2025 City of Atlanta ballot endoresements
ThreadATL endorses these candidates in the City Council race for 2025 (these are just the races where there are competitors to choose between):
Council President
Rohit Malhotra
Post 1
Juan Mendoza
District 2
Jacob Chambers
District 4
Jason Dozier
District 7
Thomas Worthy
District 9
Dustin Hillis
District 11
Nate Jester
District 12
Antonio Lewis
Homestead Exemption
Atlanta voters will also see a homestead exemption measure on the ballot, and you can read about it at the Center for Civic Innovation site: https://civicatlanta.org/blog/atlanta-senior-tax-exemption-2025-ballot
It would give an additional exemption from property taxes for Atlanta Public Schools (APS) to homeowners age 65 and older, *regardless of their income*. That last part is important.
If the intention is to give financial assistance to lower-income residents, surely there are other ways we could do this without hurting schools. As it is, the measure will heavily benefit wealthier home owners, and it provides no benefit to renters.
——
UPDATE:
Hello, all. Matt Garbett here. Although the endorsements are a collaborative activity, you can lay the blame for the endorsements on me. I'm available at matt@threadatl.org
In a normal year, I'll have a face to face meeting with candidates I don't know particularly well. We'll take that and discuss our thoughts and relationships regarding them, talk to other groups when we can, read their endorsements, and talk to other people including current and former council members, journalists, etc.
This was not a normal year both personally and with the sheer volume of new candidates. Met with whom we could (we did know some of them), watched forums, etc. etc. We considered not doing any this year but people did ask and were already past early voting so we reviewed our notes, talked again, and threw that up quickly.
Urbanism is not a single issue vote as it encompasses a wide, wide, wide range of topics. So, all that said reasoning for our endorsements:
Mayor: none. Seemed appropriate.
Council President: Rohit Malhotra was the obvious choice as anyone who has seen him speak or met him knows.
Post 1 At-Large: Tough decision. Matt Rinker and Juan Mendoza are both worthy and necessary replacements for Bond. Sentiment is that Mendoza's strong background in financing and accounting is sorely needed on City Council. Either will be strong on the issues I think we all agree on.
D2: Embarrassment of riches. Multiple candidates that will be good but we felt Jacob had the strongest urbanism chops and we like his approach to problem solving. But there are several great choices here.
D4: Jason Dozier. Obvious choice.
D7: Thomas Worthy. Another difficult decision. Wasn't a wow but ultimately his stances on housing and TODs persuaded us as the best candidate.
D9: Dustin Hillis. Obvious. Some room for improvement but generally solid.
D11: Nate Jester. Received strong personal endorsements from people we trust and aced his interview regarding urbanism and willingness to learn more on the topic and his primary opponent is also status quo.
D12: The one you've all been waiting for. First, I live in D12 so I have extensive background with Stephanie Flowers and Antonio Lewis. I've gotten to know Delvin Davis over the last several months during the campaign.
Regarding the data center, I was heavily involved in organizing the opposition to it last year as I am this go around. The data center is, after all, up the street from my house. For what it's worth, Lewis is not involved in the data center this time. He has not come forward to say, "I was wrong. I learned," which would be nice.
That said, without going into detail, the sentiment is that none of the candidates are ideally prepared for serving on council at this time. I think all 3 would currently support the TAD extensions. lack policy chops or a complete grasp of legislation at this time, and will primarily focus on constituent services in their home turf. I went with my gut on Lewis to continue to do the latter.
