Who’s running for Atlanta Mayor? Here are the top five candidates
MAYA SMITH: Earlier in 2021, Keisha Lance Bottoms announced she would not be running for reelection for mayor of Atlanta. Bottoms has served as mayor since 2017 and would have been able to seek another term, but decided not to saying that “it’s time to pass the baton on to someone else.” This unexpected news that the highest seat in local office is up for grabs triggered a flurry of potential candidates. As Georgia has recently become a winnable state for democrats, it is important to pay attention to how Atlanta, Georgia’s biggest city elects as their leader. Here are five of the most prominent candidates:
Kasim Reed
Kasim Reed is a democrat who was Atlanta mayor from 2010 until 2018. On his campaign website he details his way of tackling crime by “hir[ing] 750 new APD officers,” implementing implicit bias and de-escalation training. He also wants to keep the Atlanta City Jail open in order to prevent “overcrowding” in the Fulton County Jail. He also wants to expand Atlanta’s Policing Alternatives and Diversion Initiative, a program he created in his first term. To address affordable housing and homelessness, Reed wants to create an office of Anti-Displacement to “build housing for middle income city employees, including public safety officers and teachers, so they can live in the town they serve,” and to ”double the number of affordable units near MARTA stations without jeopardizing or destabilizing historic single-family neighborhoods.” Reed plans on working with local organizations and faith-based institutions to combat homelessness.
Felicia Moore
Felicia Moore is also a democrat who has been city council president since 2017, but has been a city council member for 20 years. According to Atlanta’s channel 2 Action News, as city council member, she voted to decriminalize marijuana possession and introduced Mattie’s Call, a bill that helps find missing eldery people. As for infrastructure, she has helped end a food desert in North West Atlanta by bringing a supermarket to the area, and additionally she worked to ensure that the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which according to Prezcat.org “expected to generate $120 million over 25 years” was included in the Beltline Project in an effort to ensure affordable housing would be still be available in the area.
Antonio Brown
Antonio Brown, another democrat, is the first openly LGBTQ+ BIPOC person to be on Atlanta’s city council. He represents district 3, which includes English Avenue and Atlantic Station. On his campaign website, Brown says he wants to expand resources and training for officers and increase the number of non emergency response teams for crimes. He wants to add a “light rail” on the Atlanta to improve infrastructure and wants to establish a separate department on housing and community development that addresses affordable housing.
Sharon Gay
Sharon Gay, a nonpartisan candidate, is the former deputy chief of staff for former Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell and has also worked as a lawyer in the Georgia Attorney General’s office. On crime, Gay says that “you can’t just do what we might have done four or eight years ago. New problems require new strategies, smart strategies and smart solutions, but at the same time, we’ve got to have good policing.” While Gay has emphasized her heavy role in redeveloping Atlanta’s Westside through project such as Ponce City Market (PCM) and Atlantic Station, she is still committed to ensuring that there is affordable housing in Atlanta and plans on using government, private sector and faith based organizations to help facilitate this, according to chanel 2 Action news. To improve infrastructure, Gay plans to work with MARTA to coordinate bigger regional projects that will help the city.
Andre Dickens
Andre Dickens is the post 3 at large councilmember. Dickens plans to combat crime through his S.A.F.E plan where on his campaign website says that he wants to add 250 more officers to the force in his first year in office wants to “arrest gang leaders that are our preying on our children and resolve pandemic-related court backlogs to get violent criminals off our streets.” He also wants to increase youth engagement in policing efforts. Additionally he wants to create a taskforce to combat gun trafficking, also help address non-violent issues that police respond to. He also says on his website that he wants to “empower APD to engage in community policing and to support them with new technologies to reduce response times.” On his campaign website, Dickens says that he will have “development with displacement” by freezing property taxes for seniors and by adding 20,000 affordable housing units in the next eight years. He also wants to have free MARTA for all by 2030.
Election Day is November 2nd.
Who Atlanta decides as its next mayor will be important as they will oversee Georgia’s biggest city and an economic hub of the southeast for the next four years. I will be voting for Felicia Moore because she has extensive experience in local government and has progressive ideas for the issues I care about. While the voter registration deadline has already passed, early voting will continue until October 29th and election day is November 2nd. More information on how and where to vote can be found here.
Maya Smith is a freshman from Atlanta, Georgia in the School of Foreign Service with a prospective major in International Politics and minor in History.