Buckhead City Movement Poised For Action As Dickens Wins Atlanta Mayor's Race

ATLANTA, GA — Atlanta Mayor-Elect Andre Dickens closed out Tuesday night celebrating his victory in the race to run City Hall but awoke to a bitter pill.

An acerbic letter of congratulations from Buckhead City Committee head Bill White went out at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, soon after the mayor's race was called, to greet the soon-to-be-mayor and remind him of one of the primary challenges facing the budding administration.

“We congratulate Mayor-elect Andre Dickens and we look forward to working with him to ensure a smooth transition for Buckhead City as we make our future sister cities safe and prosperous!” the letter started.

After adulating law enforcement and calling for a more streamlined government to out-perform an Atlanta he called a “bloated bureaucracy,” White took aim at late-election rumors claiming Dickens’ runoff opponent City Council President Felicia Moore had designs to scale back nightclub hours and close nude dancing clubs.

“When the last day of voting for the Mayor of Atlanta was primarily focused on which candidate was going to be the stronger supporter of strip clubs, it was clear to the families of Buckhead that our priorities of safety, education, infrastructure, and zoning are no longer aligned with those in Atlanta’s City Hall,” White wrote.

Since late this summer, White has become the face of the movement to de-annex Buckhead from Atlanta and forge a new city.

Efforts have gone mostly undeterred as only a portion of the nearly 100,000 Buckhead residents have directly weighed in and most of the legislative heavy lifting to bring cityhood to a 2022 ballot measure has been done by lawmakers from outside the proposed city limits. Direct action from Buckhead voters — those who will actually decide if a new city is to be — won’t come into play until November 8, at the last minute.

For his part, Dickens took up the mantle of Atlanta’s next chief executive Tuesday night during his victory address, answering voters’ call for unity.

“They believe that this city needed a unifier,” he said, crediting voters. “Somebody that could bring this whole city together.”

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