Choice of leaders.
Thursday, April 30th, 2020
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R).
On the left is our mayor. On the right is our governor. The picture of the governor is from Wikipedia. He hasn’t been that available for on-camera interviews during this crisis. The picture of the mayor is from CNN, but last night she was on Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and she’s been frequently, frequently interviewed the past few days about the crisis and our state and local response to it. If you’ve turned on television news in America the last few days, you may well have seen her.
She has been very visible, and has emerged as a smart, sane voice agreeing to politely yet emphatically disagree with our state’s governor about his ‘reopening’ policy. Her advice and explanations of complex issues of a pandemic are reassuring, and her leadership makes me glad to have voted for her.
The governor didn’t bother to consult the mayor of the state’s largest city about the ‘reopening’ changes. He didn’t bother to consult the mayor of Albany, Georgia, where there has been a massive outbreak of Covid-19. I don’t believe he consulted with any of the mayors in the state outside his party.
The Mayor worked in her mom’s hair salon in her teenage years. She literally knows first-hand how close you get to your customers in the kinds of establishments that Kemp thinks it’s OK to reopen now. She doesn’t think it’s OK. She’s asked us, the residents of Atlanta, to stay the course. Yep, Ms. Mayor, we can do that.
