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 Politics Archive 2014






Atlanta mayor received donation from the Koch brothers
by Nathan'ette Burdine: January 31, 2014
 


During the 2013 Atlanta Mayoral Race, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed received a $6500 donation from the Koch Brothers. 

The donation resulted in some Atlanta residents wondering where Reed’s loyalties lie.

Reed is a Democrat and a close ally of President Obama. The Koch brothers are Republicans who formed the super Pac, American for Prosperity, which gave over $2 million to Mitt Romney’s 2012 Presidential campaign.

Walter Andrews, who is the director of the Communication Workers of America, told Channel 11 Atlanta, “When I heard the mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed had formed an alliance with the Koch brothers, it thoroughly disgusted me.”

Reed dismissed the criticism.  He told WABE, “If you all want to take a $6500 contribution and give it an outsize impact, you all play that game but what was going to happen in this town was two hundred to three hundred thousand dollars of outside money that’s focused on the charter school effort was coming into Atlanta and I was not going to let that happen.”

Reed has been criticized before for not being “liberal” enough.  He was considered a hypocrite for his comments about Mitt Romney’s former company, Bain Capital.

During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Reed stated that the negative criticism about Bain Capital was “fair game” and that former Senator Ted Kennedy was able to beat Mitt Romney by painting Bain Capital in a negative light. 

However, Matthew Cardinale noted that Reed’s comments didn’t fit in with his actions of praising Peter Aman, a Partner at Bain and Company, for the work the company had done for the city of Atlanta. 

Also, Reed’s actions didn’t fit in with his hiring of Aman as the chief operating officer from 2010-2011 and the hiring of his successor, former Bain Consultant Hans Utz.




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