Son of Last White Mayor Enters N.O. Mayor's Race Against Nagin
- Thread starter QueEx
- Start date
QueEx said:
I'm sure there will be an effort to get ballots out to those misplaced by Katrina. My question would be, what does the voting laws say about this issue and how does the law of that city read for residents to vote if they have NO residence? If it hasn't been addressed, it damn well better be addressed right now. Because there are gonna be some hateful voters out there should this issue go to court and the court doesn't agree with displaced residents. We got a bad habit of sleeping on simple shit like this.
Crowded field? Who else is running QueEx?
-VG
VegasGuy said:
<font size="5"><center>Black Minister to Run for New Orleans Mayor</font size></center>
San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, February 17, 2006
02-17) 20:08 PST New Orleans (AP) --
An influential black pastor and frequent critic of Mayor Ray Nagin declared his candidacy for mayor Friday, saying Hurricane Katrina exposed the weaknesses of the administration.
"We have put up with the political foolishness for a long time, and the impact from poor leadership was not shown until the storm showed it," the Rev. Tom Watson III said to about 50 supporters on hand for the announcement.
Watson, 50, is the first black challenger to Nagin, who also is black. <u>Nine others</u>, all white, have said they plan to run in the April 22 election. Candidates will formally sign up March 1-3.
Watson said his campaign will work to engage voters who have been displaced and live in more than 40 states.
"We will go there," he said. "We will knock on doors, on trailers, on mobile homes. We will be on radio and TV and in print so that our voters will understand our message. So, get ready to pack your bags because we will be traveling the country."
___
On the Net:
www.tomwatsonformayor.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/02/17/national/a200837S17.DTL
<font size="4"><center>
"If you are a registered voter of Louisiana who has been displaced
as a result of Hurricane Katrina or Rita, you are still eligible to vote
in your home parish if you have not registered to vote in another
parish or state."</font size></center>
[frame]http://www.sec.state.la.us/elections/elections-index.htm[/frame]
"If you are a registered voter of Louisiana who has been displaced
as a result of Hurricane Katrina or Rita, you are still eligible to vote
in your home parish if you have not registered to vote in another
parish or state."</font size></center>
[frame]http://www.sec.state.la.us/elections/elections-index.htm[/frame]
Why wouldn't a white candidate have an excellent chance ???yureeka9 said:
- Given that a large percentage of New Orleanians were Black and poor;
- Given that a large percentage of the poor are typically renters -- and rental property in N.O. is as scarce as Black presidents in the U.S. White House;
- Given that a large percentage of the displaced were Black;
- Given that the Ninth Ward, among the hardest hit by the floods, was Black and are now mostly displaced
- Given that reconstruction, on the grand scale, is virtually nil
- Given that those most likely to have rebuilt, at this point, would be those with independent funds to do so (much of the damage claims covered by insurance are in the pending basket and that which has been paid may be in limbo if the affected area has not be authorized to rebuild -- I don't think that rebuilding has been authorized in the Ninth Ward)
- Given that a large percentage of the poor are typically renters -- and rental property in N.O. is as scarce as Black presidents in the U.S. White House;
- Given that a large percentage of the displaced were Black;
- Given that the Ninth Ward, among the hardest hit by the floods, was Black and are now mostly displaced
- Given that reconstruction, on the grand scale, is virtually nil
- Given that those most likely to have rebuilt, at this point, would be those with independent funds to do so (much of the damage claims covered by insurance are in the pending basket and that which has been paid may be in limbo if the affected area has not be authorized to rebuild -- I don't think that rebuilding has been authorized in the Ninth Ward)
What do you think ???
QueEx
`
I don't know if its all that damning, yet. I don't know what the racial makeup of N.O. really is, since Katrina (I was just thinking out loud above); and it would be interesting to know whether those displaced typically voted in the first place. I don't know if it matters who runs N.O. after the election, but personally, I would like to see a Black mayor do it -- and I would like to see such a mayor pull the city through in flying damn colours ... such that the recovery would be a model of "How To Do Shit Right". I believe that would make us all proud -- sort of a black self-validation (unfortunately, we are still proving ourselves).
QueEx
I don't know if its all that damning, yet. I don't know what the racial makeup of N.O. really is, since Katrina (I was just thinking out loud above); and it would be interesting to know whether those displaced typically voted in the first place. I don't know if it matters who runs N.O. after the election, but personally, I would like to see a Black mayor do it -- and I would like to see such a mayor pull the city through in flying damn colours ... such that the recovery would be a model of "How To Do Shit Right". I believe that would make us all proud -- sort of a black self-validation (unfortunately, we are still proving ourselves).
QueEx
This article seems to sum it up:
<font size="5":><center>Race could define mayor election</font size>
<font size="4">Nagin already facing roster of white rivals </font size></center>
Sunday, February 12, 2006
By Gordon Russell
and Frank Donze, Staff writers
The first New Orleans mayor's race after the horrors of Hurricane Katrina has an intriguing racial undercurrent: How will a black mayor elected with strong white support fare against numerous white challengers while much of the city's black electorate is displaced?
And in a city that has historically voted along racial lines -- but whose very future now hangs in the balance -- will candidates be able to persuade voters to look beyond race in casting their ballots?
The script that is ultimately written will hinge on how the electorate -- the segment living in New Orleans as well as the tens of thousands scattered across the nation -- judges Mayor Ray Nagin, the embattled incumbent who in many ways still sits in the eye of the storm.
Everything in New Orleans changed Aug. 29, not the least of which was Nagin's sunny prospects for re-election in a primary originally scheduled for Feb. 4. Instead, the election is now set for April 22, and instead of picking out a suit for his inaugural, Nagin is facing a fight for his political life.
In perhaps the most mind-boggling development of all, Nagin, who is black, must reckon with not one but two formidable white challengers: Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Nature Institute Chief Executive Officer Ron Forman. Such a scenario would have been hard to imagine last summer in a city that, until Katrina displaced two-thirds of its population, was nearly 70 percent black.
With Forman set to formally announce Tuesday and Landrieu about a week later, a half-dozen other contenders are already on the stump. The lineup is mainly composed of political newcomers, save for former at-large City Councilwoman Peggy Wilson. Other announced challengers are radio personality James Arey, lawyer Virginia Boulet, investment banker Mike Hammer, community activist and former state Rep. Leo Watermeier and lawyer Bill Wessel.
The wide-open field may test a couple of the bedrock rules of New Orleans politics. One is that incumbent mayors, no matter how unpopular, usually are re-elected. The second is that New Orleans mayoral elections are inevitably racially polarizing.
The radical makeover of the mayor's election owes to two main factors. One is that Katrina and its aftermath raised questions about Nagin's leadership among voters of all classes and races. More importantly, perhaps, the storm disrupted the city's traditional electoral balance, in which black candidates held a virtual monopoly on major offices, with white elected officials relegated to swing-vote status.
Though exact numbers are impossible to come by, demographers and political analysts agree the Katrina diaspora is disproportionately black, loosening the firm grip that black voters had on city politics before the hurricane. As evidence of that shift, Nagin's eight announced challengers are white.
In some ways, it could be argued that the city's electorate resembles the New Orleans of 1978, when there were nearly equal numbers of white and black voters. Facing a better-known white opponent, Dutch Morial became the city's first black mayor that year by sweeping the black vote and running surprisingly well in the white community with a crossover total of nearly 20 percent.
After his historic victory, Morial said the results were "indicative of the kind of city New Orleans is: a city where leadership and ability count for more than race."
Four years later, the optimism of that sentiment washed away, as many of the white voters who once supported Morial defected to his lesser-known white opponent, leaving Morial embittered during his second term about white New Orleanians' ability to ignore race.
More crossover voting?
No one thinks race will cease to be a factor influencing voting decisions in New Orleans this year. But it could well be that the racial calculus goes deeper than skin color in a way that hasn't been seen since the 1978 election. In other words, white voters may not all flock to white candidates, and black voters may not rally behind black entrants.
"Among the opportunities the city has to experience here is what happens when people pull away from that dynamic," said Keith Woods, dean of the nonprofit Poynter Institute and a former city editor at The Times-Picayune. "The racial politics have been this way since toward the end of white dominance (of office-holding) and through the last few decades of black dominance. The opportunity here is to see a different side of politics than the city has seen in recent years."
At a minimum, a higher level of crossover voting than usual is expected: Nagin is likely to hang on to at least part of his once-formidable white support, analysts said. Conversely, they expect Landrieu to continue his family's tradition of drawing substantial support from black voters, who as a group already were lukewarm on Nagin. And Forman, though drafted by the city's white Uptown establishment, said he plans to make a concerted effort to appeal to black voters by putting together a diverse team, including some who would commit to serving in his administration.
The flip side: With analysts guessing that the numbers of black and white voters will be about equal -- and with some displaced African-Americans in particular thinking there's a move afoot to keep them out of town -- the contest could take on a bluntly racial tone. It will depend on whether candidates genuinely try to forge coalitions, or whether they pander to their respective bases.
The bonds shared by some of the key contenders could help keep things civil -- or, as occurs sometimes when friendships go south, make them nastier.
Forman, for instance, calls both Landrieu and Nagin close friends. He has called former Mayor Moon Landrieu, Mitch Landrieu's father, his political mentor, recalling a speech the elder Landrieu gave at Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business in which he challenged young candidates for master's degrees to consider public service.
