People are thirsty for someone to show that they care.”
The sheer politics of the job is often underappreciated, too, I heard many times. As soon as the mayor is sworn in, he or she will be in the throes of the General Assembly’s legislative session, led by Republicans, followed by the 2022 statewide campaigns, when they’ll likely be campaigning for the Democrat running against Gov. Brian Kemp.
And while the City of Atlanta is the namesake for the Atlanta Metro area, the dozens of surrounding city and county governments, along with the Atlanta Public Schools, MARTA, and other independent bodies all have separate governing structures, but interlocking problems. The next mayor will have to build, and in some cases, build back, those relationships.
On top of the known challenges of the job, the highest hurdle the next mayor faces may turn out to be something no one has even considered.
Keisha Lance Bottoms was hit almost immediately with a cyberattack that sent nearly all city services to written tickets for weeks and months until new systems were built, hardened and installed.
And COVID-19 did not exist at all before it exploded on the scene in 2020 and shut down Atlanta, and every other government for months.
The next mayor will need a team and a temperament that can handle the worst, in many forms, all at once.
But maybe more than anything, and this is me talking here, the mayor will need to be able to remind Atlantans what Atlanta is again.
Why is the city worth keeping and investing in? Why should you keep your family and your business and your future tied to this place?
We know the towering role Atlanta played in the history books. What contribution can we make, and must we make, toward its future?
Being the mayor of Atlanta, especially now, means something. And yet in August, when my colleague Bill Torpy told people in the city, “Wake up, Atlanta, and pay attention to the mayor’s race,” 41% of voters were still undecided about who to vote for.
But it seems like people have been hitting the snooze button because the AJC’s latest poll from mid-October showed 41% still undecided.
The AJC has written detailed profiles of the leading candidates. There have been dozens of public forums. Each one has a website and staff ready to convince you they’re the ones to lead this city through the next, crucial four years.
Atlanta, it’s time to decide.
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