Runoff to be scrappy, expensive

ATLANTA --- If history is any guide, the runoff for mayor in Atlanta will be an expensive, bare-knuckles brawl that could lay bare racial divisions in the city that served as the cradle of the civil rights movement.

Atlanta has had a black mayor for a generation, a point of pride for blacks, who make up 60 percent of the city.

City Councilwoman Mary Norwood, an Augusta native, hopes to end that streak. She was the top vote-getter in Tuesday's six-way race but fell short of the 50 percent plus one vote needed to avoid a runoff. On Dec. 1, she faces Kasim Reed, a black state senator who earned 36 percent of the vote to Ms. Norwood's 46 percent.

Turnout is almost always lower in a runoff, so the challenge is to convince campaign-weary voters to trek back to the ballot box after the Thanksgiving holiday, said Tom Perdue, the campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss' runoff in Georgia last year.

Money will also be key as the candidates rush to replenish warchests left bare.

Ms. Norwood said Wednesday she needed "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to compete. The morning after the election, she said she had already secured pledges worth well more than $100,000.

A Reed spokesman said he had promises of more than $200,000 in donations.

Those campaign coffers might make up only a part of the race's total price tag. Outside groups are likely to weigh in.

In the days leading up to the general election, the state Democratic Party shipped out mailers casting Ms. Norwood as a closet Republican, a charge she has rejected. The attacks could intensify.

Atlanta elected Maynard Jackson as its first black mayor in 1973 and has had black mayors ever since.

Runoffs in Atlanta's mayoral races have historically come down along racial lines, with the outcome in favor of the black candidate. Mr. Jackson defeated Sam Massell, the city's last white mayor, in a runoff; likewise, former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young defeated Atlanta businessman Sidney Marcus in runoff in 1981.