The Atlanta mayoral election came down to skin color.

The black candidate, former state Sen. Kasim Reed, declared victory as unofficial results gave him a 715-vote edge over the white candidate, City Councilwoman Mary Norwood. Before the upcoming recount, Reed had 42,549 votes, or 50.4 percent, to Norwood's 41,834, or 49.6 percent.

Reed won the overwhelmingly black Southside. Norwood took the predominantly white Northside.

Overt racism reared its head in September as the campaign heated up. The Black Leadership Forum sent out a memo calling for blacks to vote for Lisa Borders, the City Council president, one of several black candidates including Reed, who was given little chance at that time. An InsiderAdvantage poll of a few weeks earlier had showed a virtual tie between Norwood at 30 percent and Borders with 28 percent. Reed trailed far back at 8 percent.

The Black Leadership Forum memo said:

"For the last 25 years Atlanta has represented the breakthrough for black political empowerment in the South. Time is of the essence because in order to defeat a Norwood (white) mayoral candidacy we have to get out now and work in a manner to defeat her without a runoff, and the key is a significant black turnout in the general election."

The big worry for the group was that blacks would not turn out in a runoff. A co-author of the e-mail memo, Clark Atlanta University political science professor William Boone, told the AP: "Blacks do not return to the polls in a runoff, historically."

Norwood denounced the memo, of course, and Reed, to his credit, blasted the missive as "racially charged and vitriolic." He said the campaign "should be waged on the merits of each candidate, not the color of their skin."

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the voting booths Nov. 3. Borders came in third with 14.5 percent of the vote behind Reed, 36.3 percent, and front-runner Norwood, 45.8 percent.

The black group's strategy of defeating Norwood without a runoff failed. But, of course, in the runoff, Borders endorsed Reed. Amazingly, Reed's 50.4 percent in the runoff was within a fraction of the 50.8 percent that he and Borders combined received in the general election.

As for black turnout for the runoff, this one was different. In Reed's southwest Atlanta base with its huge black majority, more than 9,300 voters cast ballots, up 7 percent from 8,720 in the general election. Nearly all the additional votes went to Reed - and Norwood's total actually decreased by about 90 votes.

The old civil rights warrior, Tom Houck, one of few whites active in demonstrations across the South in the 1960s, assessed the Norwood-Reed runoff for the AP before the election:

"When people say race doesn't matter, obviously it does. There is no dominant issue that distinguishes these two other than she's a white woman and he's a black guy."

What a sad commentary on race relations in Atlanta 2009.

dmckee9613@aol.com