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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Atlanta Mayoral Race Too Close to Call By SHAILA DEWAN ATLANTA — Kasim Reed, a former Georgia state senator, appeared headed for a narrow victory over City Councilwoman Mary Norwood in the Atlanta mayor’s race on Tuesday night, but the outcome remained too close for a clear winner to be declared. With 98 percent of the precincts reporting, Mr. Reed was ahead by 620 votes out of 84,000 cast, giving him a margin of 50.4 percent. Provisional ballots were scheduled to be counted on Thursday. A victory by Mr. Reed would squelch the hopes of Ms. Norwood to becoming this city’s first white mayor in 35 years. Unusually, the runoff attracted even more voters than the general election on Nov. 3. Mr. Reed, a lawyer and a Democrat, vaulted from third place to a strong second in the general election, placing him in a runoff against Ms. Norwood, an at-large member of the City Council. Mr. Reed, who ran the campaign of the departing mayor, Shirley Franklin, and won endorsements from many members of the city’s political establishment, both black and white, outraised Ms. Norwood by about half a million dollars. Both candidates promised to increase the size of the police force and clean up the city’s finances, which have been battered by accounting problems, pension increases and the recession. Mr. Reed also promised to reopen recreation centers across the city that were closed in a round of budget cuts. In the final weeks of the campaign, Mr. Reed kept his momentum and played up Ms. Norwood’s political naïveté, increasing the intensity of his attacks on what he said was her ineffective performance on the City Council. She never served as chairwoman of a committee or spearheaded legislation. Ms. Norwood countered that the administration refused to give her information that she had requested and that its books were not in order. She was forced to defend herself for missing a vote of crucial importance to the city’s sizable gay and lesbian community, to extend benefits to domestic partners, and for voting against a tax increase that ended furloughs for police officers and firefighters enacted last year. The results of the runoff disappointed voters who had hoped to send a message by electing Ms. Norwood, who styled herself as an outsider despite eight years on the Council and set the tone of the race by stoking dissatisfaction over the city’s finances and spikes in crime in some areas. Ms. Norwood’s strength as a candidate was based on her assiduous attention to neighborhood issues like trash pickup and historic preservation.
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