ATLANTA — As if a potential World Series clinch wasn't enough, Atlanta is also set to head to the polls on Tuesday to choose a new mayor.
Current Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced earlier this year she wouldn't run for re-election, opening up the race for a wide field that includes the city's former mayor, its current City Council president, multiple councilmembers and more than a half-dozen others - 14 qualified candidates in all.
Polls have suggested there's a large undecided vote out there, and if no candidate can clear the 50% + 1 vote threshold, a runoff will be scheduled for Nov. 30.
Ahead of the vote on Tuesday, here are five neighborhoods around the city who should provide a solid barometer of where things are headed:
Peachtree Hills/Lindbergh
You thought this was going to be Buckhead, didn't you?
Yes, Buckhead is very interesting, but as far as the mayor's race goes, the most animating issue there - the cityhood movement - isn't actually endorsed by any of the leading mayoral candidates (which makes sense - who wants to shrink the city they're trying to be mayor of?)
What makes Peachtree Hills and Lindbergh - adjacent neighborhoods wedged to the northeast of the I-75/85 split and to the immediate southeast of Buckhead, and which often more or less get lumped in with greater Buckhead - interesting is that they're younger, more diverse, more working-class neighborhoods that represent pretty much the only slice of the Northside that voted for Bottoms in 2017.
With crime a fairly central issue to Buckhead, residents of Peachtree Hills and Lindbergh - who have seen some high-profile incidents - will offer something of a barometer on the issue. Will they lead a Buckhead wave toward more establishment candidates who have promised to tackle crime, such as Kasim Reed or Felicia Moore, or, as they did back in 2017, gravitate to the candidates considered more progressive, such as Andre Dickens or Antonio Brown?
The rest of Buckhead might also find itself with an interesting split among the more conservative vote - will they go for the police-union-endorsed Reed, the experience of Moore or a businesswoman in Sharon Gay?
The "Upper Westside"
The "Upper Westside" isn't actually a neighborhood, so this is a bit of a cheat, but it's a branding term that's been applied to a lot of the development sprouting up to the northwest of Howell Mill Road.
It generally refers to the area including neighborhoods like Blandtown, Underwood Hills and Bolton.
This is an interesting area because it's Moore's old district. She represented District 9 on the City Council for two decades before becoming council president in 2018.
The district also stretches out to the Perimeter, including neighborhoods like Riverside and Scotts Crossing, and then goes down toward Donald Lee Hollowell Pkwy., including Grove Park, Almond Park and Carey Park.
The question here is does this broad swath of northwest Atlanta give Moore a solid base to challenge Reed from, or has the development wave and emerging gentrification pressures left behind a changed district that doesn't feel all that loyal to the city council president?
English Avenue
Speaking of gentrification, perhaps no area of the city faces a more immediate transformation than the Hollowell Parkway corridor, which starts with English Avenue to the northwest of Downtown and encompasses Bankhead and then Grove Park as you head west.
English Avenue, specifically, sits right in the middle of a southeast-to-northwest district that runs most of Joseph E. Boone Blvd. all the way up through midtown and the I-75/85 split. You could say it's quite literally at the crossroads of gentrification pressures in Atlanta.
It will soon be home to the massive Echo Street West development, at the corner of Northside Drive and Hollowell Pkwy., as well as an increasingly vulnerable population of longtime, largely Black residents.
Will they embrace the progressive politics of their councilman, Brown, or perhaps gravitate to a familiar face like Moore or Reed - who was criticized by the Atlanta NAACP as "not a good mayor for Black neighborhoods" during his previous term as mayor, from 2010-18.
Reed was challenged for allegedly being more favorable to developers and failing to emphasize affordable housing or negotiate development deals favorably for Black neighborhoods - issues that should be highly salient in English Avenue.
Southwest OTP
While we're on the subject of Reed, here's his home base.
The two-term mayor who's looking to return to office boasts sophisticated political organizing and support in southwest Atlanta, a broadly and historically Black swath of the city that in some respects represents the epicenter of the city's Black community.
Will Reed, who went to Westlake High School (back when it was Westwood High) and hails from the part of the city beyond I-285 in its southwest corner, boost turnout and support here?
The area, stretching from as far south as Camp Creek Pkwy. and going up through areas like Campbellton Road to the west of Greenbriar, up to Cascade Road and Adamsville, is one of the more historically disenfranchised parts of Atlanta.
Do they see him as one of their own and their champion, or will they share some of the same skepticism the local NAACP expressed ?
Summerhill
Perhaps no neighborhood in Atlanta provides as much of a wild card than Summerhill.
Located just to the southeast of the old Turner Field (now used by Georgia State's football team), it had one of the more interesting splits in the 2017 runoff between Bottoms and the more conservative Mary Norwood.
Most of the neighborhood's precincts comfortably backed Bottoms, but its largest - with a polling precinct at 250 Georgia Ave. that also includes neighboring Grant Park - went for Norwood with 63% support.
Summerhill represents an emerging mix of college students affiliated with Georgia State, young progressives flocking to the gentrifying blocks of Georgia Avenue, longstanding Black residents south of the stadium, and white residents abutting Grant Park, making the neighborhood one of Atlanta's more integrated and an important window into whatever racial splits emerge in the election.