Where’s Mary, indeed - Norwood is strangely out of sight

Speaking only for myself, the events of the past two weeks — at least those relating to the mayoral runoff — have certainly confounded expectations.

In the fortnight leading up to the Nov. 3 general election, Kasim Reed’s campaign pulled something of a rope-a-dope, implying that his opponents weren’t true Democrats. Both Mary Norwood and Lisa Borders took the bait, spending time and energy trying to establish their own Democratic credentials — an effort that likely lost them both some votes.

It was a masterfully divisive maneuver on Reed’s part, but I’ve talked to some voters who were disgusted by it for that very reason, folks who didn’t like seeing a wedge driven between political parties in a non-partisan race.

I assumed the runoff campaigning would get dirtier still. How could it not, given that Norwood seemed to have a lock on white Northside votes? It appeared the only way Reed could hope to win was by undermining Norwood’s curious popularity among black voters — and the only way to do that was to make race an issue in the race.

But I was mistaken. That’s not what has happened — at least, not yet. In fact, it’s been quite the reverse.