Candidates Scramble to Announce Last-Minute Endorsements

By Odette Yousef

Atlanta, GA – Atlanta's top mayoral candidates scrambled this week to announce more endorsements as Tuesday's election nears. Some political observers think endorsements may be particularly important this year, considering the large block of undecided voters.

But as WABE's Odette Yousef reports, the endorsement landscape is not at all what it once was.

Angelo Fuster was part of former mayor Maynard Jackson Jr's administration. He says Jackson's endorsement was long considered the most valuable to a candidate:

FUSTER: Maynard combined almost this mythical following with hard work - he would get out there and do it.

This is the first real toss-up for Jackson's former seat since he died in 2003, and Fuster says no one else has the same pull with voters. But he says current Mayor Shirley Franklin could come close.

So far, Franklin has been silent on her preferred candidate, but this week she aimed her torpedoes at the frontrunner, Mary Norwood. In a comment on the Atlanta Journal Constitution's Political Insider blog, Franklin wrote "Norwood has not demonstrated vision, competence or integrity in her public life as an elected offical (sic)." Still, Norwood has won endorsements from several groups and individuals, including the firefighters union.

Former Mayor Sam Massell, now the head of the Buckhead Coalition, says he's somewhat surprised that Franklin hasn't endorsed anyone. But he is more surprised that the AJC has dropped endorsements.

MASSELL: Frankly, the endorsement of a mayoralty candidate from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in its heyday, was considered a value of about 10 thousand votes.

Massell says that when he ran for Mayor, in 1969, that accounted for 15% of what it took to win.

Massell thinks voters may consider endorsements heavily this year because the three frontrunners have similar platforms. But others think voters won't City councilmember Kwanza Hall:

HALL: They're really looking at their pocketbooks, they're really looking at who's going to make the city safe.

Hall believes those stresses will push Atlantans to take their votes more personally this year than in any recent election.

Odette Yousef, WABE News.