Thickening the plot, Forman said he and Mitch Landrieu met numerous times in recent months to encourage one another to run for mayor. The operating assumption in most of these conversations was that one or the other might, not both. But when Landrieu recently announced his intention to run, Forman said he couldn't let go of the idea.
Meanwhile, Sally Forman, Ron Forman's wife, served as Nagin's communications director until this week, when she resigned after her husband declared his intention to run. Ron Forman served on Nagin's transition team four years ago.
Black vote to lift Nagin?
The key to the election riddle hangs on a host of questions that are far from being answered.
For example: Will the white voters who once cheered on Nagin cast him aside?
Or, will black voters, many of whom never warmed to the mayor, gravitate to him now that there's a real possibility the top city job could go to a white candidate for the first time since Moon Landrieu left City Hall 28 years ago?
Though no polling data are available, speculation is widespread that Nagin will be hard-pressed to surpass the estimated 35 percent to 40 percent of the black vote he got in 2002.
Like many political insiders, veteran consultant Ron Nabonne agrees that Nagin must have a strong showing among black voters to have a chance to win re-election.
But Nabonne said Nagin could benefit from a growing perception among some segments of the black community that New Orleans' white establishment is trying to use Katrina to roll back decades of progress by African-Americans.
"There is a sentiment out there that there is a power grab going on to disenfranchise blacks, that this is the second (post) Reconstruction period," Nabonne said, referring to post-Civil War developments that saw freed slaves acquire the right to vote and to own property, only to see those historic advances obliterated by state laws and policies implementing poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and other discriminatory practices.
"All these things are reverberating throughout the community," he said. "And people who read history see a lot of similarities in all of this."
The fundamental question is: Can a black mayor who is not widely popular among black voters get the bulk of the black vote?
"The answer is yes," Nabonne said, "if blacks feel there are issues in play that are bigger than the mayor who happens to be in office. They could say, 'It's not about Ray.' "
Woods sees that possibility too, although he warns against reading pure racial loyalty into anyone's vote.
"There will be black people who will vote for Nagin who didn't vote for him before and who wouldn't be voting for him this time if it were not for the feeling that their city is being taken away," Woods said.
Constable Lambert Boissiere Jr., a former city councilman and state senator who ran for mayor in 1994, said there also is a degree of anxiety among black voters that putting a white mayor in office could thwart efforts to elect black candidates to other local posts.
"It's not often that you see an elected official win without the help of the mayor," Boissiere said. "We want to see continued support for some of the gains we've made.
"No one is saying that the mayor's office has to be held by an African-American. But you want to have some assurance that the mayor will have an open mind to supporting African-American candidates because that's the seat that controls so much financial support in this city."
The absentee factor
Even if black voters warm up to Nagin, questions remain about how many will vote, particularly among the tens of thousands spread across the country.
Though there's broad agreement among analysts that turnout among voters back in the city will be high, perhaps record-setting, there's less consensus about how many of the displaced will vote.
One school of thought holds that absentee voting will be kept relatively low by a couple of factors: Some evacuees have settled in other cities and have little intention, and in some cases little ability, to return to New Orleans and thus scant interest in the election. Meanwhile, those inclined to come back may be discouraged by the two-step process the law now prescribes: Absentee voters must first receive a request for a ballot, mail that in, wait for the ballot and then remember to send it in.
"With these obstacles to voting, if you're away, you have to be very motivated," said Susan Howell, a University of New Orleans political science professor. "The more barriers you put up, the more absentee voting is going to be limited to higher socioeconomic groups. For poorer people, it will be more difficult for them to surmount the obstacles."
But there's another line of thinking too: Many displaced New Orleanians will find other ways to vote. As usual, the election will be on a Saturday, and untold hundreds -- or perhaps thousands -- of the displaced already make regular trips to the city on weekends. Those people, whatever their numbers, are likely voters.
The exact manner in which the displaced will vote is still something of a moving target, but one that will have a huge effect on the election.
There is talk of mass efforts to mobilize and bus voters from major evacuee hubs -- Houston, Baton Rouge, Atlanta, Dallas -- to New Orleans. The Legislature, meanwhile, is considering plans to set up New Orleans polling places in various locations around the state and possibly in cities outside Louisiana.
How those efforts will play out is unclear, but observers generally agree that costs may be prohibitive for candidates to reach far-flung voters because the media markets in Texas and Atlanta are some of the nation's most expensive. Those efforts will carry the risk of a low return on the dollar as well.
"I don't see a huge turnout of people who aren't here," said Ed Renwick, director of Loyola University's Institute of Politics. "Maybe 25 percent, or a third."
Well-financed incumbent
In part because of the wide dispersal of voters, money will be perhaps more important than ever in the effort to round up votes.
Though Nagin appears to have fallen out of favor with many of the city's big-money players, he already has $1.3 million in his war chest -- much of it from those same people -- and plans to conduct another fund-raiser soon. With the picture still fuzzy, some contractors who rely on City Hall for business may be forced to cover their bets and re-up for Nagin.
Also working in Nagin's favor is his universal name recognition, a celebrity that has only increased in Katrina's aftermath.
When it comes to fund raising, thus far only Landrieu and Forman appear capable of playing in Nagin's league.
Forman, who has long-standing ties with well-heeled patrons of the Audubon Institute, claims to have lined up commitments for $1.6 million with little effort. Landrieu, a former state legislator, has statewide contacts as a result of his run for lieutenant governor and, with his sister's help, is expected to tap into the national Democratic Party fund-raising apparatus.
Black challenger likely
Some theorize that the necessity of money -- and the difficulty of raising it in a field dotted with proven fund-raisers -- explains the lack thus far of a black challenger to Nagin.
That could well change. It's possible -- and some observers say likely -- that another credible black candidate will get into the race by the time qualifying closes on March 3, or much sooner.
The Rev. Tom Watson, a powerful black pastor who has been critical of Nagin, said Friday that he is "90 percent" sure he will run and will probably decide by Monday. Watson said much of his campaigning, should he run, will be done in cities with high numbers of evacuees. Others could follow.
Given Nagin's difficulties in wooing black voters in the past -- about 60 percent of the black vote either backed his runoff opponent, Richard Pennington, or stayed home four years ago -- even a cash-poor but well-known black candidate could well siphon a chunk of the black vote from him.
That would be particularly true if that candidate made a blunt appeal to black voters by questioning Nagin's Democratic Party loyalty, reminding voters, for instance, of his endorsement of Republican Bobby Jindal in the 2003 governor's race.
But should the current crop hold, and should the old patterns assert themselves, Nagin, as the only black candidate, would seem assured of a large slice of the black vote. That would make him a near-lock to make the May 20 runoff and a strong contender for re-election.
In what would be a first in New Orleans politics, Nagin also could lose an appreciable chunk of the black vote to white candidates. According to some analysts, there is a sizable element of the African-American electorate whose first priority is to vote against Nagin, whether or not the ultimate recipient of the vote is white or black.
Among white candidates, the likeliest magnet for black votes would be Landrieu. His father was the first New Orleans mayor to involve black people in city government in a substantive way, and both he and his sister, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, have shown an ability to attract widespread black support.
"The Landrieus have never done particularly well with white voters," Renwick said. "It's been largely support from the black community that has allowed them to win."
Meanwhile, Forman said he will make a serious play for black votes, though he'll probably have to work harder to persuade black voters that he's their candidate than will Landrieu.
"I would characterize (Forman's) base as fairly small and something of a silk-stocking base," Howell said. "He's clearly the superior fund-raiser, and he would be favored by many elements of the business community. But he also has sort of an aristocratic air that would not serve him well."
Howell said Forman's pledge to introduce prominent African-Americans as members of his proposed management team may help him beat back that image, one that Forman himself recognizes he must overcome.
Rebuilding plan an issue
A corollary to the fascinating racial ballet that is likely to imbue the campaign will be the rebuilding plan crafted by Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission: a plan whose reception also has tended to cleave along racial lines.
The plan, which has been controversial largely because of its call to reduce the city's footprint, seems likely to serve as the centerpiece issue around which the campaign will revolve. The plan drew rebukes from many black leaders and residents, in part because black sections of town were more apt to flood than white ones.
Nagin has scheduled several meetings to receive more feedback on certain aspects of the plan, and he already has killed its most controversial element: to enact a moratorium on building permits in flooded areas.
In the next two weeks, Nagin has said he will tweak the plan and forward it to the City Council, the City Planning Commission and the state for approval. This week Nagin said he supports most of its major elements, although he disagrees with its proposed use of eminent domain to buy out homeowners in the most shattered areas.
Meanwhile, Mitch Landrieu has said little publicly about the plan, while other candidates, including Peggy Wilson, have advanced their own rebuilding plans that do not use the Nagin plan as a touchstone.
Forman said this week that he will essentially adopt the plan, subject to minor revisions, as his blueprint for rebuilding. He'll attempt to distance himself from Nagin by positioning himself as the candidate best-suited to implement the plan.
Nagin: a new coalition
Nagin's response to the shifting sands of New Orleans' fractured political landscape may well dictate the course the election takes, but it's unclear how the mayor will adjust.
It seems likely that, to win, he'll have to assemble a different coalition than the one that carried him to victory four years ago.
That's OK with him, Nagin said, adding he has learned that political constituencies are "fluid." "There are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies," he said.
He has mused aloud about the racial implications of the suddenly crowded field of white candidates, saying he may try to tap into the fear and anger some black New Orleanians are expressing.
