White candidate scrambles vote, attitudes in Atlanta race

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By Joseph Curl

"I suspect for many voters, maybe all voters, race would be something they would think about, and although it's not the only factor, for some voters it is the determining factor," said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.

The Survey USA poll found Mrs. Norwood leading by a 6-to-1 margin among whites, Republicans and independents. Mr. Reed, who has been endorsed by Mr. Young, leads among blacks, who made up 59 percent of the electorate in Survey USA's turnout model.

And in a major break with past elections, a separate Insider Advantage poll on Oct. 16 reported that Mrs. Norwood was even leading among the city's black voters, with nearly one-third supporting her.

With six candidates on the Nov. 3 ballot and two write-in candidates, many do not expect any candidate to win a majority of the votes on Election Day, which means the top two finishers would compete in a runoff on Dec. 1.

But with only a few campaigning days left, Mrs. Norwood is nearing 50 percent in the polls and could win an outright victory on Tuesday.

In the 1960s and '70s, whites fled the city, with the black percentage of the population soaring to about 70 percent in the 1980s.

But between 2000 and 2006, Atlanta's white population grew faster than that of any other U.S. city, according to the Brookings Institution. In 2000, Atlanta was 33 percent white and 61 percent black. In 2007, the numbers were 38 percent white and 57 percent black, according to U.S. Census data.

"Black voters have been moving further and further out of Atlanta, and whites who wanted to be closer to work have been moving in," Mr. Bullock said, noting that the city has grown by 100,000 residents since 2000.

Political power and race have a long, tangled history in the Georgia capital. The divisions reached new heights in 1973, when Maynard Jackson, a Democrat, ran for mayor.

Mr. Jackson targeted his campaign to blacks, who less than a decade earlier had won the full, unrestricted right to vote. He demanded that the city's white business elite open their doors to minorities and urged strict new affirmative-action policies to level the playing field for blacks.