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      Andre Dickens Is Elected Mayor of Atlanta

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      Mr. Dickens and Felicia Moore had advanced to the runoff election by beating former Mayor Kasim Reed.ATLANTA — Andre Dickens, a veteran City Council member, was elected mayor of Atlanta in an upset on Tuesday night after promising voters that he would help guide the city in a more equitable direction.Mr. Dickens, 47, will step into one of the most high-profile political positions in the South after defeating Felicia Moore, 60, the City Council president, in Tuesday’s runoff election.In a first round of voting, Ms. Moore had bested Mr. Dickens by more than 17 percentage points. But on Tuesday, Mr. Dickens had about 62 percent of the vote when The Associated Press declared him the winner at about 10:30 p.m.Mr. Dickens, a church deacon, delivered an upbeat, roof-raising victory speech to supporters, noting his humble upbringing in the working-class neighborhood of Adamsville, his engineering degree from Georgia Tech and the daunting problems he has promised to tackle.“We are facing some generational problems in our city,” he said. “Atlanta is growing in population and in wealth. Businesses are flocking to the city, yet we still have people living on our streets. We have people working at our airport just to meet last month’s rent. People are still fighting to stay in their homes in the city that they love.”But if there was “any city in the world” that could face these issues, he added, “it’s Atlanta.”Voting at the Church at Ponce & Highland in Atlanta on Tuesday.Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressThe mayor’s race unfolded at a time of promise and peril for Atlanta. The city’s population grew 17 percent in the past decade, to about 499,000 people, and a number of major technology companies are expanding their footprint in the city in hopes of increasing diversity, given that nearly half of city residents are Black.But like many U.S. cities, Atlanta has been struggling with spikes in a number of violent crime categories, including murder. In May, the city’s political future was thrown into doubt when Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced she would not run for re-election after a first term in which she was forced to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, a high-profile police shooting of a Black man, Rayshard Brooks, and racial justice protests that occasionally became violent.As other killings rocked the city, public safety emerged as the key issue in the mayor’s race, giving an early boost to former Mayor Kasim Reed, who argued that his experience made him uniquely qualified to solve the crime problem. But Mr. Reed, who left office in 2018, also brought significant political baggage, with numerous members of his administration convicted or indicted on federal corruption-related charges.Mr. Reed’s complicated past was a likely factor in the surprise outcome in the initial balloting, when Mr. Dickens nudged out the better-known Mr. Reed to secure a spot in the runoff against the first-place finisher, Ms. Moore.Since then, Mr. Dickens and Ms. Moore endeavored to distinguish themselves in the nonpartisan race, despite the fact they are both liberal Democrats who share many of the same policy goals.Both supported hiring more police officers, encouraging the reform of police culture and increasing Atlanta’s stock of affordable housing.Felicia Moore campaigning in Atlanta in September.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBoth candidates also opposed a controversial effort to allow Buckhead, an upscale, majority-white neighborhood, to secede from Atlanta, taking with it a substantial chunk of the city’s tax base. This potential divorce, which has been fueled by crime concerns, would require approval by the Republican-dominated State Legislature and a subsequent vote by the neighborhood’s residents. To derail the plan, the next mayor will need to deploy the bully pulpit and engage in nimble and strategic lobbying of Republicans who control the Statehouse.During the campaign, Ms. Moore, a real estate agent, leaned into her reputation as a thorn in the side of previous mayors, including Mr. Reed. Before he left office, she argued that he should be held accountable for the corruption on his watch. She reminded voters that she backed legislation creating a new inspector general for City Hall as well as an independent compliance office, both in reaction to the scandals that dogged the Reed administration.“I am actually like the outsider that’s on the inside, fighting against corruption, fighting against the status quo, sometimes fighting the established order of things,” Ms. Moore told a recent audience at a mayoral forum.Mr. Dickens is the chief development officer at TechBridge, a nonprofit organization that uses technology to help amplify the work of other nonprofits. During the campaign he emphasized his role in increasing the minimum wage for city employees, as well as spearheading the creation of a city transportation department. Mr. Dickens, who was endorsed by Mayor Bottoms and former Mayor Shirley Franklin, argued in recent weeks that Ms. Moore had spent more time criticizing others than racking up her own achievements over the course of her long career.“She does nothing and I do a lot,” Mr. Dickens said in a recent interview.Both Ms. Moore and Mr. Dickens are Black. Tuesday’s election extends a streak of Black mayors in Atlanta since the election of Maynard Jackson in 1973 despite a recent influx of white residents that caused the share of Black residents to decline from a slight majority to 47 percent of the population, according to an analysis of 2020 Census figures. More

