Q Politics

Queer

Keisha Waites

Liliana Bakhtiari

Bakhtiari, Waites wins make LGBTQ Atlanta history

By Mike Fleming

ATLANTA GETS THREE OPENLY LGBTQ

City Council members in the New Year after Liliana Bakhtiari and Keisha Waites won their Nov. 30 runoffs.

Former state Rep. Waites and queer community organizer Bakhtiari both led their fields with margins just shy of winning outright on Election Day, and both dominated their runoffs. Waites beat Jacki Labat for the At-Large Position 3 seat with 53% of the citywide vote. Bakhtiari won the District 5 seat with a whopping 68% of votes against Mandy Mahoney. The two join councilmember-elect Alex Wan, who with nearly 80% of the vote on Election Day won back the same District 6 seat he vacated in 2017. He became the council’s first Asian American and first out gay male member in 2010. The three newly elected members make up the most openly LGBTQ councilmembers to ever serve on Atlanta City Council at the same time. Lesbian members Cathy Woolard and Anne Favre served together in the early 2000s. As of this writing, neither new candidate made a direct public statement declaring victory, though Waites tweeted a meme that says “To God Goes the Glory” late on Tuesday night.

MAKING MORE HISTORY Bakhtiari becomes the first openly LGBTQ Muslim elected official in state history. She is one of just five out queer Muslims ever elected to public office in the United States. She relished the opportunity to represent Atlanta’s diversity on the council. “Atlanta is supposed to be the gay mecca of the South,” she told Project Q in July. “If we don’t have representation on council – the very body that has the ability to affect the LGBTQIA population,

COUNCIL

that proposes the budget that goes into serving the LGBTQIA population – then we are failing as a city, and we’re failing as the leader of the South that we’ve always claimed to be.” Bakhtiari also campaigned on homelessness and infrastructure in District 5, as well as reform for the city’s beleaguered HOPWA funding program for AIDS housing. “We have no complete streets in our district, so we need to work toward complete street design – paving and repaving roads, providing lanes with sidewalks,” she said. “Council getting involved and engaging the public in what’s going on helps break down silos,” she added.

Waites is no stranger to history making either. She is the first Black lesbian on the council, and she was the second Black LGBTQ woman elected to the Georgia state legislature in 2012. “We need to start electing people that bring a level of competency and compassion to the conversation,” she told Project Q in August. “I understand how to move policy through all levels of government.”

‘GOOD MORNING, SOUTH FULTON’ South Fulton City Councilmember Khalid Kamau beat incumbent Bill Edwards in that city’s race for mayor. The win means Kamou is the city’s first LGBTQ mayor and the sixth openly gay mayor in Georgia. “I think [becoming mayor] will just send this signal about how progressive South Fulton actually is and what our priorities really are,” Kamau told Project Q in August. Kamau, 44, is a democratic socialist who was a delegate for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. He was also an organizer for the

Atlanta chapter of Black Lives Matter and a field organizer for the Georgia House Democratic Caucus.

As a South Fulton councilmember, Kamau amended a nondiscrimination resolution to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

On Wednesday, he tweeted a celebratory though vague nod to his win with a video clip of “Everybody Rejoice” from The Wiz. “Good morning, South Fulton,” he wrote. In Tucker, Imani Barnes lost her runoff bid to be that city’s first openly LGBTQ black lesbian council member. Cara Schroeder won that race 53% to Barne’s 47%.