Cabral Franklin, political strategist and son of former Mayor Shirley Franklin, has died

Morehouse grad played key yet quiet role in many local and state campaigns

Cabral Franklin, an experienced Atlanta political strategist and son of former Mayor Shirley Franklin, has died from complications of cancer. He was 41.
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?”My dear son passed away today surrounded by his family and friends,” the former mayor said in a statement. “He was deeply loved. I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers.”
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?”I have lost my best friend and the love of my life and the father of my daughters,” his wife Candice Coleman Franklin said in a statement. “We will miss him and cherish his memory always. He will be in in our hearts each and every day of our lives.”
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?Atlanta City Councilman Andre Dickens, a childhood friend and classmate of Franklin’s at Benjamin E. Mays High School, says the Morehouse College grad was a “dear friend” who “loved his family and friends — and we loved him. He was an astute businessman and consultant and will be missed greatly.”
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?Politics ran in Franklin’s blood. According to his bio on Franklin Communications LLC, the strategy firm where he served as managing partner, Franklin’s passion for politics came from hearing his mother, the future first woman mayor of Atlanta, and his father, David Franklin, an attorney and veteran political strategist who died in 2008, debate issues at home. Franklin’s godfather was Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor. His mother’s historic mayoral bid marked his first foray into helping to manage political campaigns, Dickens says, kicking off a career that included key yet quiet roles in big-name state and local campaigns.  
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?”He didn’t want to be in the front,” says Dickens, who leaned on Franklin for guidance in his 2013 victory over incumbent H. Lamar Willis. “He could just do.” 
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????According to his website bio, Franklin more recently served as the senior adviser for the Georgia Coordinated Campaign and produced black radio ads for Michelle Nunn’s U.S. Senate run and Jason Carter’s gubernatorial bid. In addition to working on Mayor Kasim Reed’s early campaigns, Franklin helped pass the charter school amendment and T-SPLOST outside metro Atlanta, Peach Pundit notes. He also worked on campaigns in Virginia, South Carolina, and, before he died, Mississippi.
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?”He knew math better than anybody I knew,” Dickens says about Franklin, who also held a master’s degree in finance from Georgia State University. “He was a numbers guy who did politics. He could do the marketing stuff, from the social and psychological standpoint. But he knew those numbers. He could take demographic data and voter data to a whole other level. i think he had a left and right brain.”
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?Franklin, who was not a smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Dickens says his friend went about battling the illness “very calmly. He went about work until he couldn’t work. He wanted to keep everything as normal as possible. He came to grips with it and still kept family first.” The councilman will remember him as “a friend that went first and went more than you could do for him. Without Cabral Franklin, more than 90 percent of Atlanta wouldn’t know who Andre Dickens was.”
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?Franklin is survived by his wife Candice, daughters Kaci Amanda Franklin and Kori Renee Anderson, his siblings Kai Franklin and Kali Franklin, and his mother. His body will be cremated. A memorial service is expected to be held over the weekend.
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