Atlanta mayoral candidates feel the heat at Spelman debate

The mayoral forum on Friday night began with an acknowledgment that the candidates were short on time. They needed to get somewhere else soon. And after about half hour, it was easy to see why.

The stage of the Sisters Chapel at Spelman College wasn’t a place that either councilwomen Keisha Lance Bottoms or Mary Norwood seemed to feel comfortable.

The moderators included Student Government Association President Jill Cartwright and activist Avery Jackson, a Spelman alum.

For Lance Bottoms, the evening was about confronting questions about the sale of Turner Field, a transaction that brought accusations that she sold out the community.

For Norwood, it was about clearing up confusion surrounding her belief — or lack thereof — that racial profiling exists.

Jackson asked Bottoms how she could claim during a debate the day before that residents around Turner Field had applauded her, in light of longtime community members occupying the field for 60 days to protest the deal.

As executive director of the Fulton County Recreational Authority, Lance Bottoms oversaw the transaction, but did not obtain a community benefits agreement that some residents wanted so they would have more of a say in how the stadium was developed.

Bottoms said there weren’t many bidders on the empty baseball stadium, and if she hadn’t acted swiftly it would have sat indefinitely without a suitor.

“You cannot wait,” she said. “Because if you wait a year, we will have an empty stadium which will be even worse for the community.”

She said that she still addressed neighborhood concerns and that after she kept her word the same people who had wanted to rip her apart months earlier applauded.

“There still is not a community benefits agreement,” Jackson said.

When Cartwright asked Norwood how she would stop police from criminalizing people of color, Norwood immediately brought up a moment during another forum that left some wondering whether she believed racial profiling existed.

“I absolutely believe there is racial profiling,” Norwood said, adding that if people watched the entire video of the event, they would understand why she asked for clarification.