ATLANTA — Mayoral candidate Sharon Gay tells voters she’s had hands-on experience at city hall. However, she doesn’t usually mention that the mayor she worked with went to prison.
Bill Campbell served two terms as mayor in the 1990s. One of his early volunteers and, later, one of his top aides was Sharon Gay.
"I was (at city hall) before and during the Olympics. And it was a really important time to be in local government," Gay said.
While the city built Olympic infrastructure and revamped its public housing program, Mayor Campbell sailed through his first term at city hall with Gay, an attorney, at his side.
"One of the greatest testaments of Bill Campbell was what a great team of people he brought into the office at the very beginning," recalled Doug Blackmon, who covered city hall in the 90s for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Blackmon later covered Campbell’s corruption trial for the Wall Street Journal.
"No team like that lasts through two terms of a mayor," Blackmon said.
Sharon Gay left city hall a few weeks after Campbell started his second term. Blackmon says Campbell's second-term team went astray after she and other aides departed.
"As those people began to filter away, he made really bad choices about people who came in to replace him," Blackmon said. "That’s what led him into some bad decisions that got him into lots of trouble."
Blackmon says Gay had made a clean break from city hall before the FBI started probing Campbell’s administration. Gay says the FBI never interviewed her as part of its investigation. Campbell was acquitted of corruption charges -- but went to prison on a tax evasion charge.
"The work she did in the Campbell administration was very distant from the activity that caused the corruption," Blackmon said.
Gay left city hall to work with the Greater Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. She returned to city hall as a volunteer after Campbell left office. "In fact, Mayor (Shirley) Franklin appointed me – when she was elected -- appointed me as part of her transition (team) to her ethics task force. And I helped rewrite the city’s ethics code and create the position of ethics officer," Gay said last week.
Like Sharon Gay, Franklin had never run for office before winning the election as mayor. Franklin had worked as a top aide in city hall under the administration of Andrew Young.