Atlanta’s Jackson Won’t Seek New Term : Politics: Financial security is believed to be a factor in mayor’s decision. Impact on plans for the 1996 Olympics is feared.

Citing “necessary, unavoidable and compelling personal reasons,” Mayor Maynard H. Jackson announced Wednesday that he will not seek reelection to a fourth term.

The decision creates a wide-open race to find a successor, and raises the possibility of a divisive political free-for-all at a time when anxiety is running high in the city over slow-moving preparations for the 1996 Summer Olympics.

“I have a powerful yearning to serve my beloved city as mayor during the next few years,” the 55-year-old Jackson said, speaking of the coming period as a time of “unparalleled importance” for Atlanta. “Regrettably, however, I must continue to serve Atlanta in a different way. This is a course of action I have no choice but to follow.”

Jackson, a Democrat who announced his decision to city employees and politicians gathered at City Hall, declined to discuss his reasons for stepping down. But Jackson and his wife, Valerie, both suggested in separate comments that financial considerations were a factor.

He has talked in the past of wanting to provide greater financial security for his family. Jackson, a lawyer by profession, potentially could earn much more than the $100,000-a-year salary he receives as mayor.

Jackson, who had bypass surgery last September for six blockages in his arteries, has maintained that he is in excellent health. He would not say Wednesday if advice from his doctors had played a role in his decision.

He promised to help the new mayor and the committee that is organizing the Olympics. The Summer Games are seen here as an opportunity to improve the quality of life and to show off the city’s assets before a world audience. But Jackson and the Corporation for Olympic Development in Atlanta have been criticized for moving too slowly with neighborhood and downtown development projects that many had counted on to transform the city before 1996.

In the eyes of many business, political and community leaders, who had urged the mayor to seek reelection, a change of leadership could further inhibit the process.

“It’s a sad day for Atlanta,” said Douglas Dean, president of Summerhill Neighborhood Inc., which hopes to develop the depressed inner-city community where the Olympic stadium will be built. “At a time when neighborhoods under the mayor’s leadership have a window of opportunity through the Olympics to maybe get a chance to be developed, we don’t have our friend and our leader at the helm of the city. . . .

“Today when we look at being three years away from the greatest event that will ever take place in America again, and the mayor not being a part of that in an official way, it’s sad enough,” he added. “Then when we look at only months away from the mayor’s race and the potential of this being a real bitter, back-stabbing and dirty race, because people are so jealous of being the mayor or being in that position knowing that we’ve got the Super Bowl coming in ‘94, and the Olympics coming in ‘96, it’s sort of scary.”

City Council member Myrtle Davis is the only announced candidate for the mayor’s post. But at least six prominent politicians have been waiting for Jackson to reveal his decision before making up their minds whether to enter the race. The election is in October.

“It’s going to be an interesting summer,” said Martin Luther King III, a Fulton County commissioner and the son of the slain civil rights leader. King said he will announce soon whether he will seek the job.

Former Mayor Andrew Young and Billy Payne, president and CEO of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, who spearheaded the drive to get the Olympics here, both tried to downplay the impact of Jackson’s decision by saying a change in leadership does not threaten the success of the Olympics. But they both acknowledged that they tried to persuade Jackson to run again.

“I’m not as good a salesman as I thought,” Payne said. “I tried to convince him that we needed him in that role as mayor. I regret I was unsuccessful in that regard.”

Young, insisting that plans for the Olympics are on schedule, said now is the “perfect time” for the city to pass the torch to a new generation of leaders, citing the city’s seemingly single-minded drive to make the Olympics a success.

“There are advantages to regular change in leadership and in developing a broad base of leadership,” he said.

Jackson became Atlanta’s first black mayor in 1973 at the age of 35, and he served two consecutive terms. He won election to a third term in 1989 after Young decided not to seek reelection.

Jackson’s relations with the city’s business elite were stormy during his first term, and the business community generally opposed him during his three campaigns.

In Jackson’s last election race, many business leaders supported Fulton County Commission Chairman Michael L. Lomax, who dropped out of the race when it became evident that Jackson was unbeatable.

In recent weeks, Lomax encouraged Jackson to run again. “I think that a divisive campaign and a lame-duck mayor would be a catastrophic prescription for disaster at the Olympic planning organization,” he said.

And with recent polls showing Jackson with a 75% popularity rating, many others in the business community had been encouraging him to seek reelection.

Times researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.