ATLANTA — Monday night, for the first time, the two runoff candidates for mayor of Atlanta were one-on-one, facing each other at a forum and answering questions about priorities, plans, visions, their grasps of a myriad of city problems -- even how they’d attack potholes.
Felicia Moore and Andre Dickens were the top, two finishers in last week’s general election; they finished ahead of a dozen other candidates for Atlanta mayor who were on the ballot.
Next: The runoff election to choose either Moore or Dickens; the runoff is on November 30—early voting actually begins November 17—and Moore and Dickens are working, now, to define for the voters sharp and clear differences between them.
The co-sponsors of Monday’s forum included the League of Women Voters Atlanta-Fulton County, and the ACLU-Georgia.
Most of the questions allowed Moore and Dickens, two veterans of the Atlanta City Council, a platform to exhibit their expertise in the inner workings of city government -- what is succeeding, what is failing, and what is needed to make it run better for Atlanta taxpayers.
At one point, the moderator asked, What keeps you awake at night, and what allows you to have a good night’s sleep?
Moore:
“It’s knowing that bullets are not going to be flying through your window while you’re sleeping. It means that you know that you can drive somewhere and stop at a light and not be pulled out and beaten to a pulp and waiting for a long time for someone to come. It means calling 911 for help and someone actually is able to answer the phone, and our officers are able to actually get to you because the cars that they have actually work and are running. Or the fire happens and the trucks actually can get to where you are and reach you. So those are the things that keep me up at night. And that is one of the reasons I’m running for mayor, is—we have a broken city. And we have not paid attention to the foundation, the fundamental services in this city and how they’re delivered, making sure we have the equipment…. We have to be able to serve you.”
Dickens:
“I actually think it’s the steady drumbeat of inequity that I keep feeling. That keeps me up at night. I feel like I’m chasing and trying to help the city chase to catch up, so that all of us can be able to still live here. It does keep me up at night, because that leads to a lot of things like homelessness, and crime, and despair. That beat, I hear it, I feel it, it’s trying to catch up each day, trying to help people get to fairness… and then beyond: opportunity. And so that keeps me up, so that’s where I spend a lot of my time, trying to uplift people, and help them beat the odds, because the odds are now beginning to be stacked against too many people in our city. And so this tale of two cities is going to end up to be one city (if nothing is done), and it’s going to be San Francisco where it’s all prosperity, and all the poor folks have to drive in every day to serve the rich, and then they go back home at night. And so that’s a steady drumbeat that I’m a little unnerved by, and it leads to other things, like crime and stuff.”
Both Dickens and Moore said that they are already working to try to convince Buckhead residents that Buckhead would be better off not splitting off from Atlanta to become its own city. Legislation to authorize a vote on cityhood (possibly in November, 2022) will be considered during the 2022 session of the Georgia General Assembly that begins in January.
The two both support hiring more police officers, as well as hiring mental health counselors and therapists to answer non-crime 911 calls, “where you have trained professionals,” Moore said, “who can help administer mental health services and calm a situation down. Of course, they can always use the police as back-up.”
“Most of the officers that I’ve talked to,” Dickens said, “they don’t want to be the ones to deal with people experiencing mental health challenges, or those that are experiencing homelessness, they would much rather leave that up to a specialist.”
Moore and Dickens are now waiting to see which one of them the departing mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, will endorse.
Bottoms’ endorsement could provide a significant boost, including financial contributions from across the country.
The forum can be viewed here.