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      Felicia Moore, Andre Dickens Will Compete for Atlanta Mayor; Kasim Reed Falls Short

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      ATLANTA — The mayoral election in Atlanta produced a surprise result, as Kasim Reed, a former two-term mayor once considered a front-runner in the race, failed to finish in either first or second place, denying him the chance to compete in the Nov. 30 runoff and ending his surprising political comeback bid.Felicia Moore, the City Council president, finished first in Tuesday’s race with about 41 percent of the vote, followed by Andre Dickens, a city councilman, who narrowly bested Mr. Reed with about 23 percent of the vote. Both Ms. Moore and Mr. Dickens had attacked Mr. Reed for the series of corruption scandals that unfolded on his watch at City Hall, resulting in numerous indictments and guilty pleas from high-ranking city officials.Amid the controversy, Mr. Reed, who had been one of the most high-profile politicians in the state, virtually disappeared from the political stage after leaving office in January 2018. He officially returned to the scene in June, announcing that he would seek a third term after the current mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, declared she would not run for a second term.Mr. Reed led a crowded field of contestants in early polling with a message heavily focused on a promise to fix the city’s violent crime problems. In a statement on Thursday afternoon, he thanked Atlanta voters and congratulated Ms. Moore and Mr. Dickens.“When I declared my candidacy for mayor in June, I had one goal: to restore safety in every neighborhood across our city,” Mr. Reed said. “Like many others, I witnessed the tapestry of diverse communities that make up our city be torn apart by surging levels of violent crime.”Kasim Reed, a former two-term Atlanta mayor, failed to make it to the runoff.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBut the corruption concerns appeared to have dragged him down, even as he reminded voters that he had never been charged or indicted after a lengthy federal investigation of his administration.Like Mr. Reed, both Ms. Moore, 60, and Mr. Dickens, 47, have promised to get a handle on violent crime. Both candidates have also focused on affordable housing, an increasingly hot topic in a rapidly gentrifying city.Because so much of the race leading up to the election was focused on Mr. Reed and questions about his fitness for office, it is unclear how Ms. Moore and Mr. Dickens will seek to differentiate themselves in the runoff phase, and which lines of attack they might try against each other.On Tuesday night, after The Associated Press had projected that Ms. Moore would advance to the runoff, she hugged and shook hands with supporters and volunteers as “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas played. Ms. Moore said the election was about “a new Atlanta — an Atlanta where everyone’s going to feel safe.”“An Atlanta,” she continued, “where when you spend your money for your taxes and your services, you’re going to get them.”Ms. Moore, center, celebrated with her supporters on Tuesday night.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesOn Thursday afternoon, Mr. Dickens pushed a message of unity and urged supporters of the candidates who did not make it to the runoff to support him. “I’m a bridge builder, I’m inclusive, I will bring this city together because I draw circles, I don’t draw lines to separate people,” he said. “I will bring us together and we will get things done.”Mr. Dickens, who joined the City Council in 2013, is a product of Atlanta’s public school system who earned an engineering degree from Georgia Tech. In recent years he has focused on ways to help disadvantaged people find jobs in the city’s growing technology sector.Ms. Moore has served on the City Council for more than two decades after serving as head of her neighborhood association. During the current campaign, she has emphasized good-government reforms she championed at City Hall, where she was an outspoken critic of perceived excesses in the Reed administration.Both Mr. Dickens and Ms. Moore are Black. Their advancement into the runoff ensures that the city’s streak of electing African American mayors, which stretches back to 1973, will be unbroken, despite a significant influx of white residents in recent years. More

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      Kasim Reed Focuses on Crime in Atlanta Mayoral Election

