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Thread ID: 15346 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2004-10-18
2004-10-18 02:10 | User Profile
Group engineers Clayton County's shift in power
By ADD SEYMOUR JR. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 10/16/04
In restaurants, doughnut shops and his wedding chapel, Lee Scott and "The Scott Organization," as he calls it, hashed out a plan:
Scott would help identify and finance candidates with whom Clayton County's black voters ââ¬â particularly black women ââ¬â could connect. Voters then would be deluged with signs, mailings and phone calls.
It worked in 2003, when political novice Phaedra Graham won Riverdale's mayoral race and became Clayton's first black mayor.
"We're taking over," Scott said minutes after Graham's first City Council meeting in January.
And it worked again in July, when Clayton voters elected their first black sheriff, solicitor general and district attorney.
It was the district attorney's race ââ¬â in which Lee's wife, Jewel, toppled Robert Keller, the state's longest-serving district attorney ââ¬â that seemed to solidify the place of the Scotts and other African-Americans in the county's evolving power structure.
"To unseat a seasoned district attorney?" said Clarence Cox, the chairman of the Clayton County Democratic Party. "It was a message clearly sent that African-Americans have come to this county, and they are not going to take the second seat but the first seat."
In the months after that stunning victory, huge billboards for Jewel Scott and her husband, Lee, still dot Clayton. But few voters know much about the Scotts' coordinated effort to put "The Scott Organization" on the forefront of the county's leadership change.
Sweeping changes
Today, Clayton County bears little resemblance to the Southern, pre-Civil War backdrop to Margaret Mitchell's novel, "Gone With The Wind."
In the 1970s, African-Americans began moving to the county, long seen as a mostly white, rural suburb of Atlanta. By 1990, 27 percent of the county's population was African-American.
The past 15 years has been Clayton's largest growth period. And, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission, blacks and other minorities now make up 68 percent of Clayton's population.
In 1996, Lee Scott figured he'd try to make sure the political structure mirrored that change.
That year he helped Virginia Gray's successful bid to become Clayton's first black county commissioner. He ran for a commission seat himself in 1998 but lost despite a strong showing. Two years later, he ran again. And this time Jewel Scott made her first run at elected office.
She lost to longtime state Sen. Terrell Starr, but picked up 48 percent of the vote. Lee made it into a runoff against former commission chairman Charley Griswell. Griswell won a close race. "Those races were important in order to prepare for what happened in 2004," Lee Scott said.
And what happened in 2004 was nothing short of surprising. On July 20, Michelle Ellison ââ¬â and 17,103 other Clayton County voters ââ¬â cast a ballot for Jewel Scott in the state's primary election.
Ellison later said she knew virtually nothing about Jewel Scott, nor did she realize Scott had little, if any, experience prosecuting criminal cases.
"Only what the [mailing] was telling me," said Ellison, 39. "I think experience is the most important, but since I wasn't up on everybody, it was a plus that she is African-American and a woman, because I'm a black female."
That kind of thinking worked perfectly with the Scotts' plans.
Lee Scott acknowledges that he spent the past two years putting together a strategy to get himself, his wife and other like-minded candidates elected.
The group met over coffee some mornings at Riverdale's Krispy Kreme shop, some evenings in other restaurants and other times at Scott's wedding chapel. They talked strategy, demographics and which offices each person would seek.
Then, before candidate qualifying began in April, the Scotts erected huge billboards, some featuring Jewel and others featuring Lee. None indicated the office either was seeking.
The first day of qualifying, Jewel Scott said she would run for district attorney, and "for District Attorney" was added to her billboards.
Days later, Lee said he'd skip the Clayton commission chairman's race to focus on helping candidates. His billboards remained unchanged.
The Scotts gave money to several candidates, including $1,000 to Democratic chairman candidate Eldrin Bell.
According to campaign finance disclosure statements, Lee Scott was the main donor to Jewel's campaign, providing $111,471.53 worth of "in-kind" contributions the day she qualified and $112,507 more on Sept. 30.
Keller, the 27-year incumbent, who had never had a challenger, had more than $64,000 in his campaign war chest. But by the end of June, he'd spent only a little more than $24,000.
Canvassing county
Meanwhile, Scott Organization candidates flooded Clayton with yard signs, mailings and phone solicitations.
Jewel's slick mailings often pictured her opposite Keller, saying he "shares responsibility for nonenforcement of equal opportunity laws" and was part of "unjust profiling of citizens and targeting teens."
