This week’s Atlanta City Council meeting erupted into angry accusations of personal vendettas during a lengthy debate over when the qualifying period should be for a special election.
When Keisha Sean Waites resigned from her Post 3 At-Large seat on March 8 to qualify to run for Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts, the council was faced with picking a date for a special election to fill the citywide seat. The council also had to choose the dates when candidates could qualify.
The Nov. 5 general election is the earliest date to hold a special election to fill the vacant council seat, according to Georgia law. The council agreed to the date, but members expressed it was unfortunate constituents would be without a voting representative for roughly eight months.
The legislation proposed at the March 18 council meeting recommended the qualifying period be May 14-16. However, several members noted that August is the traditional qualifying period for a November election. Forcing candidates to qualify so soon would likely reduce the number of potential candidates. It would also prevent Waites from qualifying to run for her seat again if she were to lose the clerk’s race.
Councilmembers Andrea Boone and Michael Julian Bond both argued the city’s tradition is for qualifying to be held three months before an election.
Bond made a motion to move the qualifying period to July 22 – 26, but Councilmember Alex Wan commented that it appeared that his colleague picked those dates by “throwing a dart at a calendar.”
Bond, visibly angered by Wan’s accusation, responded that the May qualifying dates were designed to keep Waites from being able to run again for the council seat should she lose her bid for Fulton County Clerk.
“It is a poison dart aimed at a colleague who resigned and a not-so-underhanded effort to prevent that person from seeking office again, within this calendar year,” Bond said.
An emotional Bond then began shouting at Wan, claiming the legislation was a “personal vendetta” against Waites made by people who had personal conflicts with her.
Bond said he had seen all kinds of battles between members during his many years on the council, but had never seen “people get down in the mud on the worst most juvenile, petty issues.”
“I have no interest in that whatsoever,” Waites said of the implication she might want to run again for city council if she lost the Fulton election.
State law requires an elected official to resign from their post when they qualify to run for another seat. Waites said she decided to run for the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts.
Waites said the city’s legal department informed her a person must resign at least 90 days before a special election could be held. That would mean Waites would have had to resign by Feb. 12 for the city to call for a May 21 special election for the seat.
But Waites said she couldn’t resign in February because she still had business before the council.
The original legislation coming out of the finance committee stated qualifying would be June 25-27. The Committee on Council, in its meeting held a few hours before the full council, voted to change the qualifying dates to May 14-16.
Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari, chair of the Committee on Council, said the decision to move up the qualifying period was to give voters more time to get to know the candidates. An earlier qualifying period also gives organizations concerned about housing, transit, and other city issues more time to vet the candidates.
“The motivating factor behind an earlier qualifying period had nothing to do with keeping a person that has run many times in her career from running again,” said Bakhtiari.
Waites, a Democrat, has run for several state and and county races over the past 20 years, including unsuccessful bids for Atlanta City Council in 2001, 2005, and 2009. She won the Post 3 At-Large seat in a runoff election on Nov. 30, 2021. Her term would have ended Jan. 5, 2025.
Previously, Waites won a special election in 2012 for the state House District 60 seat, representing an area around East Point, Hapeville, and southeast Atlanta. She resigned from that seat in 2017 to run for Fulton County chairperson but lost in a runoff to incumbent Robb Pitts.
