PolitiFact Georgia | Distance between Deal, Reed can be measured in steps

Serious question: did you use the elevators in the Capitol or the stairs? Does anyone think they can close the gap and get from Gov. Deal’s office to Mayor Reed’s in 300 or fewer steps?

“My office is about a 300-step walk to the governor’s office,” [Atlanta Mayor Kasim] Reed said. “But you would have thought previously that walk was a 10k.”

PolitiFact Georgia is always looking for an opportunity for a little fun and exercise. So we grabbed our pedometer and set out for a walk.

Not depending on our math alone, we got out a pedometer for a more accurate step count. We walked the path from Reed’s office in Atlanta City Hall to Deal’s office on the main floor of the Georgia State Capitol, and back again, twice.

Our calculations found that Reed was correct. The distance from the governor’s office to the first step outside City Hall was 300 steps. Throw in the distance from the outside City Hall steps to Reed’s actual office and the step count increases between 65 and 100 steps, depending on the route through the lobby, whether you take a short ramp or the few steps up to the main office level, and stride of the walker.

Reed’s overall point was that the political divide between he and Deal has closed. Based on their history of delivering economic development projects for the city and state, that statement is correct.

But the mayor is off just a bit on his distance claim if you take his statement literally.

We rated Reed’s claim Mostly True.

via PolitiFact Georgia | Distance between Deal, Reed can be measured in steps.