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      Kasim Reed, the former mayor whose administration was marked by corruption scandals, is running for another term, promising to restore public safety.ATLANTA — The fear of rising crime in American cities is having a profound effect on mayoral politics from New York to Seattle. In Atlanta, it has had the power of resurrection, delivering a reanimating jolt to the once-moribund career of one of the South’s most polarizing public figures.Kasim Reed, the former Atlanta mayor who fell off the political map in 2018 amid a steady drip of scandal in his administration, has returned to the spotlight with an unlikely bid for a third term and is now a leading candidate in a crowded field of lesser-known contenders.The overwhelming focus of Mr. Reed’s second act is the troubling increase in violent crime in Atlanta — and a promise that he, alone, can fix it.“I am the only candidate with the experience and track record to address our city’s surge in violent crime,” he recently wrote on Twitter, introducing a new campaign ad in which he called public safety “Job No. 1.”“I am the only candidate with the experience and track record to address our city’s surge in violent crime,” Mr. Reed wrote on Twitter.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn an echo of moderate Democrats like Eric Adams, the winner of this summer’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, Mr. Reed is promising to strengthen law enforcement in a way that takes into account grass-roots demands for a cultural change in policing. He has promised to add 750 officers to Atlanta’s police force. “But we’re going to train them in a post-George Floyd way,” he said in a recent television ad.Most of Mr. Reed’s major opponents in the nonpartisan race identify as Democrats, and most are also offering some version of this message, which is distinctly different from the defund-the-police rhetoric that emerged from progressive activists during the street protests of 2020.Mr. Reed’s fate at the polls in November may also hint at how much voters are willing to overlook from politicians so long as they think they might gain a modicum of peace and order. His time in office was defined by a sharp-elbowed style that some described as bullying, and by several scandals involving kickbacks, theft of public funds and weapons violations, among other things.Felicia Moore, the City Council president and one of Mr. Reed’s top rivals for mayor, wants voters to think hard about the string of corruption cases involving members of his administration. “The leadership should take responsibility for the actions of their administration,” she said. “He was the leader of that organization.”But in Atlanta, crime has increasingly taken center stage. The number of homicides investigated by the Atlanta police surged from 99 in 2019 to 157 in 2020, a year when the United States experienced its largest one-year increase in homicides on record, and in Atlanta, this year is on track to be worse. Some homicides have particularly horrified residents over the past year: An 8-year-old girl shot and killed in a car she was riding in with her mother last summer. A 27-year-old bartender kidnapped at gunpoint and killed as she was returning home from a shift last month. A 40-year-old woman mutilated and stabbed to death, along with her dog, while she was on a late-night walk near Piedmont Park, the city’s signature open space, in July.“They are more random, and they’re happening all over the city at all times of day,” said Sharon Gay, a mayoral candidate who noted that she was mugged about 18 months ago near her home in the well-heeled neighborhood of Inman Park. A memorial for Katherine Janness, who was fatally stabbed near Piedmont Park this summer.Ron Harris/Associated PressThe political ramifications extend beyond the mayor’s office. Georgia Republicans have begun campaigning with dire warnings about the violence in liberal Atlanta — even though cities run by both Democrats and Republicans have seen a rise in violent crime. Gov. Brian Kemp has devoted millions in funding for a new “crime suppression unit” in the city. And the upscale Buckhead neighborhood is threatening to secede from Atlanta due mostly to concerns about crime, a move that could be disastrous for the city’s tax base.Some critics blame the current mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, for failing to adequately tackle the crime problem.This spring, a few days before Ms. Bottoms announced she would not run for re-election, Mr. Reed asserted that crime had reached “unacceptable levels” that were “fracturing” the city. It was widely interpreted as a turn against Ms. Bottoms, his one-time protégée, and a sign that Mr. Reed was plotting a comeback.When it came, it was with a heavy dose of glamour.