TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020 A
NATLANTA — Kwanza Hall and Robert
M. Franklin Jr. have been campaigning
for months, planting signs in grassy me-
dians along busy Atlanta roadways and
onto windows of popular brunch spots.
They have distributed hand sanitizer,
met with the men of Omega Psi Phi and
vigorously debated each other. In a live-
streamed discussion, they delved into
ambitious ideas for conquering in-
tractable problems — limited access to
health care, inequality in the criminal
justice system and attacks on voting
rights.
Politics has consumed much of Geor-
gia in recent weeks. President-elect Jo-
seph R. Biden Jr. won the state — a feat
no Democrat had managed in nearly
three decades, and one confirmed by a
hand audit of ballots — and two high-
stakes runoffs in January will determine
which party controls the Senate.
Well, this is the other runoff, one
mostly notable for the short turn the win-
ner will have in Congress. Very short. All
told, not even a month in the House.
A peculiar set of circumstances has
created a contest with stakes that could
not be much lower. Mr. Hall and Dr.
Franklin, both Democrats, are compet-
ing in a runoff Tuesday in a reliably Dem-
ocratic district for a term that ends at
noon on Jan. 3. And there is no chance of
an extension for the winner, as his suc-
cessor was elected last month.
Still, the candidates have argued that
their bids are anything but inconsequen-
tial. The victor will serve what would
have been the final days of John Lewis’s
17th term representing Georgia’s Fifth
Congressional District. Mr. Lewis, the pi-
oneering civil rights leader, died on July
17.
“These are the days he earned,” Dr.
Franklin, a scholar of theology and for-
mer president of Morehouse College,
said outside a library before he cast his
ballot. “For me, that’s the honor and the
privilege.”
Dr. Franklin and Mr. Hall, a former At-
lanta city councilman, advanced to a run-
off after a special election in September,
emerging from a mixed-party pack that
included five Democrats, one independ-
ent and a Libertarian.
“It matters to me,” Mr. Hall said, “be-
cause we’ve had no representation since
July 17.”
The district, which encompasses parts
of Atlanta and its surrounding suburbs,
is an economic and cultural hub that has
long drawn African-Americans from
across the South with possibilities for up-
ward mobility and relief from the bur-
dens of racial hostility in the places they
left behind.
But it is also an area that has been re-
minded of the ways that the aspirations
for Atlanta’s promise have fallen short of
reality.
Gentrification has spread rapidly,
shoving out longtime Black residents.
And in June, Rayshard Brooks, an Afri-
can-American man, was killed by a city
police officer, setting off protests that
grew tense and violent and underscored
that, despite its reputation, Atlanta was
anything but immune to the pernicious
and enduring consequences of racial in-
equality.
After Mr. Lewis’s death, Democratic
Party officials had to rush to meet a state
deadline to replace his name on the No-
vember ballot, putting out a call for appli-
cations and landing on Nikema Williams,
a state senator.
Party officials effectively handed Ms.
Williams a ticket to Congress. Mr. Lewis,
a Democrat, had won all but one of his
re-election bids with more than 70 per-
cent of the vote. Ms. Williams won with
85 percent of the vote, and she has al-
ready been elected as president of the in-
coming freshman class of Democrats.
Mr. Hall and Dr. Franklin are involved
in a separate process that began when
Gov. Brian Kemp called for a special elec-
tion to serve the remainder of Mr. Lew-
is’s term. Ms. Williams declined to par-
ticipate, and no candidate cleared the 50
percent hurdle in the September elec-
tion, forcing the runoff. (Just over 31,
people cast ballots.)
The campaign might seem like a puz-
zling endeavor. Just the span between
the special election and the runoff on
Tuesday is more than twice as long as the
amount of time the victor will have in
Congress.
Even so, the candidates have made se-
rious investments of time and money.
They have gathered endorsements from
elected officials, activists and local busi-
ness leaders. While donations are no-
where near the prodigious sums the
heated Senate races have brought in,
they have raised hundreds of thousands
of dollars between them.
Dr. Franklin hired a staff of eight and
has kept a steady schedule of virtual
events, like joining a gathering of inter-
faith leaders.
Mr. Hall has run a leaner operation. He
is his own communications director. The
phone number posted on his campaign’s
Facebook page rings on his cellphone.
He keeps his face covered and has
swapped handshakes for elbow bumps
during the pandemic, but he still prefers
pounding the pavement. “I’m running
for Congress,” he told one person after
another as he handed out fliers at a shop-
ping center.
