A Rising Political Star Lights Up Georgia

Before a recent gathering of female union members, Shirley Franklin recalled how an 8-year-old boy had summed up her groundbreaking rise to power here. It was, she related, “time for a girl.”

The line drew applause, underscoring what a big moment it was when -- in her first bid for elective office -- Franklin narrowly won election in 2001 and became Atlanta’s first female mayor. But perhaps more remarkable is the way the plain-talking Democrat has shaken things up since taking over a city government in distress.

In 15 months, Franklin’s stock has soared, even among some Republicans, as a result of her handling of a budget crisis and her strides in restoring faith in City Hall, which had seemed forever entangled in corruption charges under former Mayor Bill Campbell.

The 57-year-old Franklin, a former consultant and onetime aide to Mayors Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young, is a rare bright spot these days for Georgia Democrats. The party was floored last fall when Republicans took the U.S. Senate seat of Democrat Max Cleland and grabbed the governorship for the first time since Reconstruction.

Now Franklin has Democratic activists urging her to think bigger. Some would like her to run next year for the Senate seat held by Democrat Zell Miller, who has announced that he’ll retire. A recent poll by Emily’s List, a women’s group that raises money for Democrats, shows Franklin outrunning two possible GOP candidates.

Franklin previously has indicated that she would seek another term as mayor in 2005, but in light of the poll she’s considering a Senate run. “It’s not anything I aspire to,” she said in an interview at City Hall last week. “But on the other hand, I also didn’t expect to be mayor.”

Skeptics question whether a liberal Atlanta mayor, even a successful one, stands much of a chance of winning a more conservative statewide vote, especially with President Bush atop the 2004 Republican ticket. But the poll indicated that Franklin’s popularity could help her slice into the GOP base in Atlanta’s suburbs.

Since becoming mayor -- one of only six black women leading large U.S. cities -- Franklin has written strict ethics rules and returned the water system to the city after a dissatisfying experiment in privatization. She has opened City Hall to greater outside scrutiny, initiating corporate-style audits that have won praise from business leaders, many of whom had been cool to her candidacy.

Some leaders in outlying counties credit Franklin with tightening ties to the suburbs. Past relations have swung from mutual indifference to outright hostility, although the city of 420,000 and its dense suburbs share worries about traffic, dirty air and finding enough water to sustain the sprawl.

Despite all the good feelings, however, it’s still too early to pass judgment on Franklin’s tenure.

“From what I’ve heard and read, she didn’t have anywhere to go but up,” said F. Wayne Hill, a Republican who chairs the board of commissioners in suburban Gwinnett County. “She’s still got to prove herself.”

Some of Franklin’s initiatives -- such as a street-fixing program called the “pothole posse” -- have been seen as more flash than substance. And by her own admission, Franklin has gotten a late start in addressing some issues, such as homelessness, because she was tied up with budget problems.

She faces other big tests, especially rounding up $3 billion for a court-ordered overhaul of the city’s decrepit sewer and storm system. Also underway is a $5.4-billion expansion of Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport amid calls by some to privatize the city-owned facility, which handles more passengers than any airport in the world.

The region’s worsening traffic needs addressing, as do the city’s finances, which last year forced Franklin to approve the largest property tax increase in Atlanta’s history and slash 960 municipal jobs, most of them vacant. The mayor chopped her own salary by $40,000 after discovering that she had inherited a budget shortfall projected to reach at least $80 million.

The tax hike and layoffs were bitter medicine to homeowners and the powerful municipal unions. But instead of alienating key constituencies, Franklin’s handling of the crisis -- along with the other reforms -- helped propel a political honeymoon that so far shows no signs of abating.

Organized labor has stood by her. City Council members admire her energy and candor. Even the Fulton County Taxpayers Assn., which calls the nearly 50% tax increase “shockingly high,” lauds Franklin for making good appointments and trying to rid City Hall of cronyism.

“Being able to raise taxes and cut services and increase fees and reduce employees -- what a package,” said former Mayor Sam Massell, who heads a group of local business leaders and residents. “But she’s done it because it had to be done. She’s made choices that are very distasteful, and the voters support her.”

Backers say Franklin, a gardening buff who pins splashy silk flowers on her suits and dyes her close-cropped hair blond, has freshened City Hall with a disarming style. She arrived well-schooled, having served as cultural affairs commissioner under Jackson in the late 1970s and later as chief administrative officer under Young, whose frequent travels often left her in charge.

As mayor, she has persuaded local corporations to chip in $2 million to help pay for top-to-bottom studies of city departments. She gets weekly updates from Bain & Co., a consulting firm that is advising the city for three years, free of charge.

And when things have gone wrong, Franklin hasn’t ducked. After traffic snarls smothered key streets when Atlanta played host to the NBA All-Star Game in February, she appeared alongside the city’s new police chief, Richard Pennington -- her most touted new hire -- to apologize for not foreseeing the problems. “We were wrong,” she admitted.

“Every issue she has taken on, she doesn’t skirt it, she just tackles it head-on,” said Bert Bellinson, who heads a neighborhood group in the leafy Candler Park section of Atlanta.

Bellinson did not support Franklin in the three-way mayor’s race, which came down to a tight contest between Franklin and Robb Pitts, then president of the City Council. “I didn’t think at the beginning she had enough political experience to get the job done,” Bellinson said. “I didn’t think she would do well, but she has.”

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Times researcher Rennie Sloan contributed to this report.