Fishwrapper - No more walking-around sleaze

“Isn’t that illegal? Isn’t that buying votes?” “That it is ... . There’s no other way to win a citywide election. And today you’d better have a half-million dollars set aside just for that, just for handing out cash to voters.”?
?-- Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full

From the standpoint of democracy, it’s Original Sin. Vote buying is corruption euphemized in Atlanta as “get-out-the-vote money” or “walking-around money.”

There are shades of the sin. Some are venal. Others are deadly to that quaint ideal that an informed citizenry weighs the merits of high-minded public servants and selects the candidate mostly likely to address the serious issues at hand. In Atlanta, the deadly variety dominates.

Money is doled out to “grassroots” groups (many of which seem to be mere Astroturf created just to extort cash from candidates). Still more dollars, usually untraceable hard cash, are passed around to small armies of workers — the people waving signs on street corners or leafleting churches. Nothing illegal there. But what happens to the money once it is given to neighborhood groups’ strongmen is another story. So is the dispersion of tens of thousands of dollars in small bills ostensibly paid to workers but which, more than likely, have other destinations.

With the practiced don’t-know-nothingness of Mafia dons, the city’s candidates for mayor have for generations insulated themselves from street-level politics, where bagmen parcel out cash in exchange for punched chads. But the pols know, yes they know.

Like Original Sin, walking-around money taints all that comes after. The process begins with corruption, which is then woven into the entire fabric of Atlanta’s public life.

It’s why contractors and vendors believe they have to pony up huge chunks of campaign cash, concealed under the names of bogus donors, in order to win city bids. It’s why cronies are lavished with non-cancelable contracts that extend into the distant future. It’s why mayors get fat “speaking” fees from groups that want favor. It’s why no one should wonder at the end of the current administration, federal indictments are smashing down, like a barrage of missiles, closer and closer to Bill Campbell’s bunkered office.

The description of this insatiable and unholy political system was researched by novelist Tom Wolfe during the months before the last city election. Atlanta’s power elites, black and white, howled at Wolfe’s savaging of politicians, developers, bankers, socialites and even the holiest of all holies, the Georgia Tech athletic program. Yet, considering the meltdown of the Campbell administration, Wolfe now seems timid in pointing out that the emperor wears no clothes and is naked, very naked indeed.

In the final days of this campaign, it’s business as usual for the defilers of democracy. “There’s no one different running the campaigns this time than in the past, so I don’t see how it could have changed,” says lawyer Kenny Tatum, manager for an impoverished reformer among the mayoral hopefuls.

The “consultants” and grassroots groups (legitimate and ersatz) will get their bags of cash from middlemen. The go-betweens protect candidates for mayor and City Council from direct participation in smarminess that borders on criminality. Finally, on Nov. 6, some voters, mostly in Atlanta’s poor neighborhoods, will pocket a little money in exchange for casting ballots for people about whom they may know absolutely nothing.

Campaign aides for the two leading mayoral candidates (when measured by stuffed war chests) don’t like to talk on the record about the time-honored corruption of Atlanta politics. One told me, “I heard it existed in the past.” And now? I asked. The answer was a raised eyebrow and a shrug.

Another veteran of the hustings said the walking-around money was merely a way that candidates said thanks to civic-minded groups — and that the vast amounts of cash hardly ever were used for nefarious purposes. Uh-huh.

One careful response came from a soldier in the other cash-fat camp: “I have no direct knowledge of vote buying.” But then, after some reflection, the candidate handler made a candid admission. “Is walking-around money a reality? I can assure you of this, it’s alive and well.”

Oh, by the way, the candidates for mayor are former city Chief Administrative Officer Shirley Franklin and City Council President Robb Pitts (the two with plenty of folding green), Gloria Bromell-Tinubu (respected, but generally written off because she’s cashless), plus two lesser-knowns (because they don’t have even pocket change), G.B. Osborne and Trudy Jane Kitchin. They all tout “platforms,” “issues” and “qualifications.”

They’re all very intelligent and very good folks, and I’m not being facetious.

But it really doesn’t matter. This election is all about dollars. First, it’s about the money you see in the campaign contribution reports — to date, about $2.6 million for Franklin, $1.7 million for Pitts and a close-to-negligible $135,000 for Bromell-Tinubu. Then it’s about how many of those dollars are parceled out on the street. Finally, it’s about carving up the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars — your money — among the next administration’s insiders.

“Atlanta doesn’t have a culture of bribery. It’s not like New York. It’s more like: ‘You build us day care centers, youth centers, health clinics, parks, swimming pools — so we can say to our constituents, “Look what we brought you” — and we’ll see about doing something for you.’ That’s the way it works out.”?
?-- Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full

David Walker isn’t a candidate for mayor. But he was. No one — especially The Atlanta Journal-Constitution — paid any attention because Walker had no money. So he dropped out of the race.

That’s unfortunate, because Walker did have an idea. Maybe not a great idea, but an idea nonetheless.

