Since 1975, when Maynard Jackson was elected the city’s first Black mayor, Atlanta has been run by a Black mayor voted into office by the Southwest Atlanta Political Machine.
In the 2014 election, Kasmin Reed barely held off a challenge from Mary Norwood, a white Republican who lives in the wealthy Buckhead community. She came within 900 hundred votes, more or less, of winning. Again in 2018, Norwood nearly wrestled the mayor’s office away from the Black power structure in another close race against Keshia Lance Bottoms, Reed’s hand-picked successor.