This is all hoopla. When you have two black candidates and one white candidate in a multi-candidate race, the blacks usually split and give the white candidate a “chance” to claim the seat by plurality. Sort of like when Ears Perot jumped in the race in ‘92.
If nobody in a multi-candidate race gets over 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters go into a runoff.
If Norwood survives the general, whoever gets into the runoff with her will go around screaming to the various black constituencies and whip them up into a frenzy and to the polls, and she'll lose the runoff.
I would like to think that ALL Atlantans, including the black community, are tired of corruption and 'business as usual', but I doubt it. The current mayor, Shirley Franklin, is actually a friend of my mother's. She's not radical, she's honest, and as far as I know she is clean. But she is burned out from fighting the entrenched City Hall corruption. I'm not sure a change of mayor to a white Northsider would do any good at all. There will have to be more indictments before anything changes downtown.