Atlanta, you see, is teetering on insolvency, the result of (and this is the most charitable explanation) incredible incompetence by City Council and the Campbell administration. At least $20 million in over-budget, bringing-home-the-pork projects — many lacking any merit except to win votes for incumbents — have been slammed through the council, a body made up largely of ethical dwarfs.

Walker’s thought was for the city to take over the infamous Gold Club and turn it into a casino. “That would produce hundreds of millions of dollars,” he effused. It’s unlikely that Georgia, the oversized buckle of the Bible Belt, would go for legalized casinos — although, as Walker notes, the state’s God-fearing citizens seem to have no problem allowing the demon gambling to pay for their children’s college tuition.

My point is that in the current campaign, political programs — whether realistic or, as with Walker, fanciful — are irrelevant.

For months, the press has tried with little success to get the three major candidates to be specific on issues. They’re all for ethics (yeah!). They’re all for doing something (not too clear what) about crumbling sewers and icky water (yeah!). They’re sternly opposed to crime and favor hiring more cops (yeah!).

Actually, it would be a relief if one would announce that she or he had decided to be openly scummy, planned to squander money on frivolous nonsense and would invite thugs to rule the streets. At least we’d have a debate.

If the candidates and their statements are irrelevant, it’s because the city of Atlanta has become an anachronism. Once the population center of Georgia, the city now contains only slightly more than 10 percent of what the world thinks of as “Atlanta.” What happens 20 miles north, south, east and west of the city limits is a lot more important to “Atlanta” than what’s going on at 55 Trinity Ave.

Pitts, an uninspiring and stolid, yet intelligent man, alone among the candidates has offered a few thoughts on the fact that Atlanta isn’t “Atlanta.” He has suggested consolidation of the city and Fulton County. For the metro area to ever grab hold of its destiny, a regional government for a dozen or more counties is necessary.

But that would wreck political fiefdoms, and the official city of Atlanta lives on because it is a power base. There are tremendous rewards — money and influence — to be had for those that have their hands on the control levers of Atlanta politics. Indeed, the most simplistic characterization of the election is a contest between Franklin, the pawn of the black elite (dominated by Maynard Jackson and Andy Young), and Pitts, the tool of the white business establishment.

That’s unfair to both Franklin and Pitts.

Still, it’s hard to understand how Franklin would ever make the wholesale housecleaning City Hall desperately needs when the backbone of her support is the gang that built the system. She repeatedly told CL she would rely on audits to measure the effectiveness of departments, as well as the frugality and efficiency of bids and contracts. Yet, government-by-audit would add little — expect another layer of expense — unless there was a righteous transformation in officialdom from top to bottom. Manipulation of the audit process could merely become the new twist to business as usual.

It’s equally difficult to imagine Pitts encountering a Buckhead-dwelling developer he didn’t adore or seeing a chunk of concrete he didn’t revere. “I will remove every department head,” he vows. That’s a good start. But Pitts has been unable to be an effective leader on the council, and it’s nearly impossible to picture him leading a City Hall reformation. It’s far more likely he’d replace the old bureaucrats with ones who were his own band of insiders.

“Nobody — nobody — wins a citywide election strictly on the merits. You must have two things: money and organization.”?
?-- Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full

And that brings us to Gloria Bromell-Tunubu. In its very safe, inoffensive endorsement of Shirley Franklin last week, the AJC chided Bromell-Tinubu for lacking “the broad City Hall experience the two other major candidates bring.” That’s equivalent to saying that to qualify to run the city, one must be steeped in mismanagement and cronyism, and have demonstrated the skill of selling out the taxpayers.

Franklin clearly is a capable and likable person. She is not besmirched with scandal. And, she has taken one step her opponents should emulate — opening her personal financial records. But too many strings are attached to Franklin — from Jackson and Young, from the city employees, from those with an interest in keeping things in petrified status quo.

Pitts is a knowledgeable technician. During good times, he would be a fine caretaker. But the city is in crisis, and he would be unable to galvanize citizens and public employees to meet the challenge. Moreover, he has his own set of strings, leading to the builders and bankers and businesses.

What Atlanta really needs is revolutionary. That may not be practical or likely, so a reformer will do. Bromell-Tinubu is intelligent and dynamic, an economics professor at Spelman College who (contrary to the implication of the AJC) learned city government during a term on the council. She would break the system, ousting the ineffective bureaucrats and malignant sycophants, making tough calls on the nearly half-billion-a-year budget, demanding that high ethical standards permeate every inch of City Hall.

“Shirley and Robb just represent two slightly different factions of the same ruling clique that has brought Atlanta almost to ruin,” Bromell-Tinubu commented to CL. “Nothing essential will change with either one of them. And what we need is total change.”

But she has no money — especially no walking-around money. The pundits therefore give her no chance — other than to succeed in garnering enough votes to throw the election into a runoff between Pitts and Franklin.

If that’s so, on Nov. 7, after the votes are tallied, the powers-that-be will still be. The only losers will be those who wistfully yearn for good, responsible government.

Unless, of course, enough people say, “hit the road” to the walking-around money crowd — and vote for Bromell-Tinubu.??