Her mailings also said that because of Keller, "innocent people go to jail or prison while many guilty go free."
Keller publicly said nothing about the Scotts' campaign. But there were black attorneys in Clayton who disagreed with the Scotts.
"Most of the criminal defense lawyers liked [Keller]," said Melvyn Williams, a black attorney who has practiced in Clayton for 12 years. "He is very approachable and definitely willing to work with you."
The key was the use of race and gender against Keller, others said.
"I'm a black woman, so this is the message to me," said Kelley Jackson, who ran against Phaedra Graham in the 2003 Riverdale mayoral race. " 'See me, I'm a black woman. See him? He's an old white man.' Playing the race card essentially and playing to people's racial thought patterns. That's not right.
"You compare that pretty, nice face to this white man's face to a county of a bunch of single, black women," Jackson said. "It was just marketing."
Black women make up nearly 40 percent of Clayton's active voters. Consequently, "Our marketing was at black women," Lee Scott said.
"It was huge," said David Reed, a former chairman of the independent and predominantly black Harold Washington Party in Chicago and one of the Scotts' closest advisers.
"The dynamic of the African-American female vote here in Clayton carried the day."Jewel Scott bested Keller with 60 percent of the vote to his 31 percent.
The other Scott Organization candidates were victorious as well. Leslie Miller Terry narrowly defeated longtime Solicitor General Keith Martin; Wole Ralph won a commission seat and Victor Hill, the sheriff's race.
School board candidate Rod Johnson and House District 74 candidate Roberta Abdul-Salaam made it into runoffs that they both won. Abdul-Salaam faces Republican Emory Wilkerson Nov. 2.
"They were absolutely pivotal to my campaign, in terms of people, resources, not so much money," Abdul-Salaam said of the Scotts. "I mean, even to use their phone system to make calls, they've done it. They are genuinely family people."
'Obviously, time's up'
Keller acknowledges that the black female vote was likely his and other white candidates' undoing. "Obviously, time's up," he said. "Our county is changing, and I think the election is clear that the county has changed."
He's pledged to work with Scott for a smooth transition during the weeks before she takes office on Jan. 2.
Keller was disappointed to lose his first contested race, but he won't say much about the Scotts' campaign against him. "I ran the campaign the way I wanted to run a campaign," he said. "I tried to emphasize the things I've done and the things I accomplished. Obviously, that campaign was not successful. I'll just leave it at that."
Since the Scott Organization's wins, Reed, the Scotts and their "transition team" have been interviewing candidates for jobs in the district attorney's office.
They've also gotten involved in other county issues, such as establishing a committee to keep an eye on the special purpose local option sales tax program that will fund county school system improvements. Voters approved it in September.
Lee Scott said he plans to run for County Commission chairman in 2008.
But some around the county are leery of Scott's organization.
Riverdale City Council member Michelle Bruce points to a contentious relationship between the council and first-term Mayor Phaedra Graham. Graham's transition team included some members of Jewel Scott's transition team ââ¬â led by Lee Scott.
Council members criticized Graham for listening less to them and more to Scott and the transition team. One member of the transition team, attorney Robert Mack, nominated himself to become Riverdale's Municipal Court judge. The council chose another person, but Graham vetoed its decision. The council overrode that veto.
Lee Scott said he's stepped away from the Riverdale situation in recent months.
"The only thing I can say is one good ol' boy system went out and now another has gone in," Bruce said referring to the Scott Organization.
Still, members of that organization say it will continue to get larger ââ¬â and more influential.
[url]http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/clayton/1004/17jewelscott.html[/url]
2004-10-18 06:08 | User Profile
Sad, so sad. This is what the marxist are doing to all of America!
[QUOTE]Today, Clayton County bears little resemblance to the Southern, pre-Civil War backdrop to Margaret Mitchell's novel, "Gone With The Wind."
In the 1970s, African-Americans began moving to the county, long seen as a mostly white, rural suburb of Atlanta. By 1990, 27 percent of the county's population was African-American.
The past 15 years has been Clayton's largest growth period. And, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission, blacks and other minorities now make up 68 percent of Clayton's population.
In 1996, Lee Scott figured he'd try to make sure the political structure mirrored that change. [/QUOTE]
2004-10-18 21:42 | User Profile
Reading this article and the viewpoints of these people justifies the fact that "equality" is just a cover for putting "power" on another face.
2004-10-18 21:54 | User Profile
Robbie,
That's what I got from it as well. While not quite as organized as Clayton county, the same thing has happen close by where I live.