"It blows my mind that I would be sitting here as an African-American mayor facing, what is it, eight white candidates, at a time when we're in crisis, we're trying to recover and a significant portion of the African-American voting base is spread out all over the country," he said. "I think it's a power play of sorts. I think it's coordinated, and I think it's not what the city needs right now."
At the same time, Nagin said he has no plans to rewrite his message to target a different audience than the one that elected him last time. He prefers to view his constituency in economic rather than racial terms, saying he won the 2002 election because he had broad support from middle- and upper-income New Orleanians of all races. Even if the big-money crowd has abandoned him, most of the rest are still there, he said.
"I won the election based upon economics," he said. "We had an economic coalition. Anyone who earned $35,000 or $40,000 or above, we dominated: black, white, Asian, Hispanic. I think that coalition is still out there and available, and we're going to dominate it again."
. . . . . . .
Gordon Russell can be reached at grussell@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3347. Frank Donze can be reached at fdonze@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3328.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1139731591155110.xml
<font size="5":><center>Race could define mayor election</font size>
<font size="4">Nagin already facing roster of white rivals </font size></center>
Sunday, February 12, 2006
By Gordon Russell
and Frank Donze, Staff writers
The first New Orleans mayor's race after the horrors of Hurricane Katrina has an intriguing racial undercurrent: How will a black mayor elected with strong white support fare against numerous white challengers while much of the city's black electorate is displaced?
And in a city that has historically voted along racial lines -- but whose very future now hangs in the balance -- will candidates be able to persuade voters to look beyond race in casting their ballots?
The script that is ultimately written will hinge on how the electorate -- the segment living in New Orleans as well as the tens of thousands scattered across the nation -- judges Mayor Ray Nagin, the embattled incumbent who in many ways still sits in the eye of the storm.
Everything in New Orleans changed Aug. 29, not the least of which was Nagin's sunny prospects for re-election in a primary originally scheduled for Feb. 4. Instead, the election is now set for April 22, and instead of picking out a suit for his inaugural, Nagin is facing a fight for his political life.
In perhaps the most mind-boggling development of all, Nagin, who is black, must reckon with not one but two formidable white challengers: Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Nature Institute Chief Executive Officer Ron Forman. Such a scenario would have been hard to imagine last summer in a city that, until Katrina displaced two-thirds of its population, was nearly 70 percent black.
With Forman set to formally announce Tuesday and Landrieu about a week later, a half-dozen other contenders are already on the stump. The lineup is mainly composed of political newcomers, save for former at-large City Councilwoman Peggy Wilson. Other announced challengers are radio personality James Arey, lawyer Virginia Boulet, investment banker Mike Hammer, community activist and former state Rep. Leo Watermeier and lawyer Bill Wessel.
The wide-open field may test a couple of the bedrock rules of New Orleans politics. One is that incumbent mayors, no matter how unpopular, usually are re-elected. The second is that New Orleans mayoral elections are inevitably racially polarizing.
The radical makeover of the mayor's election owes to two main factors. One is that Katrina and its aftermath raised questions about Nagin's leadership among voters of all classes and races. More importantly, perhaps, the storm disrupted the city's traditional electoral balance, in which black candidates held a virtual monopoly on major offices, with white elected officials relegated to swing-vote status.
Though exact numbers are impossible to come by, demographers and political analysts agree the Katrina diaspora is disproportionately black, loosening the firm grip that black voters had on city politics before the hurricane. As evidence of that shift, Nagin's eight announced challengers are white.
In some ways, it could be argued that the city's electorate resembles the New Orleans of 1978, when there were nearly equal numbers of white and black voters. Facing a better-known white opponent, Dutch Morial became the city's first black mayor that year by sweeping the black vote and running surprisingly well in the white community with a crossover total of nearly 20 percent.
After his historic victory, Morial said the results were "indicative of the kind of city New Orleans is: a city where leadership and ability count for more than race."
Four years later, the optimism of that sentiment washed away, as many of the white voters who once supported Morial defected to his lesser-known white opponent, leaving Morial embittered during his second term about white New Orleanians' ability to ignore race.
More crossover voting?
No one thinks race will cease to be a factor influencing voting decisions in New Orleans this year. But it could well be that the racial calculus goes deeper than skin color in a way that hasn't been seen since the 1978 election. In other words, white voters may not all flock to white candidates, and black voters may not rally behind black entrants.
"Among the opportunities the city has to experience here is what happens when people pull away from that dynamic," said Keith Woods, dean of the nonprofit Poynter Institute and a former city editor at The Times-Picayune. "The racial politics have been this way since toward the end of white dominance (of office-holding) and through the last few decades of black dominance. The opportunity here is to see a different side of politics than the city has seen in recent years."
At a minimum, a higher level of crossover voting than usual is expected: Nagin is likely to hang on to at least part of his once-formidable white support, analysts said. Conversely, they expect Landrieu to continue his family's tradition of drawing substantial support from black voters, who as a group already were lukewarm on Nagin. And Forman, though drafted by the city's white Uptown establishment, said he plans to make a concerted effort to appeal to black voters by putting together a diverse team, including some who would commit to serving in his administration.
The flip side: With analysts guessing that the numbers of black and white voters will be about equal -- and with some displaced African-Americans in particular thinking there's a move afoot to keep them out of town -- the contest could take on a bluntly racial tone. It will depend on whether candidates genuinely try to forge coalitions, or whether they pander to their respective bases.
The bonds shared by some of the key contenders could help keep things civil -- or, as occurs sometimes when friendships go south, make them nastier.
Forman, for instance, calls both Landrieu and Nagin close friends. He has called former Mayor Moon Landrieu, Mitch Landrieu's father, his political mentor, recalling a speech the elder Landrieu gave at Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business in which he challenged young candidates for master's degrees to consider public service.
Thickening the plot, Forman said he and Mitch Landrieu met numerous times in recent months to encourage one another to run for mayor. The operating assumption in most of these conversations was that one or the other might, not both. But when Landrieu recently announced his intention to run, Forman said he couldn't let go of the idea.
Meanwhile, Sally Forman, Ron Forman's wife, served as Nagin's communications director until this week, when she resigned after her husband declared his intention to run. Ron Forman served on Nagin's transition team four years ago.
Black vote to lift Nagin?
The key to the election riddle hangs on a host of questions that are far from being answered.
For example: Will the white voters who once cheered on Nagin cast him aside?
Or, will black voters, many of whom never warmed to the mayor, gravitate to him now that there's a real possibility the top city job could go to a white candidate for the first time since Moon Landrieu left City Hall 28 years ago?
Though no polling data are available, speculation is widespread that Nagin will be hard-pressed to surpass the estimated 35 percent to 40 percent of the black vote he got in 2002.
Like many political insiders, veteran consultant Ron Nabonne agrees that Nagin must have a strong showing among black voters to have a chance to win re-election.
But Nabonne said Nagin could benefit from a growing perception among some segments of the black community that New Orleans' white establishment is trying to use Katrina to roll back decades of progress by African-Americans.
"There is a sentiment out there that there is a power grab going on to disenfranchise blacks, that this is the second (post) Reconstruction period," Nabonne said, referring to post-Civil War developments that saw freed slaves acquire the right to vote and to own property, only to see those historic advances obliterated by state laws and policies implementing poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and other discriminatory practices.
"All these things are reverberating throughout the community," he said. "And people who read history see a lot of similarities in all of this."
The fundamental question is: Can a black mayor who is not widely popular among black voters get the bulk of the black vote?
"The answer is yes," Nabonne said, "if blacks feel there are issues in play that are bigger than the mayor who happens to be in office. They could say, 'It's not about Ray.' "
Woods sees that possibility too, although he warns against reading pure racial loyalty into anyone's vote.
"There will be black people who will vote for Nagin who didn't vote for him before and who wouldn't be voting for him this time if it were not for the feeling that their city is being taken away," Woods said.
Constable Lambert Boissiere Jr., a former city councilman and state senator who ran for mayor in 1994, said there also is a degree of anxiety among black voters that putting a white mayor in office could thwart efforts to elect black candidates to other local posts.
"It's not often that you see an elected official win without the help of the mayor," Boissiere said. "We want to see continued support for some of the gains we've made.
"No one is saying that the mayor's office has to be held by an African-American. But you want to have some assurance that the mayor will have an open mind to supporting African-American candidates because that's the seat that controls so much financial support in this city."
The absentee factor
Even if black voters warm up to Nagin, questions remain about how many will vote, particularly among the tens of thousands spread across the country.
Though there's broad agreement among analysts that turnout among voters back in the city will be high, perhaps record-setting, there's less consensus about how many of the displaced will vote.
One school of thought holds that absentee voting will be kept relatively low by a couple of factors: Some evacuees have settled in other cities and have little intention, and in some cases little ability, to return to New Orleans and thus scant interest in the election. Meanwhile, those inclined to come back may be discouraged by the two-step process the law now prescribes: Absentee voters must first receive a request for a ballot, mail that in, wait for the ballot and then remember to send it in.
"With these obstacles to voting, if you're away, you have to be very motivated," said Susan Howell, a University of New Orleans political science professor. "The more barriers you put up, the more absentee voting is going to be limited to higher socioeconomic groups. For poorer people, it will be more difficult for them to surmount the obstacles."
But there's another line of thinking too: Many displaced New Orleanians will find other ways to vote. As usual, the election will be on a Saturday, and untold hundreds -- or perhaps thousands -- of the displaced already make regular trips to the city on weekends. Those people, whatever their numbers, are likely voters.
