Atlanta Mayor Recount Goes to Reed

Atlanta Mayor Recount Goes to Reed
By ROBBIE BROWN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: December 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/us/10atlanta.html?hpw


ATLANTA — Kasim Reed, a lawyer and former state legislator, was elected mayor of Atlanta by a margin of 714 votes, according to a recount of last week’s vote that concluded on Wednesday afternoon.

His opponent, Mary Norwood, a City Council member, requested the recount, which failed to reverse the outcome of last week’s runoff election. Under Georgia law, a recount is permitted when the margin of victory is less than 1 percent of the total vote. She conceded the race after the recount confirmed her loss.

The narrow victory, out of 84,000 votes cast, gives control over the city often known as the capital of the South to Mr. Reed, 40, a former state senator and former campaign manager for Mayor Shirley Franklin. Mr. Reed rocketed to first place from third in the campaign’s final months after he pledged to bolster crime-fighting in the city and consolidated the votes of black residents, who had supported several candidates in the primary.

Even before the recount, Mr. Reed had started assembling his mayoral team. He quickly named a chief operating officer and interim police chief, but he said he is mindful of needing to court Atlantans who did not support him.

“I’m going to continue to reach out, not only to Ms. Norwood’s supporters, but to Ms. Norwood directly,” Mr. Reed said in an interview Wednesday. “We’re going to have an administration that’s focused on talent, merit and government, and I think that message is resonating well on the north side of the city.”

Mr. Reed inherits a mayor’s office still reeling from deep budget cuts, an unpopular departing police chief and complaints over the growth of property crime. He has pledged to reopen shuttered recreation centers and add 750 police officers over the next four years.

At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Reed said he would inherit many challenges when he is sworn in next month, and vowed to travel to Washington to secure more federal funding for the city.

“It’s going to take certainly all of my skills and all of the skills of my team,” he said. “Atlanta’s got some tough choices to make. I’m going to put the choices in front of the citizens. I’m going to choose a direction. And I’m going to work to earn support for the direction I choose.”

At her own news conference, Ms. Norwood said she would remain active in the city’s politics.

“I have never gone away and I’m not going away now,” she said. “I love this city and I intend to stay very active.”

After a narrow victory, Mr. Reed will need to govern by consensus, said William H. Boone, a political scientist at Clark Atlanta University.

“He needs to balance the needs of the black community against those of the more prosperous white community,” Mr. Boone said. “That would be a balancing act for any mayor.”The election divided Atlanta along familiar lines of class and race, with Mr. Reed, who is black, carrying precincts in the poorer south side and Ms. Norwood, who is white, dominating the prosperous northern neighborhoods around Buckhead. Ms. Norwood came closer to winning than any white candidate has since 1973, when Maynard H. Jackson was elected the city’s first black mayor.

In recent years, an influx of whites and Hispanics into Atlanta has shifted the demographics in what was once a city guaranteed to elect a black mayor. The percentage of blacks has fallen below 57 percent from 61 percent in 2000. The racial factor, among others, helped spur supporters of both candidates to the polls, producing a turnout in the runoff that was, remarkably, higher than during the primary.

In the campaign, Ms. Norwood sought to label Mr. Reed as too much of a political insider, while Mr. Reed countered by calling her a Republican, although she identifies herself as an independent.

Ms. Norwood, who finished first in the general election, lost momentum among crossover black voters, said Michael Leo Owens, a political scientist at Emory University. Voting analyses suggested that Ms. Norwood won more than 20 percent of the black vote in the multicandidate general election but as little as 15 percent in the runoff, he said.

“Mary Norwood ran as if we live in post-racial Atlanta,” Mr. Owens said, pointing to her message of uniting neighborhoods and races. “It was demonstrated quite clearly on runoff day that we don’t,” he said, adding, “The blacker the district, the greater support was for Kasim Reed.”

Mr. Reed lost only a single vote in the recount.