Will Atlanta voters return to the polls?
ATLANTA— Although discussions of race and crime may intensify prior to Atlanta’s mayoral runoff election next month, convincing voters to return to the polls may be the harder problem to solve, according to political and policy experts at Georgia State University.
“I was both surprised and disappointed by the turnout,” said Harvey Newman, professor and chair of the department of public management and policy in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, noting that only 24 percent of the population cast votes. That means fewer than one in five adults determined the election results for Atlanta. When Mayor Shirley Franklin was in the running, voter turnout was in the 30 percent to 35 percent range.
GSU experts said the two biggest challenges ahead will be raising money and getting voters back to the voting booths on Dec. 1.
“The candidates will need to energize their base supporters to get out and vote,” Newman said.
To do that, the candidates need money so they can get their messages out there. But the economic climate for raising money has impacted the mayoral race and it will continue to going forward for the runoff, he added.
Henry Carey, associate professor of political science at GSU, says candidate Kasim Reed will continue to focus his campaign on crime because that seems to be an issue that has motivated black voters to come out to the polls.
“It’s a legitimate issue because the crime rate has gone up because of the decline in the economy, but crime is an issue that the mayor doesn’t have a lot of control over,” Carey said. “Crime in this country has a lot of racial implications and unfortunately it’s a black white issue, as opposed to acknowledging that blacks are the biggest victims of crime. This has much more to do with class type issues and the fact that the poorest residents of Atlanta are those suffering most from high-crimes.”
In terms of race, both Carey and Newman said Mary Norwood will de-racialize her campaign some, given the dominant issues were safety, budget and finances.
“I don’t think the fact that we haven’t had a white mayor meant that whites turned out in greater numbers. We can see that Norwood did not win in the first round which is what her strategy was,” Carey said.
Norwood has also focused on improving city government and stamping out corruption, which Carey said are issues that will be harder to blame on Reed.
“The front runner who is most linked to city policy, Lisa Borders, is no longer in the race and Reed is not an incumbent and he is better off not being in office,” Carey said. “His fundraising capabilities have been remarkable and if he can raise that much money again, I think he will cruise to victory.”
Voters in the United States and Atlanta generally vote along racial lines, Carey said.
Census studies show that whites have moved into Atlanta, while African-Americans have moved out to the suburbs, creating a major demographic shift since Franklin became mayor. The City of Atlanta added 100,000 new residents in the last eight years.
There are “polarized” areas in the city, such as Buckhead in the north, and pockets of poverty in certain areas of Atlanta.
“But Atlanta does not have public housing complexes,” Newman said, adding that they’ve been torn down in the last eight years since Franklin took office. “It’s much easier to mobilize people to go vote in large numbers if they’re all in one area.”
But the fate of Atlanta does not rest on a new mayor alone, said Katherine Willoughby, professor of public management and policy with the Andrew Young School.
“The City of Atlanta does not have the power it needs to take care of business,” Willoughby said.
In that, Willoughby means, it’s worth a second look at what requirements are in place for Atlanta’s’ chief operating officer and chief financial officer.
“Real change will require building a city that functions effectively at all levels,” Willoughby said. “City management must have the power and initiative to make changes throughout the government hierarchy.”