Atlanta's first woman mayor reflects new era

With stage appearances by Hollywood actor Chris Tucker and rap stars OutKast, last week's inaugural fest for the first woman mayor of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, was hardly conventional.

But then the deep South's premier city is becoming accustomed to Franklin's unconventional style. The 50-something African-American politician favors bleached-white hair. Her election ads thumped with hip-hop rhythms. And her campaign stops included weekly late-night gatherings at people's homes - dubbed "sleepovers" - where up to 30 voters could chat with "the next mayor."

Now Ms. Franklin faces the more conventional task of governing one of the nation's most diverse cities - which won't be easy.

Atlanta is facing a budget shortfall of $90 million, the city's sewers and bridges are in disrepair, and a third of Atlantans fall below the poverty line. By her own admission, her first task will be a mundane one - mending the more than 600 potholes rattling motorists across the city.

Yet, ultimately, the new mayor's biggest test will be trying to bridge a variety of complicated coalitions that are shaking up the urban South's political patterns, rapidly displacing the black male power base that has traditionally dominated Atlanta over the past 20 years.

"I had an advantage in that I had never run for office," says Franklin, one of the only African-American women mayors of a major US city. "I didn't fall into that trap that some groups of people would vote for me, and some people wouldn't. I had to build a new base as opposed to appealing to just the historically black vote," says Franklin in a Monitor interview.

The city that rose from the ashes of the Civil War to become the capital of the new South is experiencing what Franklin calls "a new diversity." Atlanta has lost some 30,000 blacks in the past 20 years as even greater numbers of middle-class whites, Asians, Hispanics, and homosexuals have moved into the city's rapidly gentrifying former slums. It was by making inroads into the city's Asian and homosexual communities - while also targeting Atlanta's black women and undecided voters - that Franklin trounced a more experienced politician, in last year's election.

"In big city politics, the emergence of this diversity at the polls is a new phenomenon in this past decade," says Robert Smith, a political science professor at San Francisco State University.

Today, a black politician can only expect 55 percent of the vote - a number that continues to dwindle. Analysts see the same trend happening across urban America, from Houston to Hampton, Va., from New Orleans to East Point, Ga.

The new mayor wasn't alone to receive the largesse of this new voter demographic: Half the council are freshmen and its new president, Cathy Woolard, is the first openly gay politician in the city. Last week marked the first time women have occupied the top two political spots in the city.

The new urban voters also ousted Sherry Dorsey, who had complained bitterly about whites and gays "gentrifying" traditional black neighborhoods and forcing poorer residents out of the city. And they also shunnned Michael Julian Bond, the son of civil rights scion Julian Bond.

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