Beacon News Analysis

By Paul Kaplan / Staff

Just before the primary election earlier this month, David Tolleson, one of three candidates for mayor of Roswell, published an advertisement saying he had “consistently opposed” Charlie Brown’s mega-development in East Roswell starting way back in 2005.

When Lori Henry saw the ad, she shook her head in disbelief. Henry helped lead the fight on City Council to defeat Brown’s project, and Tolleson’s support was crucial to make sure the ultra-high-density development never got off the ground.

But Tolleson refused to commit – not in 2005, or in 2006. Tolleson repeatedly told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in both of those years that he wasn’t prepared to pass judgment on the project until he saw the final plans.

If Tolleson loses Tuesday’s runoff for mayor, his attempt to rewrite history on Brown’s project could be the main reason why.

Tolleson and incumbent mayor Jere Wood made it into the runoff. Although Wood won more votes than Tolleson in the primary – 40 percent to 32 percent – political insiders considered Tolleson a strong favorite to win the runoff.

That’s because, after 12 years of Wood’s leadership, 60 percent of the voters in the primary said they wanted a different mayor – the 32 percent who voted for Tolleson and the 28 percent for Henry, who failed to make the runoff. The assumption was that Henry’s supporters wanted a change at the top, so they’d be more inclined to vote for the challenger in the runoff – Tolleson – than for Mayor Wood.

LORI TO DAVID: YOU’RE NOT TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE BROWN

But when Tolleson published that fiction on the eve of the primary, he lost Henry. There was no way she could support him after that claim, which Tolleson repeated in last week’s mayoral runoff debate.

Henry’s supporters are intensely loyal. She was the Council’s leader on development issues and was Roswell’s first serious female mayoral candidate. Had Henry supported Tolleson in the runoff, Tolleson would have been a prohibitive favorite to become mayor. Even if Henry had remained neutral – which she may have been inclined to do – Tolleson probably would have gotten the wide majority of Henry’s supporters and won the runoff handily.

But that ad was the tipping point, and Henry threw her support to Wood. That gave new life to the mayor’s vulnerable campaign, and insiders now are calling Tuesday’s runoff a tossup.

It will likely come down to which side is better at getting their voter base to the polls, and that could favor Tolleson.

MISTER ROGERS’ NEIGHBORHOOD

In the primary, Tolleson was able to advance by winning massive support in a small corridor of voting precincts clustered near his home along Old Alabama Road in East Roswell. Tolleson lives in Willow Springs, one of Roswell’s biggest neighborhoods, and the turnout for him there and in neighboring east side subdivisions was huge.

Wood, on the other hand, lives in a cabin on a quiet stretch of road in far western Roswell, on property that backs up to Cobb County. Some of the few neighbors he has aren’t even eligible to vote for him because they don‘t live in Fulton County.

It’s always hard coaxing voters back to the polls for a municipal runoff election, but it’s a lot easier in a concentrated area like Tolleson’s base.

But Wood has the advantage of 12 years of incumbency as mayor, and he has worked it like a pro. Nobody in city government attends more functions than Wood, and nobody at those functions engages more voters than he does.

Wood works an audience like a talk show host, effortlessly and seamlessly and always with a singular purpose – winning the next election. He stands out in any crowd, with his country-lawyer suspenders and goofy bowties and flowing white hair. He looks more like an extra from “To Kill a Mockingbird” than the leader of one of Georgia’s most important cities.

Tolleson is the opposite – quiet, unassuming, gentle – and a very effective orator in his right. A lot of people like that, especially after 12 years of Wood, who is not quiet, not unassuming and not gentle. In fact, he enjoys a good political fight, and has been in many of them, including some, as the song goes, that weren’t even worth being won.

TOLLESON’S CONSENSUS’ BUILDING A FAÇADE?

While Wood was getting his knuckles bloodied, Tolleson was serving as the Council’s leading advocate for people with disabilities. Other than that worthy effort, his workload was limited. He tended to leave the heavy lifting to others on Council.

Tolleson ran for mayor without a defining issue, except perhaps his claim to being a “consensus-builder.”

But he was not a consensus-builder on Council. In fact, he was the opposite. His modus operandi was to withhold his support on crucial issues when the Council was divided, making him the swing vote and power broker.

That’s where Tolleson was headed on the Charlie Brown project, but the strategy blew up on him when the public’s outcry about the development became deafening in 2007. Only then, when it was clear that the project was dead, did Tolleson jump in with the opposition.

Now he’s trying to rewrite that script, and it may have worked for him in the primary – at least along Old Alabama Road.

WHATLEY’S ELECTORAL STRATEGY PAID OFF IN ROUND ONE

Tolleson owes much of his success in round one to his political strategist, Randy Whatley, whose plan was to load up on votes in East Roswell, where residents are hungry for a mayor of their own, while Wood and Henry bloodied each other in the battle for West Roswell. And that is precisely how the primary played out.

Wood’s strategy was to avoid the issues, like Tolleson, while appearing to take the high road in the primary by not criticizing his opponents. Wood only ventured down the low road when he cherry-picked crime statistics to make the case that crime is down in the city – when in fact it’s clearly a growing problem that he has pretty much ignored, as has Tolleson.

Although Henry criticized Wood for a lack of leadership on crime, she did not think his self-serving analysis of the crime data was as heinous as Tolleson’s fictional account of his role in the Charlie Brown project, which was arguably the most important issue to come before the city over the past decade.

Wood’s plan was to appear to stay above the fray in the primary while pointing out what a great town Roswell has been under his leadership. It was a smart play by Wood and his campaign strategist, Bruce Peoples.

Henry ran on the issues – the need for balanced budgets, fighting crime, prioritizing neighborhoods over development interests. It was an old-fashioned grass-roots campaign, but the voters said no thanks.

ISSUES? WHAT WAS HER CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST THINKING?

Henry’s No. 1 issue was the need to balance the city’s budget. Both Wood and Tolleson voted against a balanced budget this year, and 72 percent of the voters apparently had no problem with that. But right after the primary, Fulton County projected a 15 percent drop in the overall assessed value of its commercial and residential properties. That means Roswell, which relies on property taxes and plummeting sales tax revenues to fund its operations, will have three choices: dip further into the city’s reserves to fund the general budget, as Wood and Tolleson voted to do this year; increase property taxes; or downsize the city government, as Henry proposed.

Wood immediately saw the light. One way he earned Henry’s endorsement in the runoff was to promise a mid-year review of all city operations, with an eye toward finding cuts that would balance the budget.

So Henry missed the runoff, but her issue made it in. How ironic is that?

Despite Wood’s over-done country-boy act, which has begun to turn off a lot of voters in this increasingly cosmopolitan city, he has a quality that you’ll rarely see in a politician anymore. Instead of trying to hide his role on an issue, or mischaracterizing it as what Tolleson is doing with the Charlie Brown project, Wood openly admits his mistakes and changes course on a dime. He did it with Brown‘s project, which he originally supported, and now again with the budget.

Some people call that political flip-flopping. Others call it having the guts to admit he was wrong.

We will find out Tuesday what the voters call it.

Paul Kaplan is a veteran reporter and editor who most recently served as political strategist for Roswell mayoral candidate Lori Henry. He is now The Beacon’s Senior Political Correspondent.  E-mail him at paulhkaplan@yahoo.com.