Delta’s CEO Bastian to Lead Metro Atlanta’s Business Chamber in 2021 (Commerce: airport)

[Atlwarrior]

This will be just in time before the next mayor and governor election cycle. Bastian is super smart, and I’m glad he will lead and bring some of those strength over from Delta and with the local business community. All that craziness about the state talking over the airport will definitely be quashed. There is no one better than Bastian, who have been to nearly every global city and understands how the guys of a city transit should function.

https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/...a-chamber.html

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by Atlwarrior

This will be just in time before the next mayor and governor election cycle. Bastian is super smart, and I’m glad he will lead and bring some of those strength over from Delta and with the local business community. All that craziness about the state talking over the airport will definitely be quashed. There is no one better than Bastian, who have been to nearly every global city and understands how the guys of a city transit should function.

https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/...a-chamber.html

I like the choice of Delta CEO Ed Bastian to lead the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce in 2021.

But we should keep in mind that a figure like Bastian will not lead the Metro Atlanta Chamber until 2021.

In the interim, UPS (United Parcel Service) CEO Dave Abney will lead the Metro Atlanta Chamber in 2019, while Invesco CEO Martin Flannigan will lead the chamber in 2020.

I also do not think that Bastian's status as a future chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce just over two years from now should be taken as a sign that the efforts by deeply conservative rural, exurban and outer-suburban interests to have Georgia state government takeover control of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport from the Atlanta city government will effectively be quashed or decisively defeated.

With Brian Kemp winning the governorship on running the most deeply conservative rural/exurban-oriented general election campaign in decades and with the Georgia Republican Party being even more rural/exurban-oriented than before after heavy losses in the suburbs during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles, the Republican thirst to see the State of Georgia takeover control of the Atlanta Airport from the City of Atlanta has the potential to be even more intense than before with many of the more moderate Republican legislative members from the Atlanta suburbs gone.

The massive landslide defeat of Georgia Lt. Governor Casey Cagle (who was a leading proponent of future state takeover of Atlanta/ITP local government-controlled pieces of infrastructure like MARTA and the Airport) seems to have at least temporarily setback the movement by some deeply-conservative rural and exurban GOP legislators to takeover the Atlanta Airport.

But much of what happens in regards to the prospects of any future state attempts or overtures to takeover control of the Atlanta Airport away from the City of Atlanta will depend heavily upon the leadership of incoming Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who has yet to either articulate or even signal a position on the matter.

But ITP and metro advocates and supporters of the Atlanta Airport remaining under the control of the City of Atlanta probably should assume that a more conservative and more rural/exurban-oriented Republican legislative majority is likely to find the prospect of state control of the Atlanta Airport even more attractive than previous more moderate GOP legislative majorities in the Georgia General Assembly did.