The article discusses the success of Shirley Franklin, the mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. Four years ago, Atlanta's city government was a bloated mess with an $82 million deficit; now it is running a surplus. Four years ago, the city was seen as hopelessly corrupt; now it has an ethics plan which, to the surprise of many local skeptics, has yet to embarrass the city. Four years ago, growth was confined to the suburbs; between 2000 and 2004 the city added 13,600 housing units, more than three times what it added in the 1990s. This is not a difficult record to defend. Which explains why Shirley Franklin, who had worked for two previous mayors before winning the job herself in 2001, faces no serious challengers in 2005. Her approval ratings have run as high as 80%, and she was named one of America's five best mayors by "Time" magazine in April 2005. There is something of a political bubble in this. Atlanta's mayor governs just 400,000 people in a metropolitan region of some 4 million. And Ms Franklin's public-relations machine has been helped by the fact that she is the city's first female mayor. With her pastel suits, trademark flower pins and charisma to spare, the black Democrat has charmed not just local businesspeople but even growly white conservatives. What will Georgia's battered Democrats do with their new star? In theory, Ms Franklin could follow in the path of Ed Rendell, the highly praised mayor of Philadelphia who went on to become governor of Pennsylvania. But Georgia has never had a black or female governor, and what looks like pragmatic centrism in Atlanta might seem socialist to some rural conservatives. Another idea would be to put her up against Saxby Chambliss, one of the state's two Republican senators, in 2008. There are not that many places for a pragmatist, however well dressed, to go in politics at the moment.