“The fate of the city of Atlanta is at stake,” Mr. Reed declared at a star-studded party at the Buckhead manse of Tyrese Gibson, the actor and musician. “Atlanta, tell L.A., tell New York, tell Charlotte, tell Dallas, tell Chicago, and definitely tell Miami — I’m back!” In a matter of weeks, he had raised roughly $1 million in campaign contributions.Still, the idea that Atlanta would be better off if it could go back to the days of 2010 through 2017, when Mr. Reed was in office, is deeply divisive. Mr. Reed takes credit for keeping crime low during those years and boasts of recruiting hundreds of police officers.F.B.I. statistics show that violent crime in the city fell beginning in 2012, and continued falling throughout Mr. Reed’s tenure, a time when violent crime around the country was on a downward trend that began in the early 1990s.In fact, the total number of violent crimes per year continued to decline in Atlanta through 2020. But the high-profile nature of some of the more recent crimes has put many residents on edge, as have some short-term trends: As of early September, murders, rapes and aggravated assaults were all up compared with the same time last year.Mr. Reed has promised to add 750 officers to Atlanta’s police force. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Reed, as mayor, could display both conviction and practicality: He dismissed the city fire chief after the chief published a book calling homosexual acts “vile,” and he faced down union protesters in pushing through reforms to address the city’s enormous unfunded pension liability.However, investigations into scandals in Mr. Reed’s administration led to guilty pleas from the city’s former chief procurement officer, its former contract compliance officer and Mr. Reed’s deputy chief of staff. A former human services director, watershed management head and chief financial officer were also indicted, and are awaiting trial.In June, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, relying on court documents and campaign records, reported that Mr. Reed appeared to be under federal investigation for using campaign funds for personal purchases. Mr. Reed, in an interview, said the Justice Department had told his lawyers he was not under investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta declined to comment.In the interview, Mr. Reed said he accepted responsibility for the problems that occurred on his watch, and noted that after years of scrutiny, no charges have been lodged against him. “I have been through a level of vetting and security that very few people go through and survive, and I have come out with my name clear,” he said. He suggested that racism might have been a reason for all the scrutiny he received.Federal investigations like the ones in Atlanta, he said, are “frequently directed at Black political leaders, certainly in the job of mayor.”In a University of Georgia poll commissioned by The Journal-Constitution and conducted in late August and early September, Mr. Reed was narrowly leading the mayoral race, with roughly 24 percent support. But about 41 percent of likely voters were undecided, and Mr. Reed’s opponents are hoping to convince them that there are better choices.Felicia Moore, the City Council president, narrowly trailed Mr. Reed in a recent poll.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesSome voters have had enough of Mr. Reed. Bruce Maclachlan, 85, is a landlord who lives in Inman Park close to the place where Ms. Gay was mugged. Corruption, he said, seemed to be “circulating around Kasim Reed. It makes you wonder.”Mr. Maclachlan said he was voting for Ms. Moore, the City Council president who was just behind Mr. Reed in the poll with about 20 percent support. He said she appeared to be honest and free of scandal.Robert Patillo, a criminal defense lawyer, has felt the crime problem intimately. In the past few months, his sister’s car was stolen, his laptop was stolen from his car, and a friend’s house was broken into.“I think everybody’s been touched by it,” he said.Mr. Patillo said he, too, was voting for Ms. Moore, who he believed would be more trustworthy and better at balancing crime fighting with a civil rights agenda. But he said he understood the appeal of Mr. Reed. “When people are scared,” he said, “they turn back to a strongman.”Pinky Cole, the founder of Slutty Vegan, a local restaurant chain with a cult following, had a different view. Ms. Cole, one of the city’s better known young African American entrepreneurs, said Mr. Reed had helped her with legal problems her business faced.For Ms. Cole, the issues of crime and the city’s business climate were intertwined, a common sentiment in Atlanta these days, but one that has hit her particularly hard: In recent months, she said, two of her employees have been shot, one of them fatally.Despite the baggage from the corruption cases, she believed that Mr. Reed was a man of integrity. And she saw how he had made the city safe before.“I’m confident,” she said, “that he’ll do it again.” More

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      Potential G.O.P. Takeover of Atlanta-Area Election Board Inches Forward

