Wes Jordan Wins the Atlanta Mayoral Election

Wes Jordan’s narrow re-election victory over Andre Fleet turned on a political reversal: Charlie Croker’s appearance at a press conference intended to help Fareek Fanon instead damaged Croker’s standing with African-American voters and, in Wes’s account, secured the decisive shift in the campaign. In the conversation after the result, victory brings relief and laughter, but also a dispute over what the campaign gained and what Fareek endured.

The Result and Its Immediate Aftermath

The final tally came in at 4 a.m. Wes had defeated Andre Fleet by less than one percentage point. When Roger White visited him afterward, Wes looked ashen beneath his dark suntan, with deep circles and bloodshot eyes; he appeared to have gone without a proper night’s sleep for a week or two and had been up through the final count. Outside, a miserable November day of low clouds, fog, and clammy humidity offered little contrast to the strain of the campaign.

Wes greeted Roger with a smile and offered him a drink, noting that there was even champagne in the house. Since both men abstained from alcohol, Wes raised an imaginary glass instead and called Roger the turning point in the election. The gesture made the result personal: Wes was not simply celebrating a win but identifying the intervention that he believed had changed its course.

Croker’s Press-Conference Reversal

Wes credited Roger with persuading Charlie Croker, whom he characterized as the most hidebound white businessman in town, to attend the press conference. Roger had expected the appearance to serve their effort on Fareek’s behalf. Instead, Croker turned against Fareek in public, portraying him as arrogant, obnoxious, and animalistic, and likening him to a young man who took whatever he wanted from white women of the Piedmont Driving Club set.

Roger recalled that Croker had invoked the Manager, the weasel, and the snake, and that Wes had elbowed him away from the microphone with a remark about not having heard the Manager speak. The exchange became part of the press conference’s memorable public theater, but Wes’s account of the election focused on the political effect of Croker’s reversal: African-American voters saw Croker’s performance as a betrayal of Fareek. Because Croker had appeared to be there to say something quite different, his denunciation looked to Wes like an attempt by white business interests to sabotage the mayor.

The Campaign’s Political Calculus

Wes explained that his public position had been about fairness, justice, individual rights, and keeping the city calm, rather than declaring Fareek guilty or innocent. In his view, that distinction allowed him to defend Fareek’s rights without taking a side on disputed facts. Croker’s attack then appeared to confirm Wes’s claim that powerful business interests were willing to act unfairly, while leaving Wes as Fareek’s conspicuous defender in public life.

Wes said the campaign’s exit polling showed that practically every African-American voter had understood Croker’s performance as a betrayal. He also acknowledged that voters could regard him favorably while finding him too self-confident, which made the sympathy generated by the episode especially valuable. His explanation turns the election into a contest over political meaning: the same press conference that injured Fareek’s reputation became evidence, for Wes’s supporters, of the business establishment’s hostility.

Fleet’s Silence and the Cost to Fareek

Wes contrasted his public defense of Fareek with Andre Fleet’s silence. Fleet could not readily support Elizabeth Armholster without risking the South Atlanta vote he expected to win, but Elizabeth’s father, Inman Armholster, wanted Fleet at least to attack Fareek. Fleet did neither. Wes said that Inman became so angry that he cut off Fleet’s get-out-the-vote money, leaving the campaign without funds for voter mobilization. Wes laughed as he described Fleet ending up in the street with nothing to spend on votes; he told Roger that bringing Croker to the press conference had won the election.

Roger refused to share the celebration without qualification. He pointed out that the outcome had helped Wes but had not helped Fareek, whose name had been dragged through the mud for a long time. Wes sharply challenged that description. He distinguished public accusations from the ordeal of arrest, fingerprinting, confinement, bail, arraignment, indictment, and facing a courtroom while Elizabeth sobbed through her account. The exchange leaves the victory morally unsettled: the campaign maneuver gave Wes an electoral advantage, while the accusation and its public circulation continued to carry consequences for Fareek.