Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says he has one more election left in him

The popular Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed (D) told the Associated Press (AP), in an interview released Thursday, that after his last term as mayor ends in 2018 he’d like to work in the private sector for a bit and perhaps run for one more election sometime in the future.

"I believe I have one more campaign in me, but the decision I have is whether in 2018 to spend some time in the private sector focusing on my family and my daughter," Reed said. "I'm not inclined to run for goveor in 2018. I'm inclined to go be in the private sector."

Reed, who is the 59^th mayor of Atlanta, first served in political office from 1998 - 2002 in the Georgia House of Representatives. Next, he was elected to state Senate where he stayed until 2009. In 2009, he won a close election for Atlanta mayor. Now at the age of 45, Reed has spent the last 16 years in office, and when he leaves the mayor’s office it will be exactly 20 years.

It’s interesting that Reed would want to go back into private sector. After all, the term ”real life experience has been very popular in recent elections, with candidates that have never served in political office unseating politically experienced and sometimes quite powerful incumbents. The name Erick Cantor comes to mind.

In the 2014 U.S. Senate race in Georgia, the Republican primary included some political veterans like U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga-1) who’s served for over 20 years in Washington. While Kingston was one of the frontrunners, it was his GOP opponent David Perdue, a successful businessman with no public office experience, who won the Republican nomination in a runoff.  After winning in the general election against Democrat Michelle Nunn, who also never served in political office, Perdue is now getting ready to take a seat in the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress, undoubtedly one of the most power institutions in the world, without ever taking a single vote on any political issue. Certainly, the 2014 Senate election suggests that Georgia voters prefer private sector experience to political.  

It could only help Reed to work some more in the private sector before he runs for a state-wide office. Reed, a Howard University Law School graduate, is a former partner of Holland and Knight LLP, an inteational law firm. He is a talented politician with excellent instincts and even more excellent contacts. He threw his support behind then-Senator Barack Obama in 2008 when Obama was still struggling to get prominent public figures to back him against Hillary Clinton. Ever since then, Reed has loyally supported the President in good times and bad. 

Georgia pundits have expected Reed to move on to Washington for over a decade now. But Reed has always been very thoughtful and pragmatic about his political decisions. He’s never lost a race, and would probably like to keep it that way. He’ll only run if he knows he will win.