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      Republicans in Georgia took a step toward gaining control over elections in Fulton County, a Democratic bastion.The Georgia State Election Board on Wednesday appointed a majority-Republican panel to review the performance of the Fulton County board of elections, another step toward a potential Republican takeover of the election system in the biggest Democratic county in the state.The three-person panel will include two Republicans and one Democrat: Rickey Kittle, a Republican member of the Catoosa County election board; Stephen Day, a Democratic member of the Gwinnett County election board; and Ryan Germany, a lawyer for the office of Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state.The moves surrounding the Fulton County election board have come as Republican-controlled legislatures across the country angle for greater power over election administration, often seeking to strip it from election officials and give it to partisan lawmakers. Those efforts come as former President Donald J. Trump continues to spread lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Republicans have also pushed to restructure many county election boards in Georgia, potentially allowing more local G.O.P. officials to take over positions.The State Election Board was required to appoint the panel reviewing Fulton County under the Georgia voting law that Republicans passed in March. Republican state lawmakers who represent the county requested the review last month.Fulton County, which is the largest in the state and includes much of Atlanta, has a long history of struggles with elections, including a disastrous primary in June 2020 in which voting lines lasted for hours.But Democrats across the state have denounced the push for a performance review there, noting that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud last year and that the election results were affirmed by three recounts and audits. Democrats view the request as a political stunt at best, and at worst a partisan takeover in the most consequential county for their party in Georgia.President Biden carried Fulton County in November with 73 percent of the vote and more than 380,000 votes. It is home to the largest number of voters of color in the state. Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have falsely denied Mr. Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia, which has long been solidly Republican but last year tilted to the Democrats in the presidential election and two Senate runoffs.Voting rights groups criticized the review panel — all white and predominantly Republican — as unrepresentative of Fulton County.“Fulton County voters deserve better than this,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, the chief executive of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group in Georgia founded by Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic candidate for governor.The review panel is one of several provisions in Georgia’s new voting law that lay the groundwork for the takeover of election administration by partisan lawmakers.But any potential change in control of the Fulton County election board would be a drawn-out process, most likely taking months given the many steps required by the voting law.Mr. Raffensperger, the secretary of state, indicated his support for the panel, writing on Twitter, “I have been saying for a long time that the state needs the authority to step in when counties have consistently failed their voters.”“I’m confident that the performance review team will do a good job, and I hope Fulton will cooperate with this process,” he said. More

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      Atlanta Mayor Faces Criticism Over 'Covid Crime Wave'

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      Keisha Lance Bottoms, who announced she would not run for re-election, faced criticism for her city’s sharp increase in violence.Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta rattled off a list of grinding municipal crises on Friday, saying there was not a specific reason she decided not to seek re-election.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockATLANTA — At a news conference in which she fought to hold back tears, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta said on Friday that there was no single reason for her abrupt and dramatic decision not to run for a second term.She did, however, rattle off a list of grinding municipal crises she has faced since taking office in 2018: a crippling cyberattack at City Hall, a federal corruption investigation that started under her predecessor, the coronavirus pandemic, social justice protests, and the challenge of governing under former President Donald J. Trump, whom she referred to as “a madman in the White House.”But the most serious political threat that emerged for Ms. Bottoms in recent months was a phenomenon she had previously described as the “Covid crime wave.” Like many other American cities, Atlanta is struggling with a spike in violent crime, including a 58 percent increase in homicides last year — the likely result, researchers say, of the pandemic’s strain on at-risk populations, as well as institutions like courts and police departments.The mayor’s inability to get a handle on crime has become the central theme for two challengers — Felicia Moore, the City Council president, and Sharon Gay, a lawyer — who thought they were going to take her on in the November election. “Atlanta has a mayor that is more interested in things that happen outside Atlanta,” Ms. Moore said in a recent statement, referring to Ms. Bottoms’s emerging national stature, including talk that she was rumored to be a possible vice-presidential candidate. “We need a mayor who knows the No. 1 job of any mayor is to keep our city safe.”Ms. Bottoms on Friday pushed back against the idea that she was worried about re-election, saying that she was popular enough to have won without a runoff. But others were not so sure. And Ms. Bottoms’s predicament could become common for city leaders around the United States as crime concerns take a political toll.Law enforcement on patrol in Atlanta in January. More than 400 officer vacancies have gone unfilled in the Police Department.Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York TimesThe dynamic is already rippling through other cities. In Philadelphia, a city suffering from a spike in homicides and gun crime, Larry Krasner, the progressive district attorney, is facing a serious challenge from a candidate, Carlos Vega, who says Mr. Krasner “has not delivered on safety.”In San Francisco, where burglaries were up 46 percent in 2020 and car thefts up 22 percent, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, a similarly progressive prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, is facing a recall effort from critics focused on crime.In St. Louis, where homicides were up 35 percent last year, former Mayor Lyda Krewson decided not to run for a second term after the wearying trials of 2020. The city’s new mayor, Tishaura Jones, is, like Ms. Bottoms, an outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform who now faces the challenge of radically reimagining policing and incarceration while bringing her city’s crime numbers down.In Atlanta, crime has continued raging into 2021. In the first 18 weeks of the year, police statistics show homicides up 57 percent, rapes up 55 percent, aggravated assaults up 36 percent and auto thefts up 31 percent compared with the same period last year.The state’s speaker of the House, David Ralston, a Republican, plans to hold hearings this summer to consider putting state troopers on Atlanta’s streets. Weapons detectors were installed at the entrance of the Lenox Square mall in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood, making shopping feel like a trip to a courthouse. Some Buckhead residents are so fed up they have formed a group to explore whether to secede from the city — a move that would devastate Atlanta’s tax base.A report released in February by the Council on Criminal Justice gave a snapshot of the crime that afflicted American cities in 2020, with many of them suffering a sharp rise in homicides, aggravated assault and gun assaults.But the researchers also noted that the numbers were “well below historical highs” before crime began plummeting nationwide in the 1990s. And for now, the fear of crime does not appear to have the same political juice that it had in previous decades, when scare campaigns could help decide presidential contests and get-tough rhetoric was a winning tactic in big-city elections.Indeed, the widespread demand for criminal justice reform in liberal-leaning cities like Atlanta appears to have tempered the language and platforms of candidates promising to solve the crime problem.Protesters erected a “Defund the Police” sign in Atlanta after a police officer fatally shot Rayshard Brooks last year.Elijah Nouvelage/ReutersBoth Ms. Gay and Ms. Moore, for example, argue that the next mayor of Atlanta needs to be smarter about crime, not necessarily tougher. Instead of criticizing Ms. Bottoms for embracing criminal justice reform, Ms. Moore — who, like Ms. Bottoms, is African-American — essentially agrees that reform and safety are not either-or propositions.“I believe wholeheartedly we can do both,” she said.However, the political problem Ms. Bottoms would have faced demonstrates the enduring peril of being perceived as unable to meet the challenge of rising crime. Critics have blasted her for allowing more than 400 officer vacancies to go unfilled in the Atlanta Police Department, which is supposed to be 2,046 officers strong.Ms. Moore has criticized her for failing to hold a national search for a replacement for former Chief Erika Shields, who stepped down in June in the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks. (This week, Ms. Bottoms gave the interim chief, Rodney Bryant, the permanent role.)Others have lashed into the Bottoms administration for botching the firing of Garrett Rolfe, the white officer who killed Mr. Brooks, a Black man. The administration fired Officer Rolfe the day after the shooting, but this week, the city’s Civil Service Board reinstated him on the grounds that his due process rights had been violated.Such missteps went a long way to explaining why Ms. Bottoms had made herself politically vulnerable, said Clark D. Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University.