The exact manner in which the displaced will vote is still something of a moving target, but one that will have a huge effect on the election.
There is talk of mass efforts to mobilize and bus voters from major evacuee hubs -- Houston, Baton Rouge, Atlanta, Dallas -- to New Orleans. The Legislature, meanwhile, is considering plans to set up New Orleans polling places in various locations around the state and possibly in cities outside Louisiana.
How those efforts will play out is unclear, but observers generally agree that costs may be prohibitive for candidates to reach far-flung voters because the media markets in Texas and Atlanta are some of the nation's most expensive. Those efforts will carry the risk of a low return on the dollar as well.
"I don't see a huge turnout of people who aren't here," said Ed Renwick, director of Loyola University's Institute of Politics. "Maybe 25 percent, or a third."
Well-financed incumbent
In part because of the wide dispersal of voters, money will be perhaps more important than ever in the effort to round up votes.
Though Nagin appears to have fallen out of favor with many of the city's big-money players, he already has $1.3 million in his war chest -- much of it from those same people -- and plans to conduct another fund-raiser soon. With the picture still fuzzy, some contractors who rely on City Hall for business may be forced to cover their bets and re-up for Nagin.
Also working in Nagin's favor is his universal name recognition, a celebrity that has only increased in Katrina's aftermath.
When it comes to fund raising, thus far only Landrieu and Forman appear capable of playing in Nagin's league.
Forman, who has long-standing ties with well-heeled patrons of the Audubon Institute, claims to have lined up commitments for $1.6 million with little effort. Landrieu, a former state legislator, has statewide contacts as a result of his run for lieutenant governor and, with his sister's help, is expected to tap into the national Democratic Party fund-raising apparatus.
Black challenger likely
Some theorize that the necessity of money -- and the difficulty of raising it in a field dotted with proven fund-raisers -- explains the lack thus far of a black challenger to Nagin.
That could well change. It's possible -- and some observers say likely -- that another credible black candidate will get into the race by the time qualifying closes on March 3, or much sooner.
The Rev. Tom Watson, a powerful black pastor who has been critical of Nagin, said Friday that he is "90 percent" sure he will run and will probably decide by Monday. Watson said much of his campaigning, should he run, will be done in cities with high numbers of evacuees. Others could follow.
Given Nagin's difficulties in wooing black voters in the past -- about 60 percent of the black vote either backed his runoff opponent, Richard Pennington, or stayed home four years ago -- even a cash-poor but well-known black candidate could well siphon a chunk of the black vote from him.
That would be particularly true if that candidate made a blunt appeal to black voters by questioning Nagin's Democratic Party loyalty, reminding voters, for instance, of his endorsement of Republican Bobby Jindal in the 2003 governor's race.
But should the current crop hold, and should the old patterns assert themselves, Nagin, as the only black candidate, would seem assured of a large slice of the black vote. That would make him a near-lock to make the May 20 runoff and a strong contender for re-election.
In what would be a first in New Orleans politics, Nagin also could lose an appreciable chunk of the black vote to white candidates. According to some analysts, there is a sizable element of the African-American electorate whose first priority is to vote against Nagin, whether or not the ultimate recipient of the vote is white or black.
Among white candidates, the likeliest magnet for black votes would be Landrieu. His father was the first New Orleans mayor to involve black people in city government in a substantive way, and both he and his sister, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, have shown an ability to attract widespread black support.
"The Landrieus have never done particularly well with white voters," Renwick said. "It's been largely support from the black community that has allowed them to win."
Meanwhile, Forman said he will make a serious play for black votes, though he'll probably have to work harder to persuade black voters that he's their candidate than will Landrieu.
"I would characterize (Forman's) base as fairly small and something of a silk-stocking base," Howell said. "He's clearly the superior fund-raiser, and he would be favored by many elements of the business community. But he also has sort of an aristocratic air that would not serve him well."
Howell said Forman's pledge to introduce prominent African-Americans as members of his proposed management team may help him beat back that image, one that Forman himself recognizes he must overcome.
Rebuilding plan an issue
A corollary to the fascinating racial ballet that is likely to imbue the campaign will be the rebuilding plan crafted by Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission: a plan whose reception also has tended to cleave along racial lines.
The plan, which has been controversial largely because of its call to reduce the city's footprint, seems likely to serve as the centerpiece issue around which the campaign will revolve. The plan drew rebukes from many black leaders and residents, in part because black sections of town were more apt to flood than white ones.
Nagin has scheduled several meetings to receive more feedback on certain aspects of the plan, and he already has killed its most controversial element: to enact a moratorium on building permits in flooded areas.
In the next two weeks, Nagin has said he will tweak the plan and forward it to the City Council, the City Planning Commission and the state for approval. This week Nagin said he supports most of its major elements, although he disagrees with its proposed use of eminent domain to buy out homeowners in the most shattered areas.
Meanwhile, Mitch Landrieu has said little publicly about the plan, while other candidates, including Peggy Wilson, have advanced their own rebuilding plans that do not use the Nagin plan as a touchstone.
Forman said this week that he will essentially adopt the plan, subject to minor revisions, as his blueprint for rebuilding. He'll attempt to distance himself from Nagin by positioning himself as the candidate best-suited to implement the plan.
Nagin: a new coalition
Nagin's response to the shifting sands of New Orleans' fractured political landscape may well dictate the course the election takes, but it's unclear how the mayor will adjust.
It seems likely that, to win, he'll have to assemble a different coalition than the one that carried him to victory four years ago.
That's OK with him, Nagin said, adding he has learned that political constituencies are "fluid." "There are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies," he said.
He has mused aloud about the racial implications of the suddenly crowded field of white candidates, saying he may try to tap into the fear and anger some black New Orleanians are expressing.
"It blows my mind that I would be sitting here as an African-American mayor facing, what is it, eight white candidates, at a time when we're in crisis, we're trying to recover and a significant portion of the African-American voting base is spread out all over the country," he said. "I think it's a power play of sorts. I think it's coordinated, and I think it's not what the city needs right now."
At the same time, Nagin said he has no plans to rewrite his message to target a different audience than the one that elected him last time. He prefers to view his constituency in economic rather than racial terms, saying he won the 2002 election because he had broad support from middle- and upper-income New Orleanians of all races. Even if the big-money crowd has abandoned him, most of the rest are still there, he said.
"I won the election based upon economics," he said. "We had an economic coalition. Anyone who earned $35,000 or $40,000 or above, we dominated: black, white, Asian, Hispanic. I think that coalition is still out there and available, and we're going to dominate it again."
. . . . . . .
Gordon Russell can be reached at grussell@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3347. Frank Donze can be reached at fdonze@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3328.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1139731591155110.xml
VegasGuy said:
Didn't a poll say nagin was second to Mitch Landrieu? (I'm not asking you I'm thinking to myself). Nagin got elected with mostly white votes, and even had the nickname Ray Reagan during the 2002 Mayor's Race with Richard Pennington. I'm not in New Orleans right now I would guess that black people dont have enough faith in Rev. Watson right now to put him in office and given the Landrieu family's reputation, I would guess people are split between Nagin and Landrieu, thats my opinion, from here in San Antonio, I wont get the full feel for it till I go back
<font size="5"><center>Poll has mixed news for N.O. mayor</font size>
<font size="4">ALSO: Some candidates still exiled;
Fahrenholtz not yet in that number; First mayoral forum set </font size></center>
Times Picayune
Thursday, March 02, 2006
By Bruce Eggler
Staff writer
The results of a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of New Orleans voters -- at least, those living here now -- released this week offered good and bad news for Mayor Ray Nagin and his chief challengers in the April 22 mayoral election.
A small majority of those polled, 54 percent, said they approved of the job Nagin did in responding to Hurricane Katrina, which ranked the mayor slightly ahead of the New Orleans Police Department, at 50 percent, but well ahead of Gov. Kathleen Blanco, at 33 percent, President Bush, at 23 percent, and the much-derided FEMA, at 22 percent.
But 43 percent said they disapproved of Nagin's Katrina performance, virtually the same as the 44 percent who said they will "definitely" not vote to re-elect him.
Negatives that high are bad news for an incumbent, although the poll shows Nagin still has an opportunity to win over voters. Nineteen percent of those polled said they will definitely vote for Nagin, and 31 percent said they "might consider" voting for him, indicating that he has a chance to win re-election.
The poll also questioned respondents about four of Nagin's leading challengers: Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, Audubon Nature Institute CEO Ron Forman, former City Councilwoman Peggy Wilson and the Rev. Tom Watson. Watson is black, and the others are white.
Of the four, Landrieu did the best, with 18 percent "definitely" voting for him, 45 percent willing to consider him and 29 percent definitely opposed. The racial breakdown of those numbers was fairly close in all categories, but with white voters giving Landrieu slightly stronger support.
Forman had 12 percent definite support, 43 percent potential support and 35 percent definitely opposed.
The numbers for Wilson and Watson were dismal: 7 percent definitely backing Wilson and 4 percent backing Watson, with more than 60 percent saying they would not consider voting for either of them.
The poll shows Nagin's support is considerably higher among black residents, with 59 percent saying they approved of how he handled Katrina. There was a falloff -- although not dramatic -- among white voters polled, with 47 percent giving approval to his handling of the crisis.
Among black respondents, 31 percent said they definitely will vote for Nagin, who is black, while 29 percent said they will not and 35 percent said they will consider voting for the mayor.
