Bill Campbell, once considered a rising star in the national Democratic Party, served as mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, USA from 1994 to 2002.
In August 2004, Campbell was indicted by a federal grand jury on racketeering, bribery and wire fraud charges after a five-year federal investigation into corruption during his years as Mayor of Atlanta. On March 10, 2006, a federal jury convicted him on three counts of tax evasion. On June 13, 2006, he was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Story to 30 months in prison on charges of tax evasion and also ordered to serve a year on probation, pay a $6,000 fine, and pay more than $60,000 in back taxes. Now our former glorious, esteemed mayor is in a federal jail.
By all accounts, Bill Campbell’s Atlanta mayoralty strongly resembled the corrupt, payoff-driven administrations of Chicago’s Mayor Daleys’ administrations (both the father and the son). Sure, some things got done (especially when they financially benefitted Campbell, his family, or his buddies), but mere ethics didn’t stand in the way.
Federal prosecutors charged that Campbell ran Atlanta with a “what’s-in-it-for-me” attitude and regarded contractors who wanted to do business with the city as ‘human ATMs.’
The first two paragraphs in this morning’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution story about Campbell’s trip to prison:
Seven years ago, Bill Campbell reigned over the leading city in the Southeast and took advantage of the perks of prosperity and prestige.
That summer, Atlanta’s mayor vacationed in Puerto Rico with his wife and children for four days before jetting off to Miami with a longtime girlfriend and then rendezvousing with another girlfriend in Paris.
A former WSB-TV reporter named Marion Brooks had an affair with Campbell for years while he was mayor of Atlanta. Prosecutors used the testimony of Brooks to suggest that Campbell had access to unusually large sums of cash, as when he gave Brooks $16,000 in cash to put a down payment on a condo in Chicago, where she now works. And where did that $16,000 come from? Yep, out of the wallets of Atlanta taxpayers.
Campbell accepted $50,000 in cash from a strip club operator who wanted help getting a liquor license for a second club.
Campbell accepted $55,000 from a computer company vying for a contract to prepare the city’s computers for Y2K.
Campbell accepted an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris worth nearly $13,000 from a water company. That one was the one that also included a romp with one of his girlfriends (and not his wife).
A great family man and inspiration to inner city youth, huh?
The 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta should have been a proud moment for is in Georgia. But it very quickly turned into a huge embarassment. Campbell saw the Olympic Games as an opportunity to make a few bucks and do some favors for some friends. Campbell managed to get the city council to grant rights to use sidewalks and other city property to a friend who had printed t-shirts for his mayoral campaign. His crony, Munson Steed, then leased out parcels of sidewalks and other city-owned property to a variety of vendors of various types of cheap crap from around the world, effectively turning Atlanta into a third-world flea market for the Olympics. That, along with the bombing in the Olympic Centennial Park by Eric Robert Rudolph managed to get our city a real black eye. Granted, Campbell was certainly not at fault for the bombing … but it would have been nice if the 911 operators working for the city had known where Centennial Olympic Park was when the first calls came in.
Campbell left an $80 million deficit.
Businessman Bert Timmerman testified he paid $520,000 to Campbell confidant Fred Prewitt with the understanding it would go to the former Atlanta mayor. In exchange, Timmerman’s company would get a $4 million city contract. Where would that $4 million come from? Yep, Atlanta taxpayers.
Campbell failed to address serious infrastructure problems, especially with sewage.
Shortly after leaving office a federal investigation was launched involving members of his staff. Most were convicted of bribery. Since 1999 no fewer than 10 of Campbell’s former city officials have been convicted on a range of criminal charges.
Campbell had one of the largest police protection details of any mayor of a major city in the country. There was always an Atlanta police car parked outside of his home, night and day. One particular evening the Atlanta cop on duty saw a car pull into the driveway of Campbell’s. The passenger door opened, and Campbell’s son got out and went inside. The car then drove off. While the car was in the mayor’s driveway something made the cop suspicious and he ran the license number … and the car turned out to be stolen. The driver was stopped and arrested. So what was Campbell’s response? Did he thank the police for a job well done? Did he congratulate them for recovering a stolen car and returning it to it’s rightful owner? Nope. Campbell, so infuriated that the police had discovered that his son was riding around town in a stolen car, instructed the Atlanta Police that they were no longer to run the license plates of any cars in his driveway. That’s Campbell’s reward for a job well done. You get suspicious, run a tag, find a stolen car, and His Honor tells you to quit running tags.
Campbell frivolously spent money from a 1994 bond referendum.
When conservative civil rights activists sued Atlanta for its discriminatory racial setaside contracting policies (quotas), Campbell infamously and quite publicly stated that whites who oppose racial quotas are like the Ku Klux Klan. Campbell’s thugs have thrown white anti-quota advocates out of public meetings. And when Campbell’s corrupt game of racial favoritism — and under-the-table payoffs to him — were investigated, he said he had been the subject of a “racial inquisition” and he compared the FBI to Russia’s KGB. Campbell’s Atlanta, like Nagin’s New Orleans, is a purely Chocolate City - non-blacks need not apply. Any criticism of Campbell or his practices were quickly written off as a racial attack on him because he was black. He was, therefore, “bulletproof”. This was especially comical because in 1999, when the FBI began investigating Campbell, the Atlanta FBI office was headed by a black, and at that time the U.S. Attorney for the Atlanta district was also black.
“The mayor can make a racial issue out of a lima bean,” said Dick Yarbrough, a retired BellSouth executive and newspaper columnist. Campbell did what he always did when he found himself in a difficult position - play the race card, which is ‘business as usual’ for a lot of Atlanta politics. Since it all hit the fan in 1999, the news accounts have variously portrayed Campbell as a paranoid, power-hungry black mafia don. He handed out race-based contracts like candy to his black campaign contributors. He has publicly stated that he believes in racial quotas today, racial quotas tomorrow, and racial quotas forever.
While praising some of Campbell’s accomplishments as mayor, U.S. District Judge Richard Story said he was overcome with a “pall of disappointment over the breadth of misconduct in his administration.” That’s putting it mildly.
But now the Campbell era in Atlanta is over. The prison camp near Miami, about 80 miles south of his family’s Palm Beach stucco home, has a college-dorm feel and no barbed wire. But Campbell will have to give up two of his once favorite pastimes, golf and gambling. Conjugal visits are out of the question. He deserves much worse.
Only time will tell if Atlanta can survive the damage already done.