“It’s not because she’s too progressive,” Mr. Cunningham said. “It’s because she’s too incompetent.”Over the years, a number of people who worked with Ms. Bottoms in City Hall said she did not always seem fully engaged in the day-to-day chore of governance. At her Friday news conference, Ms. Bottoms said she had been thinking about not running for re-election as early as her first year in office. “I can’t describe it,” she said of that feeling, “but I wasn’t sure that I would run again.”Opponents of Ms. Bottoms have criticized her for failing to hold a national search for a replacement for Erika Shields, the former police chief.Audra Melton for The New York TimesAt the same time, Ms. Bottoms has displayed a passion for enacting criminal justice reform, a topic she couches in personal terms. On Friday, she made reference, as she often has, to the painful story of her father, the R&B singer Major Lance, who was convicted of selling cocaine when she was a child.The experience inspired her to limit the public disclosure of small-scale marijuana arrest records and eliminate cash bond requirements at the city jail. She hopes to transform the jail itself into a social services hub she calls a “center for equity.”Her Police Department, meanwhile, is engaged in a review of training and policy, with the goal of making the department more community-oriented.Though revamping the department may pay off in the long run, Dean Dabney, a professor of criminology at Georgia State University, said it could increase crime in the short run.“If you switch from tactical policing to community policing, it’s going to take time to reallocate those resources and get those resources doing things the new way,” he said. “During that adjustment period the criminals are going to have the upper hand.”In the weeks before she declared that she would not run again, Ms. Bottoms seemed aware of the way that crime had taken center stage. She has promised to hire 250 police officers in the near future, crack down on nuisance properties, increase enforcement against gangs, and expand the city security camera network.In her news conference, Ms. Bottoms said she would focus, in her remaining months in office, on keeping the city safe. “I’m doing that not because I’m a mayor, but because I’m a mother in this city,” she said. “I want this city to be safe for my family, in the same way that I want it to be safe for everybody else who’s standing in this room.” More

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      Keisha Lance Bottoms Won’t Seek Second Term as Atlanta Mayor

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      Ms. Bottoms, who was mentioned briefly as a potential running mate with President Biden, is the latest mayor to move on after a year of pandemic challenges and social justice protests.ATLANTA — Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first-term Atlanta mayor who rose to national prominence this past year with her stern yet empathetic televised message to protesters but has struggled to rein in her city’s spike in violent crime, will not seek a second term in office, according to two people who were on a Zoom call with the mayor on Thursday night.The news shocked the political world in Atlanta, the most important city in the Southeast and one where the mayoral seat has been filled by African-American leaders since 1974, burnishing its reputation as a mecca for Black culture and political power.It is unclear why Ms. Bottoms, a Democrat, is not seeking another term, but 2020 took a toll on mayors nationwide. It was one of the most tumultuous years for American cities since the 1960s, with the social and economic disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic as well as racial justice protests that sometimes turned destructive.In November, St. Louis’s mayor at the time, Lyda Krewson, announced she would not pursue a second term. A month later, Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle announced she would not run for re-election. Several mayors in smaller cities have also declined to run again, exhausted or demoralized by the ravages of 2020.Two contenders who have been seeking to unseat Ms. Bottoms in the November election have promised to do a better job fighting what Ms. Bottoms has called a “Covid crime wave,” which includes a 58 percent spike in homicides in 2020.But Ms. Bottoms, 51, was expected to mount a formidable defense. She has a loyal ally in President Biden, whom she was early to endorse, and who repaid her loyalty with an appearance at a virtual fund-raiser in March. Ms. Bottoms was mentioned briefly as a potential vice-presidential running mate and said that she later turned down a cabinet-level position in the Biden administration.Ms. Bottoms, who served as a judge and a city councilwoman before being sworn in as mayor in 2018, is also blessed with a voice — measured, compassionate, slightly bruised and steeped in her experience as a Black daughter and Black mother — that seemed uniquely calibrated to address the challenges of the past year.It was in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that Ms. Bottoms went on live television and became a national star as she spoke directly to protesters. Some of their demonstrations had descended into lawlessness, with people smashing windows, spray-painting property and jumping on police cars.“When I saw the murder of George Floyd, I hurt like a mother would hurt,” she said. Then she scolded the protesters, insisting that they “go home” and study the precepts of nonviolence as practiced by the leaders of the civil rights movement. More