ATLANTA -- With city councilman and former opponent Kwanza Hall at her side on a plaza off Auburn Avenue NE, Keisha Lance Bottoms grabbed an inside track to the four thousand plus voters who supported Hall in last week’s election.
"This is huge. This is huge," Bottoms gushed before a crowd of supporters and news media. In an interview afterward, she was more circumspect.
"People will make individual decisions on who they will support. You don’t just pick up voters and assign them to someone else. But it certainly it helps tremendously," Bottoms said of the Hall endorsement.
Bottoms had an appointment later in the day with Vincent Fort, another former candidate who got more than nine thousand votes last week. Fort has already met with Mary Norwood, the other finalist who will face Bottoms December fifth.
But the biggest prize may be the endorsement of third place finisher Cathy Woolard, who got more than 16,000 votes Tuesday. Woolard won a sizable cluster of Atlanta’s eastside precincts. Norwood mostly won Atlanta’s northside, while Bottoms prevailed in the south.
"She’s a very accomplished woman," Norwood said of Woolard. Norwood and Bottoms have agreed to appear jointly with Woolard at a forum November 28. Woolard has withheld an endorsement thus far.
And while she would welcome a Woolard endorsement, Norwood says regular voters will tell her story best.
"The people that know me personally, and a lot of them are being ambassadors for me out in their communities. So I believe at the end of the day, we’re going to have tremendous support all across the city," Norwood said.
A majority of voters from last week’s election are up for grabs in the runoff.