Among white voters, only 9 percent said they definitely will vote for Nagin, with 56 percent saying definitely not and 31 percent willing to consider his candidacy.
Four years ago Nagin won election with the support of most white voters and a sizable minority of black voters.
The big question, of course, is how reliable this poll, or any poll of the New Orleans electorate, can be when more than half the city's population is missing and no one knows what the relative participation rates among returned and still-displaced voters will be.
The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll was conducted by telephone Feb. 18-26 among 804 current city residents, 399 of them white and 311 of them black. The sampling error for general questions was plus or minus 4 percentage points, while results broken down by race had a sampling error of 6 percentage points.
The poll contacted voters by both land lines and cell phones, but it excluded anyone who answered no to the question, "Do you currently live within the city limits of New Orleans?" That means potential voters living as near as Metairie or as far away as Atlanta or Houston would have been excluded even if they answered local cell phone numbers.
Before Katrina, about two-thirds of the city's voters were black. It is generally thought the racial split of those still in town is much more even. If that is the case, excluding all displaced voters from the survey likely omitted a disproportionate number of black voters.
Though they were left out of the poll, the displaced will be able to vote, but how many will do so is a wide-open question. Displaced voters will be allowed to vote absentee by mail no matter where they are, or in person in advance at the registrar of voters offices in 10 other Louisiana parishes. They also can return to New Orleans on election day to cast their ballots.
. . . . . . .
ADDRESSING THE ISSUES: Three candidates who qualified Wednesday for the April 22 election listed current addresses outside New Orleans, meaning they might not have been able to participate in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
Among them were City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis, who said she is living in Harvey, and one of the challengers for her District E seat, William Willis, who listed a Terrytown address.
Louella Givens, who is running for clerk of Criminal District Court, said she is living in LaPlace.
It's possible that some other candidates listed New Orleans addresses they consider their permanent homes, even though they are now living elsewhere.
People displaced from New Orleans by Katrina can continue to vote and hold office in the city as long as they have not registered to vote in another parish or state.
. . . . . . .
NOT IN THE GAME: One candidate who did not qualify for mayor Wednesday was Orleans Parish School Board member Jimmy Fahrenholtz. At least one local TV station has continued to include Fahrenholtz among its list of mayoral contenders, but he has said in recent weeks that he did not intend to run.
. . . . . . .
READY TO RUMBLE: Voters won't have to wait long to see the mayoral contenders square off.
The Alliance for Good Government will sponsor the first candidate forum March 9 at 7 p.m. in the grand ballroom of the downtown Marriott Hotel on Canal Street.
If everyone shows up, a long table will be needed. Ten candidates qualified for mayor Wednesday, and several others have announced their intention to run.
. . . . . . .
Bruce Eggler can be reached at beggler@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3320.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/neworleans/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1141286219172740.xml
<font size="4">ALSO: Some candidates still exiled;
Fahrenholtz not yet in that number; First mayoral forum set </font size></center>
Times Picayune
Thursday, March 02, 2006
By Bruce Eggler
Staff writer
The results of a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of New Orleans voters -- at least, those living here now -- released this week offered good and bad news for Mayor Ray Nagin and his chief challengers in the April 22 mayoral election.
A small majority of those polled, 54 percent, said they approved of the job Nagin did in responding to Hurricane Katrina, which ranked the mayor slightly ahead of the New Orleans Police Department, at 50 percent, but well ahead of Gov. Kathleen Blanco, at 33 percent, President Bush, at 23 percent, and the much-derided FEMA, at 22 percent.
But 43 percent said they disapproved of Nagin's Katrina performance, virtually the same as the 44 percent who said they will "definitely" not vote to re-elect him.
Negatives that high are bad news for an incumbent, although the poll shows Nagin still has an opportunity to win over voters. Nineteen percent of those polled said they will definitely vote for Nagin, and 31 percent said they "might consider" voting for him, indicating that he has a chance to win re-election.
The poll also questioned respondents about four of Nagin's leading challengers: Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, Audubon Nature Institute CEO Ron Forman, former City Councilwoman Peggy Wilson and the Rev. Tom Watson. Watson is black, and the others are white.
Of the four, Landrieu did the best, with 18 percent "definitely" voting for him, 45 percent willing to consider him and 29 percent definitely opposed. The racial breakdown of those numbers was fairly close in all categories, but with white voters giving Landrieu slightly stronger support.
Forman had 12 percent definite support, 43 percent potential support and 35 percent definitely opposed.
The numbers for Wilson and Watson were dismal: 7 percent definitely backing Wilson and 4 percent backing Watson, with more than 60 percent saying they would not consider voting for either of them.
The poll shows Nagin's support is considerably higher among black residents, with 59 percent saying they approved of how he handled Katrina. There was a falloff -- although not dramatic -- among white voters polled, with 47 percent giving approval to his handling of the crisis.
Among black respondents, 31 percent said they definitely will vote for Nagin, who is black, while 29 percent said they will not and 35 percent said they will consider voting for the mayor.
Among white voters, only 9 percent said they definitely will vote for Nagin, with 56 percent saying definitely not and 31 percent willing to consider his candidacy.
Four years ago Nagin won election with the support of most white voters and a sizable minority of black voters.
The big question, of course, is how reliable this poll, or any poll of the New Orleans electorate, can be when more than half the city's population is missing and no one knows what the relative participation rates among returned and still-displaced voters will be.
The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll was conducted by telephone Feb. 18-26 among 804 current city residents, 399 of them white and 311 of them black. The sampling error for general questions was plus or minus 4 percentage points, while results broken down by race had a sampling error of 6 percentage points.
The poll contacted voters by both land lines and cell phones, but it excluded anyone who answered no to the question, "Do you currently live within the city limits of New Orleans?" That means potential voters living as near as Metairie or as far away as Atlanta or Houston would have been excluded even if they answered local cell phone numbers.
Before Katrina, about two-thirds of the city's voters were black. It is generally thought the racial split of those still in town is much more even. If that is the case, excluding all displaced voters from the survey likely omitted a disproportionate number of black voters.
Though they were left out of the poll, the displaced will be able to vote, but how many will do so is a wide-open question. Displaced voters will be allowed to vote absentee by mail no matter where they are, or in person in advance at the registrar of voters offices in 10 other Louisiana parishes. They also can return to New Orleans on election day to cast their ballots.
. . . . . . .
ADDRESSING THE ISSUES: Three candidates who qualified Wednesday for the April 22 election listed current addresses outside New Orleans, meaning they might not have been able to participate in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
Among them were City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis, who said she is living in Harvey, and one of the challengers for her District E seat, William Willis, who listed a Terrytown address.
Louella Givens, who is running for clerk of Criminal District Court, said she is living in LaPlace.
It's possible that some other candidates listed New Orleans addresses they consider their permanent homes, even though they are now living elsewhere.
People displaced from New Orleans by Katrina can continue to vote and hold office in the city as long as they have not registered to vote in another parish or state.
. . . . . . .
NOT IN THE GAME: One candidate who did not qualify for mayor Wednesday was Orleans Parish School Board member Jimmy Fahrenholtz. At least one local TV station has continued to include Fahrenholtz among its list of mayoral contenders, but he has said in recent weeks that he did not intend to run.
. . . . . . .
READY TO RUMBLE: Voters won't have to wait long to see the mayoral contenders square off.
The Alliance for Good Government will sponsor the first candidate forum March 9 at 7 p.m. in the grand ballroom of the downtown Marriott Hotel on Canal Street.
If everyone shows up, a long table will be needed. Ten candidates qualified for mayor Wednesday, and several others have announced their intention to run.
. . . . . . .
Bruce Eggler can be reached at beggler@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3320.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/neworleans/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1141286219172740.xml
the overall sentiment is between landrieu and nagin I am closer to Nagin personally but I have always supported the landrieu except for the mother so i will be paying close attention to the debates and more realistically and simply put whoever has the best plans for rebuilding wins
the most important thing to remember about new orleans politics and louisiana politics is that there is a LONG, STORIED, MUCH-PUBLICIZED HISTORY of GRAFT, CORRUPTION, BACK-ROOM, UNDER-THE-TABLE WHEELIN' & DEALIN...
PERIOD.
in louisiana, the money allocated to public projects, etc. NEVER gets there... all of the low down rotten ass politicians got their claws in the jar... ALL THE TIME.
if the US gov't sends billions to rebuild new orleans, i guarantee that the mob influence plus the rotten politicians are gonna get paid, paid, paid like they've never been paid before...
you guys just don't know...
the most beloved governor louisiana ever had was Edwin Edwards... a white guy from a poor family around Crowley, La. Edwards KNEW he was being tailed by the feds, knew he was being investigated and STILL ended-up getting busted leaving a mob/casino meeting WEARING A CASH BELT WITH $400,000 strapped to his ass...
the good folks of louisiana still love him though...
PERIOD.
in louisiana, the money allocated to public projects, etc. NEVER gets there... all of the low down rotten ass politicians got their claws in the jar... ALL THE TIME.
if the US gov't sends billions to rebuild new orleans, i guarantee that the mob influence plus the rotten politicians are gonna get paid, paid, paid like they've never been paid before...
you guys just don't know...
the most beloved governor louisiana ever had was Edwin Edwards... a white guy from a poor family around Crowley, La. Edwards KNEW he was being tailed by the feds, knew he was being investigated and STILL ended-up getting busted leaving a mob/casino meeting WEARING A CASH BELT WITH $400,000 strapped to his ass...
the good folks of louisiana still love him though...
