Buckhead-Backed Felicia Moore Blames TI for Scaring Voters With Threat of Closure of Strip Clubs, Crackdown on Nightlife. In the original photos, elicia Moore, Atlanta City Council president and mayoral candidate, shows off her voter sticker after casting her ballot Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021 in Atlanta during municipal elections. (AP Photo/Ben Gray) T.I. arrives at the Billboard Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Sunday, May 20, 2018, in Las Vegas. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore recently lost her bid to become the city’s next mayor in a run-off race against new Mayor-Elect Andre Dickens. Now the former candidate is blaming hip-hop artist and entrepreneur T.I. and Isaac Hayes III for her defeat.
According to Moore, T.I. and Hayes told a “salacious lie” and spread “misinformation” about her to sabotage her chances of victory. She spoke about her loss in an interview with TMZ.
“This Isaac Hayes – which somehow has some obsession with me – and now T.I., both of them went after me about that when I started to run for mayor,” Moore told TMZ. “They went after me about it before … this was a few months ago and they lied then, saying that I was saying I wanted to close all recording studios. The legislation would have never closed anything … it would only be for new ones … and T.I. puts out a very salacious lie, just point-blank lie and misinformation, saying that I wanted to close strip clubs. I’ve never even discussed strip clubs since the general election.”
Before the election, both men did post videos in opposition to Moore’s candidacy. In T.I.’s video, the first image was a screenshot of an article by MTO News with the headline “Woman running For Atlanta Mayor Promises To CLOSE ALL STRIP CLUBS!!!”
Hayes’ Instagram post was more pro-Dickens than anti-Moore. “You know what it is…. Andre Dickens for Mayor. #Atlanta get out and VOTE,” Hayes wrote under a promo ad featuring him for Dickens.
Hayes was more detailed in his opposition to Felicia Moore in an earlier Instagram post that has since been deleted, according to Rolling Out. “THIS is who’s trying to run for Mayor of #Atlanta? This person. A 30 year urban music industry capital that’s generated billions of revenue for thousands of people and she tried to kill the economy and culture cause of ‘Noise Complaints,'” Hayes wrote.
In the TMZ video, Moore said she felt Hayes has an “obsession” with tearing her down and T.I. should “stay out of politics” – a message which T.I. said is “eerily similar” to LeBron James critics who told the iconic basketball player to just shut up and dribble.
“It’s [an] ongoing stream of lies and information by Isaac Hayes III in particular. I think he has some obsession with tearing me down. I feel sorry for the karma he will receive in life,” Moore said. “And Mr. T.I. who I would have thought should’ve learned his lesson from jumping on me when I was running earlier because it got him in a fight with someone else that opened up the whole series of allegations that he has in front of him so he should learn to stay out of politics.”
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T.I. and Hayes have both publicly responded to Moore’s accusations. “Alexa play ‘Confessions’ by usher,” T.I. wrote in a caption on Instagram under a clip of Moore’s TMZ interview. “I feel threatened now… y’all watch my back outchea,” he added with a series of laughing and embarrassed emojis.
“How can she totally negate everything that happened? … If you’re saying you didn’t really plan to shut down the strip clubs. Whatever, that’s old news ma’am. It’s over,” T.I. said in a separate video he posted to Instagram. “What you did was, you lost sight of one thing. This culture, the creatives in this city, we run this town. We do. And the citizens of a city make the decisions of who should lead that city.”
“Just to be clear @mooreforatlanta lost waaaaay before Tuesday,” Hayes wrote in the caption of an Instagram post that showed the election results between Felicia Moore and Andre Dickens. “The voters in already spoken before any mention of strip clubs came to the conversation. The moment she opened her mouth about the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict and then retracted her post the election was over. #MooreProof.”
In an attempt to “set the record straight,” Hayes also made an appearance on Atlanta’s V103 radio station. “If two men can actually prevent one candidate from winning an entire election, that’s a big deal. If she can’t face the criticism of two individuals that caused her to lose an election, then you ain’t built for the job,” Hayes said.
He also said Moore was lying about her position on recording studios and in fact wanted to shut them down.
“When you have an issue with a recording studio in a community that’s existed primarily before a lot of the residents got there … you don’t collude with the community against the businesses that have been there before some of these residents got there. You bring both sides to the table and try to negotiate some sort of resolution to that,” Hayes said in the interview. “Secondly she’s lying because in her own words she said I want you to shut the business down.”
