An Angry Mayor Drops a Secret

ATLANTA -- When Bill Campbell--mayor of this image-conscious city for nearly seven controversial years--decided to let loose recently on the federal probe into possible corruption at city hall and his gambling habits, even some longtime Campbell-watchers were shocked at his choice of words.

In a televised speech Sept. 19, Campbell described the FBI investigation into his public and personal activities as "an inquisition," comparing the agency to "the KGB in communist Russia." The next day, he resumed his tirade on two local radio stations with largely black audiences, saying that federal authorities were hounding him just as they did the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. He called the investigators "forces of evil."

With those statements, Campbell publicly identified himself as a prime target of a grand jury investigation that federal officials would not even confirm exists, and he opened up discussion all over town about aspects of his private life that were not heretofore widely known. By bringing race into the equation, Campbell also has been accused by some critics of polarizing this predominantly black city where complex racial issues usually have been dealt with subtly and with maximum attention to how things looked to the rest of the world.

Details that have emerged about the investigation in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have presented an unexpected picture of the two-term mayor, who has been described as a devoted family man and "silk-stocking" lawyer with degrees from Vanderbilt and the Duke University law school.

Atlanta strip-club owner Michael Childs and former Campbell aide Dewey Clark, who lived in a basement apartment of the mayor's house for six years, have accused Campbell of accepting bribes in exchange for his alleged assurances to protect the liquor license at one of Childs's businesses, Club Nikki VIP, according to the Journal-Constitution. Childs and Clark allege that Campbell reneged on his pledge; the license subsequently was revoked.

Denying the bribery allegations, Campbell said that they came in retaliation for his attempts to clean up the city's strip-club operations. Other reports have emerged alleging that the mayor, who says he enjoys visiting the gambling casinos on Mississippi's Gulf coast in his private time, also has played poker with city contractors.

"Yes, I gamble at casinos," Campbell said in his Sept. 19 speech. "I have, and I will again. As do 40 million Americans annually."

The FBI has refused to comment on any investigation involving Atlanta, Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, or Campbell. The mayor's press secretary, Zee Bradford, said Campbell would make no further statement about the probe.

Supporters of the mayor defend his outspoken approach, saying it was exactly what was needed to counter an overzealous federal investigation that reportedly began nearly a year ago. Since then, two Fulton County officials have pleaded guilty to taking bribes, and the probe has expanded from there.

"African Americans look on the FBI with great, great disdain. We are told that race is not an issue, but we say, 'Phooey on that,' " said the Rev. Timothy McDonald, president of the Concerned Black Clergy, which includes 125 congregations. "If there is any evidence of wrongdoing or impropriety with the mayor, something should have come out by now."

The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, president emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and chairman of the National Black Leadership Forum, recently sent a letter to U.S. Attorney Richard Deane, who is African American, expressing distress with the probe's "protracted nature."

"There's a great deal of apprehension in the black community about the intent of the investigation and whether this is an extension of efforts to discredit black leadership," said Lowery in an interview. "I cautioned the U.S. attorney not to let investigators turn too aggressive and turn this into a witch hunt."

Critics, however, say the mayor has done what he always does when he finds himself in a difficult position--play the race card. They say that his pattern of launching vitriolic attacks has only hurt his credibility and embarrassed a business-minded city that boasts it is "too busy to hate."

"The mayor can make a racial issue out of a lima bean," said Dick Yarbrough, a retired BellSouth executive and newspaper columnist who wrote a critical book about Atlanta's 1996 Summer Olympics, "And They Called Them Games."

Campbell, 47, following Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson, is the third black mayor in the history of Atlanta. Unlike his predecessors, he has been described as a child--rather than a leader--of the modern civil rights movement, one of a second generation of African American politicos who generally have taken a more colorblind approach to their work.

While there has been much buzz about his outbursts, even his critics are holding their tongues about any possible outcome of the investigation.

"It's very troubling," said Dick Williams, a former Journal-Constitution editor and columnist and the longtime host of the local weekly television talk show "The Georgia Gang." "Bill Campbell, like Bill Clinton, should be among the best and brightest; he has all the gifts. You don't want to believe he did something as smarmy as take bribes from strip-club owners. You certainly don't want to believe he took bribes because he had a gambling problem. I sure hope there's more smoke than fire."

No doubt many of Campbell's attitudes toward race were forged when he was 7 years old and, in a traumatic episode, became the first black student to integrate the school system in his hometown of Raleigh, N.C. Whites taunted the child with racial slurs as he entered the school, and his family, led by his late father, Ralph Sr., who headed the local NAACP, received death threats.

Always an excellent student, Campbell graduated from Vanderbilt in three years with honors and with three majors: sociology, political science and history. After law school, he was recruited by one of Atlanta's most prestigious law firms. In 1981, he was elected to the City Council, where he served 12 years, and he became a staunch ally of Maynard Jackson.

In interviews with the Journal-Constitution over the years, Campbell has conceded that he is impatient, is something of a control freak, and tends not to seek advice. His tenure has been controversial, with some saying he has done nothing remarkable and others giving him high marks for cleaning up Atlanta's public-housing projects and leading the city through economic boom times.

In the summer of 1999, Campbell lashed out in similar fashion at the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative public-interest law firm that has taken the city to federal court over its minority contracting programs. He likened the organization to the Ku Klux Klan and urged his supporters to picket not only its offices, but also the homes of its officials. Campbell recently said that the federal probe is due in part to his heated defense of Atlanta's affirmative action policies.

"That doesn't pass the straight-face test," said foundation president Matt Glavin. "The local office of the FBI is headed by an African American, the U.S. attorney is African American. Janet Reno, Bill Clinton, all support affirmative action. Why would these people go after Bill Campbell because of his position?"

Whatever happens next, the federal probe seems to have brought Campbell's political ambitions to a screeching halt, at least for the time being. Although his name once was bandied about as a possible Cabinet secretary in an Al Gore administration, he was curiously out of sight when Gore recently campaigned in Atlanta.

"We feel there is more going on here than meets the eye," said McDonald, "a much larger agenda that would benefit Republicans if the African American community is disenchanted and stays away from the polls on November 7. They want to keep up this cloud of suspicion until then."

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An Angry Mayor Drops a Secret