Much of what you said about Edwin Edwards is true; he once said he wouldn't lose an election unless he was caught with "a live boy, or a dead woman in a compromising position." And, you're right again, literally, Louisiana politics has a LONG and stoic past -- dating back to Huey P. LONG.
I just have one problem with what you said, however, and that is the idea that they are all low down and rotten. I don't think that has been the case - any more than anywhere else -- and viewing politics, generally, from that angle is a hopeless pursuit in that I believe it breeds apathy more than activism. Just my 2.
QueEx
I just have one problem with what you said, however, and that is the idea that they are all low down and rotten. I don't think that has been the case - any more than anywhere else -- and viewing politics, generally, from that angle is a hopeless pursuit in that I believe it breeds apathy more than activism. Just my 2.
QueEx
<font size="5"><center>A Mayoral Free-for-All In Changed New Orleans</font size>
<font size="4">Incumbent Nagin Now Counts on Absentee Voters for Win</font size></center>
Washington Post
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 6, 2006; Page A03
NEW ORLEANS -- The mayoral race here, which got its official start last week, is presenting candidates with a daunting question of post-flood strategy: Who and where are the voters?
Although about half of New Orleans's residents have returned since Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of evacuees are still scattered across the country and eligible to cast ballots in the April 22 election, either by mail or at satellite polling places around the state.
But even more challenging in a city where racial allegiances -- real or imagined -- can determine political fates, is the question of who those voters will be.
Once dominated by a significant black majority, the city's demographics have taken a numerical shift toward whites, and the new, uncertain racial balance has given the contest a particularly unpredictable feel.
With credible white challengers to incumbent C. Ray Nagin (D) among a field of 24 candidates, and the looming possibility that the election will yield the first white mayor since 1978, even basic logistical questions regarding election dates and how to notify displaced voters have become bogged down with lawsuits and racial overtones.
"There is a strong sense in the black community that some in the white community are trying to pile it on," City Council President Oliver M. Thomas Jr. said last week. He predicted that anger will motivate many displaced voters to cast ballots, even if it means taking long bus trips back.
Meanwhile, the electorate's new geography is transforming the mayor's contest into a far-flung affair. Candidates are planning campaign stops and possibly even advertising in places as far away as Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Memphis and Jackson, Miss.
Nagin campaigned in Houston over the weekend, and supporters in Memphis were already arranging buses to send voters to New Orleans for the election next month, he said.
Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Ron Forman, chief executive of the Audubon Nature Institute, considered the two leading challengers to Nagin in a field of more than a dozen so far, likewise say they will divide their time between New Orleans and other cities where New Orleanians can be found. Nagin's leadership in the months after the hurricane is expected to be a key issue in the campaign.
Some analysts expect the best-funded campaigns will even run television ads in markets such as Houston, Atlanta and Baton Rouge, La.
Mail campaigns will be, at best, limited. Some candidates had hoped to use an address list of displaced people, maintained by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for mass mailings of campaign literature. But a court ruling blocked its release to candidates, citing privacy reasons.
"It's peculiar," Landrieu said of the diaspora of New Orleanians. "It's twisted a lot of people's heads. We're just going to have to figure out where we think we know the voters are."
"It's a nationwide campaign," Nagin said last week after filing papers.
But as formidable as the logistical challenges may be, it is the new racial balance in the city created by Hurricane Katrina that has lent the mayoral contest a particularly volatile character.
The racial fears and anger now coalescing around the election began to stir as far back as the flooding that left thousands of poor, black New Orleanians stranded for days inside the Louisiana Superdome -- and then got worse as authorities began to speak of New Orleans with a diminished black population.
In the weeks after the storm, Jimmy Reiss, a wealthy New Orleans businessman, angered many blacks with a comment in the Wall Street Journal: "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically."
Then Secretary Alphonso Jackson of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in a visit to Houston, told the Houston Chronicle that "New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again."
Some black leaders, such as Stephen Bradberry, a neighborhood organizer with ACORN in New Orleans, still refer to those remarks. ACORN (a community organization of low- and moderate-income families) and another group sued in federal court to compel the state to open out-of-state polling places for Katrina evacuees, most of whom are black. The court ruled against the idea.
Now those potential voters must travel long distances or perform a two-step mail-in process: They must first write to request a ballot and then send it in.
"It's almost so obvious that there's a concerted plan to make this a whiter city," Bradberry said. "You don't want to believe it because it would be too disturbing."
Thomas, of the council, and others also have faulted the state for not having polling sites outside of Louisiana.
"They had all kinds of excuses why that couldn't happen," Thomas said of the proposed out-of-state voting boxes. "But the Iraqi people voted. Why can't we do that for all of our voters?"
The mayoral election, originally scheduled for Feb. 4, had to be postponed because of hurricane damage. Then even the date chosen for the new election -- April 22 -- became, for some black leaders, a racial issue.
Some business and political leaders urged that the election be held as early as possible to keep the incumbents' terms from being extended without voter approval. But Bradberry and other activists said it should be delayed to give evacuees, many of them black, more time to move back to the city.
But it is in the cast of candidates, and in particular the altered standing of Nagin -- once viewed as the darling of white voters -- that the new demographics are having their most powerful repercussions.
In winning election four years ago, Nagin won large majorities among white voters. Then an event in the middle of his term revealed the distance between many black leaders and Nagin. A prominent black minister castigated him on a television show as a "white man in black skin." Nagin, said Bishop Paul Morton in the 2004 program, had let the city slip into an "apartheid state."
But Katrina has changed everything in New Orleans, including the political landscape.
"First, people said [Nagin] was too white," Thomas said. "Now they're saying he's too black."
This is partly due to Nagin's comments in January that God wants New Orleans to be a "chocolate city." But the appearance of credible white challengers to Nagin, raising the possibility that the new demographics might shift the mayor's office back to a white politician, has also changed attitudes.
Morton, once a strong Nagin critic, now finds himself concerned about the mayor's prospects against the white candidates.
"This mayor was really pro-white," he said. Now "they're turning on him so quick. I really have a problem with that. Why are they turning on him now when he was their man right before Katrina?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6030500884.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
<font size="4">Incumbent Nagin Now Counts on Absentee Voters for Win</font size></center>
Washington Post
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 6, 2006; Page A03
NEW ORLEANS -- The mayoral race here, which got its official start last week, is presenting candidates with a daunting question of post-flood strategy: Who and where are the voters?
Although about half of New Orleans's residents have returned since Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of evacuees are still scattered across the country and eligible to cast ballots in the April 22 election, either by mail or at satellite polling places around the state.
But even more challenging in a city where racial allegiances -- real or imagined -- can determine political fates, is the question of who those voters will be.
Once dominated by a significant black majority, the city's demographics have taken a numerical shift toward whites, and the new, uncertain racial balance has given the contest a particularly unpredictable feel.
With credible white challengers to incumbent C. Ray Nagin (D) among a field of 24 candidates, and the looming possibility that the election will yield the first white mayor since 1978, even basic logistical questions regarding election dates and how to notify displaced voters have become bogged down with lawsuits and racial overtones.
"There is a strong sense in the black community that some in the white community are trying to pile it on," City Council President Oliver M. Thomas Jr. said last week. He predicted that anger will motivate many displaced voters to cast ballots, even if it means taking long bus trips back.
Meanwhile, the electorate's new geography is transforming the mayor's contest into a far-flung affair. Candidates are planning campaign stops and possibly even advertising in places as far away as Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Memphis and Jackson, Miss.
Nagin campaigned in Houston over the weekend, and supporters in Memphis were already arranging buses to send voters to New Orleans for the election next month, he said.
Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Ron Forman, chief executive of the Audubon Nature Institute, considered the two leading challengers to Nagin in a field of more than a dozen so far, likewise say they will divide their time between New Orleans and other cities where New Orleanians can be found. Nagin's leadership in the months after the hurricane is expected to be a key issue in the campaign.
Some analysts expect the best-funded campaigns will even run television ads in markets such as Houston, Atlanta and Baton Rouge, La.
Mail campaigns will be, at best, limited. Some candidates had hoped to use an address list of displaced people, maintained by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for mass mailings of campaign literature. But a court ruling blocked its release to candidates, citing privacy reasons.
"It's peculiar," Landrieu said of the diaspora of New Orleanians. "It's twisted a lot of people's heads. We're just going to have to figure out where we think we know the voters are."
"It's a nationwide campaign," Nagin said last week after filing papers.
But as formidable as the logistical challenges may be, it is the new racial balance in the city created by Hurricane Katrina that has lent the mayoral contest a particularly volatile character.
The racial fears and anger now coalescing around the election began to stir as far back as the flooding that left thousands of poor, black New Orleanians stranded for days inside the Louisiana Superdome -- and then got worse as authorities began to speak of New Orleans with a diminished black population.
In the weeks after the storm, Jimmy Reiss, a wealthy New Orleans businessman, angered many blacks with a comment in the Wall Street Journal: "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically."
Then Secretary Alphonso Jackson of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in a visit to Houston, told the Houston Chronicle that "New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again."
Some black leaders, such as Stephen Bradberry, a neighborhood organizer with ACORN in New Orleans, still refer to those remarks. ACORN (a community organization of low- and moderate-income families) and another group sued in federal court to compel the state to open out-of-state polling places for Katrina evacuees, most of whom are black. The court ruled against the idea.
