U.S. Mayor Unapologetic as Questions Fly in Storm That Stopped Atlanta By KIM SEVERSONJAN. 30, 2014 ATLANTA — Anyone who has listened to Kasim Reed, the former entertainment lawyer who became Atlanta’s mayor in 2010, knows the man who calls himself a street fighter likes to be forceful when he makes a point. But for the past two days, as the national face of a city that was virtually incapacitated by two inches of snow and ice, Mr. Reed has come across more as peevish than powerful as he has done interview after interview, mostly rejecting criticism of the government’s role in Atlanta’s vast ice storm gridlock. “I don’t want to get into the blame game,” he snapped at local reporters Wednesday as children were still stranded in schools and images of thousands stranded on frozen interstates rolled in a seemingly endless media loop. The next day, he fired back at national journalists, suggesting that Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today” be more accurate in the images of a crippled region he was presenting to viewers and sniping with Mika Brzezinski on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. How the capital of the Deep South fell victim to more than 24 hours of icy paralysis despite early predictions that a rare winter storm was about to fall is still being analyzed. Gov. Nathan Deal, in an apologetic briefing for reporters on Thursday and in his own series of national interviews, was as soft and contrite as Mr. Reed was unyielding and combative. The governor said he did not learn the storm had been upgraded until about 9 a.m. Tuesday, six hours after the fact. He was beginning an internal investigation into why early warnings were not heeded sooner, he said. But larger questions loom for Mr. Reed, an ambitious 44-year-old politician, and Mr. Deal, who is running for re-election in November. How much will a losing gamble on how to handle a paralyzing storm hurt? And what’s the best way to cope with the kind of disastrous storm response that has dramatically wounded the careers of numerous politicians over the years? Left up to some voters, the gamble could hurt a lot. Drew Hansen, a University of Georgia criminal justice student who spent Tuesday night in a pharmacy after driving for more than seven hours, faulted both Mr. Deal and Mr. Reed. “To be honest with you, I don’t think they cared,” Mr. Hansen, 21, said. “Deal was warm. Reed was warm. They didn’t care. For them it was like, ‘Whatever, yeah, there’s people out there. We’re already in office. We don’t care.’ ” Reminded that Mr. Deal is seeking re-election, Mr. Hansen replied: “Good luck!” Still, as temperatures warmed on Thursday, some tempers cooled. Abdul Noble, 41, acknowledged the inexact science of weather forecasting but said officials could have been better prepared. “They’re human and they made a bad call,” Mr. Noble said as he waited for a National Guard escort to the car he abandoned on Tuesday night. “At the same time, Atlanta should have been more proactive.” For Mr. Reed, a Democrat with strong ties to the White House and his eyes on a long political career, the issue might be one of public relations as much as politics. Throughout the ordeal, Mr. Reed has been careful not to throw blame on Mr. Deal, a conservative Republican with whom he has worked shoulder to shoulder on key issues like expanding the state’s port in Savannah and attracting new business to Georgia. It has been a fruitful political relationship rare in a region that is deeply divided by urban and suburban concerns, political affiliation and race. When the storm was hitting the region, the two were at a Ritz-Carlton banquet room, celebrating Mr. Reed’s Georgian of the Year award from Georgia Trend magazine. During the storm and its aftermath, Mr. Reed has had to navigate the sprawling geographic and political challenges that come with being the de facto leader of a multicounty metropolitan region of six million people, only 432,000 of whom live in his city. “He has taken the media lead because every national story attacks Atlanta and it’s not in his nature to leave criticism unanswered,” said Carlos Campos, the mayor’s spokesman. “But the criticisms should actually be directed just as much to Cobb County leaders, DeKalb County leaders, Fulton County and other metro government leaders.” The city began preparing for the storm at 9 a.m., Mr. Reed has repeatedly pointed out. While tens of thousands of vehicles were at a standstill on the interstates that bisect and loop around Atlanta, the vast majority of the city streets were passable. Mr. Reed has said that the city and other governmental agencies should have worked together to stagger the times that parents and workers took to the road Tuesday afternoon. But, as he repeatedly pointed out, he has no control over preparing state highways for a storm, releasing children early from school or pre-emptively limiting the high volume of tractor-trailer traffic that choked the interstates when the ice hit. Some here worry more that the region’s seeming inability to handle a major weather crisis could hurt Atlanta’s future more than any one person’s political career. “I don’t see it as a big black eye on him or on the governor,” said Curley M. Dossman Jr., the president of the Georgia-Pacific Foundation and the chairman of the mentorship organization 100 Black Men of America. “I think the city is going to take a little heat when it comes to attracting a Super Bowl or an event like that, but he didn’t shy away from the issue. He gets credit for that.” Still, by other accounts, this is a blow to an administration that is not without flaws. Mr. Reed went all in on a regional transportation tax that was soundly trounced by voters. He has been criticized for his role in how contracts were handed out at the new international airport. And he lost the Atlanta Braves, which announced in November that the team was moving out of the city and into Cobb County. But all of that — and one bad storm — is not likely to sideline Mr. Reed, said Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who did not seem to sustain long-term damage from being blasted for his response to New York’s blizzard in 2010. He called Mr. Reed “a real comer.” “You can’t win with weather, and he’ll get over this,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “You can say I wish it didn’t snow or I wish the traffic was moving better or why weren’t the streets plowed when I wanted them plowed.” But at the end of the day, he said, all a mayor can say is, “O.K., fine. Thank you. Let’s move on.” Alan Blinder contributed reporting. A version of this article appears in print on January 31, 2014, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Mayor Unapologetic as Questions Fly in Storm That Stopped Atlanta . Order Reprints|Todays Paper|Subscribe
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 04:46:18 +0000
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