The bitter battle to become Atlanta City Hall‘s second banana

I thought of this when considering the job of Atlanta City Council president. It’s second to the mayor on the City Hall org chart. But it’s one damn big step down.

The president runs City Council meetings (kind of like a circus ringmaster), appoints council committee chairs and facilitates legislation. But he or she can’t initiate it. So they must lobby the administration because it’s the mayor who can get things done.

“You can talk about any issue but you’ve got to be focused because you’re not the mayor, you’re not the City Council,” current Council President Doug Shipman told me. “You don’t have official power to move things along. You have to catalyze attention and bring the other council members along.”

It can be a bully pulpit, but it’s hard to be a bully. Again, because there’s no real power.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

One might think the job is a launching pad to become mayor.

Nope. It’s where political careers go to die. Since 1997, six council presidents have run for mayor. All have lost.

Still, there is a ferocious fight for this job, one that pays $103,250 and allows you to stand there, meeting after meeting, being a punching bag for angry residents during public comment.

Shipman, whose diplomacy has served him in the job, is not running for reelection after just one term because of family medical issues.

The candidates running to replace him are two-term Councilwoman Marci Collier Overstreet and Rohit Malhotra, who runs the Center for Civic Innovation, a public policy think tank that’s decidedly lefty.

Malhotra would argue progressive and Overstreet is saying “radical.”

In a website and a flyer, the Overstreet camp extolled her hometown cred, saying she graduated from Atlanta Public Schools and Georgia State University. Meanwhile, “Rohit did not attend APS schools and graduated from college in Massachusetts.”

Harvard, in fact.

Overstreet, the literature notes, is a wife and mother of three. Malhotra? He’s a “bachelor.”

Malhotra, the son of Indian immigrants and raised in Gwinnett County, said the “bachelor” notation feels homophobic. He says he’s not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, as Seinfeld might add.

Overstreet says she had nothing to do with the flyer. Unknown others don’t want him in, she insists.

Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com

Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com

The president’s race is often a ho-hummer. But this time it has gained publicity and ferocity because Mayor Andre Dickens is running against some unknowns. So he has time to counsel and raise money for Overstreet.

The race, Shipman said, is both geographical and generational, with Overstreet hoping to capture established Atlanta.

“She is running on the theme, ‘We’re on course,’” Shipman said. “Rohit is pitching a new Atlanta. The question is, do people want change?”

Overstreet fueled the “insider-outsider” narrative for the race months ago when she told the Saporta Report: “The reason I don’t want an outsider is that the president is No. 2 to the mayor.”

It did have a ring of “We don’t need any troublemakers here.”

She represents Southwest Atlanta, long the political powerhouse of Black Atlanta, and home to several mayors, most recently Keisha Lance Bottoms, whom Overstreet replaced on the council.

Malhotra lives in Grant Park and is getting solid support from Atlanta’s east side and intown neighborhoods, communities increasingly white and solidly progressive.

With those two regions locked down between the candidates, voters to the north in Buckhead may become the deciding factor.

For years, Malhotra gazed at City Hall from his think tank perch, analyzing, studying, recommending and criticizing policy and politics. But after a while, a fellow figures he can do it better than those in the game, so he raised his hand.

Radical extremist? He’s more like policy geek/PITA (as in, pain in the arse).

At least eight of the 15 council members have endorsed Overstreet. There’s a feeling with some that Malhotra comes across as a self-righteous smarty pants.

Councilman Matt Westmoreland did not want to criticize Malhotra, simply saying he’s “passionate.”

“But I think she’s better,” he said. “When you serve alongside someone for eight years, you see who folks are.”

He added she’s not a “rubber stamp” for Dickens, parrying a charge frequently brought up by Malhotra.

“Whoever sits in the president’s seat will either advance the work we’ve done or bring it to a halt,” Overstreet told me.

Not surprisingly, both candidates insist the job can accomplish great things, as does Felicia Moore, a former council president who supports Malhotra.

Malhotra made enemies on the council by fervently opposing the process that led to the Public Safety Training Center. Overstreet’s team frequently accuses him of wanting the “defund the police,” although he insists those words have never crossed his lips.

Closing the city detention center, creating Beltline rail and building affordable housing are his goals.

Malhotra says the opposition is trying hard “to paint a nerd as a villain. I’m a threat to public safety. I’m Radical Rohit.”

He wanted to add one thing: Dickens is a bachelor, too.