To counter you said Atlanta as a City was bigger than most states which is wildly inaccurate.Atlanta metro is 5,949,951, would make it the 20th most populous state ahead of Wisconsin at 5,822,434, inside the perimeter is just under 1 million ppl, which would put it at the 46th largest state.
The number you are using for Metro Atlanta Atlanta is based on census data that includes a large number of counties that nobody outside of that statical metric consider Metro Atlanta. That is generally recognized as:
Fulton,
DeKalb
Gwinnett
Cobb
Clayton,
Coweta,
Douglas,
Fayette
Henry
The larger point is that regardless of the number the Mayor of Atlanta runs a city within a country of those 9. So we can’t over reach on her sway over “Metro Atlanta” regardless of the metric used.