Ivan Ho!

Atlantans boast that their city is the most progressive and peaceful in all of the Deep South. In his four years as mayor, silver-haired Ivan Allen Jr. has given them plenty to boast about. No fewer than six of the seven civic programs for which Allen campaigned in 1961 have been successfully completed.

As a result, Atlanta has: public schools desegregated through all twelve grades; an $18 million stadium home for its first major league baseball team, the Atlanta Braves (who will move from Milwaukee at season's end); a $9,000,000 auditorium-exhibition hall complex; a $14.5 million freeway link between the downtown area and the airport (fifth busiest in the U.S.) that cuts driving time 23 minutes; 20,000 new jobs yearly since 1962, which is double what Allen was shooting for and has given Atlanta the lowest unemployment rate of any major U.S. city. Only his dream of a rapid-transit system is still unfulfilled, but it is in the blueprint stage.

With such an impressive array of accomplishments going for him, Allen, 54, who ran the South's largest office-supply firm before he became mayor, was so confident of re-election this month that he even predicted his percentage of the vote: 72%. For a while, in fact, it looked as if Allen would get 100%. Until the last filing day for the election, he was the only mayoralty candidate. Then, five minutes before the deadline, in jumped Milton M. ("Muggsy") Smith, 63, an Atlanta insurance salesman who made a name during 16 years in the state legislature trying to repeal every segregation law in Georgia. But Muggsy, who had run against Allen in 1961, never had a chance.

Last week 76,000 Atlantans (less than half of the city's 181,000 registered voters) went to the polls, made Allen's prediction of his winning percentage come close to true by handing him 70% of the vote--53,187 to Smith's 21,153. And despite Smith's civil rights grandstanding, Allen won an overwhelming majority of the Negro vote. The small turnout bothered At lanta's political hierarchy not at all. It was, mused former (for 26 years) Mayor William B. Hartsfield, "indicative of a satisfied citizenry."

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