Before there was ever a Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick , a Mayor Cory Booker in Newark, N.J., or a President Barack Obama , there was Atlanta — also known as “the chocolate city,” where black power and leadership was, and still is, standard fare.

Though the latest election results may turn all of that on its head,

Atlanta won’t lose its blackness by electing a white mayor; that’s already been happening with gentrification and other demographic changes. The Nov. 3 election is only a result of those changes, not the cause.

Affluent whites who left the city in the 1970s, and were replaced by middle class African Americans, are now returning; they are attracted by improvements made to the for the 1996 Olympic Games and a better quality of life. Atlanta is undergoing the biggest demographic shift in the country. Unfortunately, many blacks are being dispersed and displaced because of the change.

Atlanta went from being 51.3 percent black in 1970, to 67.1 percent in 1990, to 61.4 percent in 2000 — and to 55.7 percent in 2006, according to a press release from the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.

Right now the city is reeling and everyone from sociologists to political scientists, from the old civil rights guard to natives, are coming up with a plethora of ways to explain Norwood, which many say is the result of another phenomenon, otherwise known as the Obama Effect.

The argument goes something like this: African Americans no longer need guaranteed seats at the table of power — like Atlanta’s mayor’s office — because an African American now sits at the head of the table, which is represented by Obama’s election to the White House

Then there is reality.

The Christian Science Monitor put it like this in its roster of election stories:

“Some analysts [have] said the potential election of front-runner Mary Norwood as the city’s first white mayor in 36 years would prove that America is undergoing a generational shift toward color blind politics. Others saw the struggle for traction by African-American ‘card carrying Democrats’ in a liberal, majority-black city as a sign that Mr. Obama’s coattails have proven woefully short.”

Race will be a part of politics for the foreseeable future, no matter how hard journalists and others try to wish it away. And as far as Obama’s coattails, as Cornell Belcher said this week, it’s not like Obama or any other officeholder can bequeath their voters to other people. Blacks and independents in Virginia voted for Obama in 2008 because he had a message that resonated with them; black and independent Virginians did not vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds because Deeds didn’t have a message distinct from his opponent. It’s about the candidates, not coattails.

There are factions in Atlanta who wish to turn December’s runoff election into a referendum on race and/or Obama.

It’s not either.

But that’s not stopping some cynics who are calling the election a rematch of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, when a white woman faced off against an African American man, and lost.

“Like (Hillary) Clinton in last year’s presidential primaries, Norwood has lost her aura of inevitability,” writes Kyle Wingfield for The Atlanta Journal & Constitution. “Will she now follow Clinton’s lead and also lose the office she seeks?”

Opponents are also attempting to paint Norwood as a closet Republican, too conservative for Atlanta (read “white”), just like some tried to paint Clinton as being too much of a conservative Democrat (read “white”). As if voters need reminding and cannot see the obvious.

Norwood initially responded by calling herself “purple” before completely disavowing the rumor and proving that she could “relate” to Atlanta’s African American voters by touting her Democratic street cred: Norwood made an about-face and said that she’d voted Democratic in the last four presidential elections. Good call. (Note to Norwood: re: Deeds, Democrats running as conservatives outside the heartland lose, even to conservative Republicans who run as moderates. That’s even truer in places like Atlanta.)

I’m not sure what will happen a month from now. My mother, another Atlanta native, says she is shocked and blames the crowded field of African American candidates that diluted the vote as the only reason Norwood got this far. She thinks a white candidate doesn’t stand a chance in the runoff.

I am not convinced. There is something else afoot, not only in Atlanta but across the United States.

People want real change. As we saw with Obama’s election (and now with [@rising dissatisfaction@http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/11/03/exit-polls-voters-divided-on-president-obamas-performance/@] a year later), Americans want candidates who will represent their interests. And finally, voters are deciding that those interests are more important than skin color.

Atlanta is no exception. In the end, Atlanta will do what’s right for Atlanta and it will still be “the chocolate city.”

Though maybe more milk chocolate than dark.

Tracie Powell is a former American Political Science Association congressional fellow and writes regularly on politics and policy.