Now those potential voters must travel long distances or perform a two-step mail-in process: They must first write to request a ballot and then send it in.
"It's almost so obvious that there's a concerted plan to make this a whiter city," Bradberry said. "You don't want to believe it because it would be too disturbing."
Thomas, of the council, and others also have faulted the state for not having polling sites outside of Louisiana.
"They had all kinds of excuses why that couldn't happen," Thomas said of the proposed out-of-state voting boxes. "But the Iraqi people voted. Why can't we do that for all of our voters?"
The mayoral election, originally scheduled for Feb. 4, had to be postponed because of hurricane damage. Then even the date chosen for the new election -- April 22 -- became, for some black leaders, a racial issue.
Some business and political leaders urged that the election be held as early as possible to keep the incumbents' terms from being extended without voter approval. But Bradberry and other activists said it should be delayed to give evacuees, many of them black, more time to move back to the city.
But it is in the cast of candidates, and in particular the altered standing of Nagin -- once viewed as the darling of white voters -- that the new demographics are having their most powerful repercussions.
In winning election four years ago, Nagin won large majorities among white voters. Then an event in the middle of his term revealed the distance between many black leaders and Nagin. A prominent black minister castigated him on a television show as a "white man in black skin." Nagin, said Bishop Paul Morton in the 2004 program, had let the city slip into an "apartheid state."
But Katrina has changed everything in New Orleans, including the political landscape.
"First, people said [Nagin] was too white," Thomas said. "Now they're saying he's too black."
This is partly due to Nagin's comments in January that God wants New Orleans to be a "chocolate city." But the appearance of credible white challengers to Nagin, raising the possibility that the new demographics might shift the mayor's office back to a white politician, has also changed attitudes.
Morton, once a strong Nagin critic, now finds himself concerned about the mayor's prospects against the white candidates.
"This mayor was really pro-white," he said. Now "they're turning on him so quick. I really have a problem with that. Why are they turning on him now when he was their man right before Katrina?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6030500884.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
Here is another question and I'm only looking at shit realistically and since all politics are local, for those who were displaced from N.O., namely the areas we inhabited but are now settling in around the country, do you think those people actually give a damn about returning and could care less about voting in a N.O. mayor? Especially if the state they are currently living in is providing better for them than they had in N.O.?
My thinking is, people who are essentially wards of the state assistance could really give a damn about where the money is coming from so the loyalty would be to those that provide it best. Moreover, since all politics are local, democrat leaders now see those folk as a boost in their own political aspirations and will do what they can to keep them (happy).
-VG
My thinking is, people who are essentially wards of the state assistance could really give a damn about where the money is coming from so the loyalty would be to those that provide it best. Moreover, since all politics are local, democrat leaders now see those folk as a boost in their own political aspirations and will do what they can to keep them (happy).
-VG
Intersting point: whether those displaced really give a fuck about whats happening in New Orleans today. From news accounts and personal conversations with a "few" of those displaced, there is interest in the Mayor's race as well as interest in knowing when someone one will make some decisions about what they left -- that is, will rebuilding take place where they were displaced from (their particular neighborhoods/houses). In the Ninth Ward, for example, while many of those displaced were renters, there are Black homeowners displaced as well -- who have an ownership stake in the action.VegasGuy said:
As I understand the rules, displaced persons who have <u>not</u> registered to vote in another state are still considered residents of Louisiana and the cities and parishes they formerly resided in. Those who have registered to vote in another state, by law, have abandoned there Louisiana residency. Of course, there are others who didn't vote in Louisiana and who may not register in their present place of abode who consider themselves as residents of where ever they now reside -- but it will be up to them to decide to participate in the Mayor's race, as stakeholders, or not to participate, for whatever reason.
Who do/will those displaced by katrina blame ??? I wonder if they will start to separate the days leading up to the strom and the immediate aftermath on the one hand; and the months after the storm, on another.
There is enough blame to go around for what happened even in the immediate aftermath. But now, six months after the storm, there is still little direction on what is going to happen (no decisions rebuilding; where will these people live if and when federal assistance is ended -- and we've seen assistance ending and temporary trailers undistributed). I wonder if they are not looking to those in power at the federal level where promised funds not only to rebuild are being held up -- but even funds to look for the dead only showed up last week. Is it Democrats who are concerned about keeping them happy; or is it Republicans that have let them down who are concerned about their aspirations ???
QueEx
P.S.
I glossed over the residency issue. As a general rule, most states hold that residency means where one is and intends to remain. As evidence of intent to remain, whether one registers to vote in a new jurisdiction is objective evidence of an intent to remain. However, for those who have not registered elsewhere, its rather subjective. That is, remain until when or remain until what? -- If one says he intends to remain in say Houston until he knows whether he can rebuild or return to N.O. (no matter how long that decision may be in the short term), where is he a resident ??? - its in the mind of that person, unless, however, he/she does things that show the intent to remain, i.e., "I'm never going back, I live in Houston now", or buy a house in Houston, or move rest of family to Houston, or ....
QueEx
I glossed over the residency issue. As a general rule, most states hold that residency means where one is and intends to remain. As evidence of intent to remain, whether one registers to vote in a new jurisdiction is objective evidence of an intent to remain. However, for those who have not registered elsewhere, its rather subjective. That is, remain until when or remain until what? -- If one says he intends to remain in say Houston until he knows whether he can rebuild or return to N.O. (no matter how long that decision may be in the short term), where is he a resident ??? - its in the mind of that person, unless, however, he/she does things that show the intent to remain, i.e., "I'm never going back, I live in Houston now", or buy a house in Houston, or move rest of family to Houston, or ....
QueEx
VERY TRUE!!QueEx said:
Damn true point. That will get fleshed out in due course I'm sure. With the release of those two tapes, (one from Bush the other with Blanco) I'm sure both sides with be with the business of proving who screwed up worse.
Hmmmm. What say you on that question?
-VG
QueEx said:
I think at this point, 6 months down stream and shit still in the air almost as mush as it was on day 10, those in the affected area or directly affected by the destruction are starting to lay blame now -- not later. When shit happens, people want someone to respond (whether they have the duty to respond or not). Right now, with New Orleans being essentially broke, with reconstruction larger than the state's treasury; with misery being a day to day condition; and an appropriation having been made by Congress to deal with it all =-= I think every day that passes with little or nothing being done, people are laying that blame at the Administration's feet. At this point, they don't give 2 shits about fleshing out and due course ... LOL (not really laughing at people's misery). They want some action, some definitive action. Unfortunately, my experience with devastating hurricanes tell me that in the case of New Orleans (with such widespread and severe damage by the flooding), with so many decisions to be made and thought processes to be re-thought, moving quickly in this mess, ain't gonna happen.VegasGuy said:
QueEx said:
I think whoever comes along, whether associated with party politics or not, with what smells like a workable plan will fare well. Whoever that doesn't, is going to suck wind. Hence, as far as party politics is concerned, both have something to gain and both something to lose, both have to be concerned, and both, as usual, are posturing. That said, both will suck as much ass as possible. But the one that doesn't do it effectively ...VegasGuy said:
QueEx
<font size="5"><center>Displaced Voters
Make Wishes Known For New Orleans</font size><font size="4">
Primary Election for Mayor Is April 22</font size></center>
The Washington Post
By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; Page A03
HOUSTON -- Career educator Kemberly Samuels is not particularly partisan, but in recent weeks she has been giving her fellow New Orleanians some straight talk about politics.
The primary election for mayor of the Big Easy is April 22, and no matter how far the survivors of Hurricane Katrina have scattered, Samuels believes they must vote.
"Now's your time; now's your time to make your voice heard," Samuels said into a telephone inside a cramped, cluttered room in the offices of the group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. "You gonna make a difference. We want you to come out and vote. You gotta get off your butt and get out and do something. You just can't complain."
Election volunteers such as Samuels, along with Louisiana election officials, are working to energize the diaspora of hurricane survivors spread out from Baton Rouge to Boston. The volunteers have been working phone banks and making door-to-door visits. They've distributed absentee-ballot applications, voter-registration cards and information packets. And they've created Web sites with election information.
This week, Samuels and her compatriots in the Katrina Survivors Association of Houston, in conjunction with ACORN, are taking busloads of evacuees living in Texas, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi to early-voting sites in Louisiana. The goal is to deliver 4,000 votes, either by absentee ballot or in early voting -- especially from among moderate-to-low-income African American residents still unable to return to sections of the city that are uninhabitable.
"We're trying to make a statement that even if we're not back in New Orleans or Louisiana, New Orleans is still our home," said Dorothy Stukes, chairwoman of the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association. "We all want to come back home. We all want to be a part of the rebuilding and have a voice in selecting someone who wants us back, because there's a lot of people in New Orleans that's trying to keep us out."
Another Houston-based grass-roots group, the Metropolitan Organization, is continuing to work on its goal of signing up 10,000 absentee voters. Last weekend, it sponsored an "accountability session" in New Orleans with the top-polling mayoral candidates to address the concerns of evacuees via videoconference.
"Voters want to make sure their agenda gets heard," said Rene Wizig-Barrios, the lead organizer of the Metropolitan Organization.
The effort, scholars have said, may be the most massive get-out-the-vote drive since the mid-19th century, when soldiers cast ballots during the Civil War. So far, the results appear promising.