Both men have lofty notions about
what they could accomplish in office.
Dr. Franklin sees a bully pulpit, a plat-
form for him as a minister and professor
of moral leadership at Emory University
to offer a message of clarity in a turbu-
lent time. And on what would be his last
day in office, a Sunday, he said, he would
leave with a benediction for Mr. Lewis
and his work.Mr. Hall envisions leaping in with an
aggressive agenda: working to decrimi-
nalize marijuana, expunge the records of
formerly incarcerated people, create
economic opportunity.
“I can do the equivalent of what I did in
15 years — I can do it in 15 days,” he said,
referring to his years on the Atlanta City
Council. “I know what not to waste my
time on. I know how to be effective.”
The history of Congress is dotted with
members whose terms were best meas-
ured in days. For the most part, any
achievements recorded by history were
largely symbolic.
In fact, the first woman to serve in the
Senate came from Georgia: Rebecca
Latimer Felton, an 87-year-old writer
and activist who was appointed in 1922
after her predecessor died, served oneday and gave one speech. In it, she
shared her vision of a Senate where more
women would serve: “You will get abil-
ity, you will get integrity of purpose, you
will get exalted patriotism, and you will
get unstinted usefulness.”
In all likelihood, the experience for Mr.
Hall or Dr. Franklin will be less grand or
productive: votes on some significant
legislation, including bills on govern-
ment funding, and opportunities to
speak on the House floor.
“It’s going to be hard to get anything
done in a short period of time, especially
in this short period of time,” said Michael
Crespin, the director of the Carl Albert
Congressional Research and Studies
Center at the University of Oklahoma.
There is no shortage of attention being
paid to Georgia politics at the moment,but this campaign has stood little chance
of competing against recounted ballots,
Senate runoffs, intraparty feuding
among Georgia Republicans and a Dem-
ocrat taking the state in a presidential
race for the first time since 1992.
It does not help that the campaign was
part of a tangle of procedures after Mr.
Lewis’s death that left voters confused.
Mr. Lewis had an almost singular pres-
ence in Atlanta, embraced as a link to
connect a new generation of Black Lives
Matter activists to the civil rights move-
ment that was rooted in the city.
Mr. Hall, 49, said he was well-suited to
carrying on that legacy even though he
thought he was done with politics. His
last campaign had been a failed mayoral
bid in 2017. He had shifted to business,
working in economic development and
consulting.
But around the time of Mr. Lewis’s
death, a coronavirus diagnosis confined
Mr. Hall to his bed and forced him to con-
template the future.
On a recent morning, as he joined vol-
unteers packing boxes with hand sani-
tizer and canned goods, he flipped
through photographs on his phone. They
were yellowing pictures of his father,
Leon W. Hall, a civil rights activist and
one of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.’s youngest lieutenants.
In one, his father embraced Mr. Lewis.
Another one made him tear up; it
showed his father being dragged by a po-
lice officer during a demonstration.
Those photographs offered the nudge he
needed. “You find yourself exactly where
you are supposed to be,” he said.
Dr. Franklin, 66, said he waited to see
who else might run, like Shirley Franklin,
the former mayor of Atlanta, or Andrew
Young, who held the seat before Mr. Lew-
is and who had also been mayor.
“OK,” he decided, “I need to offer my
leadership.”
No matter the result, he said, the cam-
paign could be a prelude to a new chapter
of holding elected office or perhaps serv-
ing as an ambassador.
“I am by no means equal to the task,”
he said of trying to fill the void left by Mr.
Lewis, “but I think I could contribute
something, even if it is for just two
weeks.”Georgia’s Other Runoff: For a Month in Congress
Two Democrats are vying
to complete John Lewis’s
17th term in Congress,
which will end on Jan. 3.
By RICK ROJASKwanza Hall and Robert M. Franklin Jr. have lofty ambitions about what they could accomplish representing Atlanta’s Fifth Congressional District.PHOTOGRAPHS BY NICOLE CRAINE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESA mourner paid respects to Representative John Lewis at the Georgia State Capitol in July.‘I can do the equivalent of what I did in 15 years
— I can do it in 15 days.’
KWANZA HALL, comparing being a congressman to his time on the Atlanta City Council.‘I am by no means equal to the task, but I think I could
contribute something, even if it is for just two weeks.’
ROBERT M. FRANKLIN Jr., on the possibility of completing the term of John Lewis.