Louisiana's chief elections officer, Secretary of State Al Ater, said last week that his office had received a record number of requests to vote by mail -- or absentee -- in the mayor's race. More than 14,000 requests -- the majority of them from residents living out of state -- were received by the beginning of April, and applications were "climbing daily." He did not say how many had been processed.
Before Hurricane Katrina, the highest number of absentee ballots requested had reached 2,500, but more typically it ranged from 1,200 to 1,500, he said.
"It's entirely possible that we'll have 20 to 25 percent of the votes that get cast by mail," Ater said. "I think that shows that the campaign works" to alert displaced residents to the mail-in voting system.
New Orleans voters have until Tuesday to request a mail-in ballot and until April 21 to postmark it. They can also deliver the ballots to polling sites in the city on April 22. The election is a primary, after which the top two vote-getters out of almost two dozen candidates will face off in a general election on May 20.
The number of registered voters in Orleans Parish has dropped to about 297,000 from the pre-Katrina number of slightly more than 299,000, according to the Louisiana secretary of state's office. The last mayoral election drew only about four in 10 registered voters. Although the number of mail-in ballot requests is encouraging and concerted efforts to draw voters continue, it is especially difficult this year to predict the turnout, Ater said.
"I don't know what to expect in this situation. . . . We're kind of in uncharted waters," he said.
"If this whole crisis, this whole disaster" doesn't motivate people, Ater said, "I don't think we're ever going to get them motivated, are we?"
The candidate's campaigns also are reaching out to the evacuees by traveling to cities such as Houston and Atlanta for voter forums; by culling the national change-of-address directory to compare with registered voter lists for New Orleans; and by requesting absentee ballot applications, which are public records.
"It is a difficult thing to do," said Tim Phillips, campaign manager for Audubon Nature Institute President Ron Forman, who is a front-runner in the race along with New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.
"In the main, the reality is that most of the voters are right here in Orleans Parish and within 100 miles," Phillips said. "So we spend our time running up and down the road to Baton Rouge more than anything else."
Landrieu's campaign spokesman said it is opening offices in Baton Rouge and Houston to be closer to voters whose support they are seeking.
Early voting is also scheduled all this week. This year, Louisiana established more early voting sites, especially near the corners of the state to accommodate displaced voters who want to drive in. ACORN-sponsored buses, for instance, will transport New Orleanians living in Houston and San Antonio this week to Lake Charles to vote; those living in Dallas, to Shreveport to vote; and those living in Little Rock, Atlanta and Jackson, Miss., to New Orleans to vote.
"Anything we can do to get the people to vote we'll do, because we know there's power in numbers," said Maranda Scott, formerly an assistant property manager of a housing development in New Orleans and now living in Houston with her husband and daughter. She was working the phone banks at ACORN's offices last week trying to persuade New Orleanians to sign up for the bus trip to Lake Charles. "They have to come out and be heard so we won't be in this situation again."
Even if some displaced voters are coming to the realization that Houston will probably become a permanent home, they want to participate in this, the first post-Katrina election, said Terry Jackson, a New Orleanian who is helping the Metropolitan Organization sign up absentee voters.
"Even though they're making a new start, they want to get involved because they have families still there," Jackson said. "Their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters are all still there."
Staff writer Matthew C. Wright in Austin contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6041101388.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
Make Wishes Known For New Orleans</font size><font size="4">
Primary Election for Mayor Is April 22</font size></center>
The Washington Post
By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; Page A03
HOUSTON -- Career educator Kemberly Samuels is not particularly partisan, but in recent weeks she has been giving her fellow New Orleanians some straight talk about politics.
The primary election for mayor of the Big Easy is April 22, and no matter how far the survivors of Hurricane Katrina have scattered, Samuels believes they must vote.
"Now's your time; now's your time to make your voice heard," Samuels said into a telephone inside a cramped, cluttered room in the offices of the group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. "You gonna make a difference. We want you to come out and vote. You gotta get off your butt and get out and do something. You just can't complain."
Election volunteers such as Samuels, along with Louisiana election officials, are working to energize the diaspora of hurricane survivors spread out from Baton Rouge to Boston. The volunteers have been working phone banks and making door-to-door visits. They've distributed absentee-ballot applications, voter-registration cards and information packets. And they've created Web sites with election information.
This week, Samuels and her compatriots in the Katrina Survivors Association of Houston, in conjunction with ACORN, are taking busloads of evacuees living in Texas, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi to early-voting sites in Louisiana. The goal is to deliver 4,000 votes, either by absentee ballot or in early voting -- especially from among moderate-to-low-income African American residents still unable to return to sections of the city that are uninhabitable.
"We're trying to make a statement that even if we're not back in New Orleans or Louisiana, New Orleans is still our home," said Dorothy Stukes, chairwoman of the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association. "We all want to come back home. We all want to be a part of the rebuilding and have a voice in selecting someone who wants us back, because there's a lot of people in New Orleans that's trying to keep us out."
Another Houston-based grass-roots group, the Metropolitan Organization, is continuing to work on its goal of signing up 10,000 absentee voters. Last weekend, it sponsored an "accountability session" in New Orleans with the top-polling mayoral candidates to address the concerns of evacuees via videoconference.
"Voters want to make sure their agenda gets heard," said Rene Wizig-Barrios, the lead organizer of the Metropolitan Organization.
The effort, scholars have said, may be the most massive get-out-the-vote drive since the mid-19th century, when soldiers cast ballots during the Civil War. So far, the results appear promising.
Louisiana's chief elections officer, Secretary of State Al Ater, said last week that his office had received a record number of requests to vote by mail -- or absentee -- in the mayor's race. More than 14,000 requests -- the majority of them from residents living out of state -- were received by the beginning of April, and applications were "climbing daily." He did not say how many had been processed.
Before Hurricane Katrina, the highest number of absentee ballots requested had reached 2,500, but more typically it ranged from 1,200 to 1,500, he said.
"It's entirely possible that we'll have 20 to 25 percent of the votes that get cast by mail," Ater said. "I think that shows that the campaign works" to alert displaced residents to the mail-in voting system.
New Orleans voters have until Tuesday to request a mail-in ballot and until April 21 to postmark it. They can also deliver the ballots to polling sites in the city on April 22. The election is a primary, after which the top two vote-getters out of almost two dozen candidates will face off in a general election on May 20.
The number of registered voters in Orleans Parish has dropped to about 297,000 from the pre-Katrina number of slightly more than 299,000, according to the Louisiana secretary of state's office. The last mayoral election drew only about four in 10 registered voters. Although the number of mail-in ballot requests is encouraging and concerted efforts to draw voters continue, it is especially difficult this year to predict the turnout, Ater said.
"I don't know what to expect in this situation. . . . We're kind of in uncharted waters," he said.
"If this whole crisis, this whole disaster" doesn't motivate people, Ater said, "I don't think we're ever going to get them motivated, are we?"
The candidate's campaigns also are reaching out to the evacuees by traveling to cities such as Houston and Atlanta for voter forums; by culling the national change-of-address directory to compare with registered voter lists for New Orleans; and by requesting absentee ballot applications, which are public records.
"It is a difficult thing to do," said Tim Phillips, campaign manager for Audubon Nature Institute President Ron Forman, who is a front-runner in the race along with New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.
"In the main, the reality is that most of the voters are right here in Orleans Parish and within 100 miles," Phillips said. "So we spend our time running up and down the road to Baton Rouge more than anything else."
Landrieu's campaign spokesman said it is opening offices in Baton Rouge and Houston to be closer to voters whose support they are seeking.
Early voting is also scheduled all this week. This year, Louisiana established more early voting sites, especially near the corners of the state to accommodate displaced voters who want to drive in. ACORN-sponsored buses, for instance, will transport New Orleanians living in Houston and San Antonio this week to Lake Charles to vote; those living in Dallas, to Shreveport to vote; and those living in Little Rock, Atlanta and Jackson, Miss., to New Orleans to vote.
"Anything we can do to get the people to vote we'll do, because we know there's power in numbers," said Maranda Scott, formerly an assistant property manager of a housing development in New Orleans and now living in Houston with her husband and daughter. She was working the phone banks at ACORN's offices last week trying to persuade New Orleanians to sign up for the bus trip to Lake Charles. "They have to come out and be heard so we won't be in this situation again."
Even if some displaced voters are coming to the realization that Houston will probably become a permanent home, they want to participate in this, the first post-Katrina election, said Terry Jackson, a New Orleanian who is helping the Metropolitan Organization sign up absentee voters.
"Even though they're making a new start, they want to get involved because they have families still there," Jackson said. "Their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters are all still there."
Staff writer Matthew C. Wright in Austin contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6041101388.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
<font size="5"><center>Race a Defining Line in New Orleans Vote</font size>
<font size="4">"The powers that be want black people out of here,"
said Beverly McKenna, publisher of the New Orleans
Tribune, a newspaper that writes about black issues.
"That's what's happening demographically, economically ...
It's insulting how transparent it is."</font size></center>
Apr 15, 2:16 PM (ET)
Associated Press
By ROBERT TANNER
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - High heels echoing, Ruby Ducre-Gethers crosses the floor of her airy but unlivable home - ear on her cell phone, eyes on the workers replacing her flooded-out walls, and mind on payback at the ballot box.
Across town, Irma Williams says the election for mayor this Saturday isn't truly an election without her neighbors to vote - but she says it's past time for street lamps to work outside her temporary trailer.
Alex Beard wakes up a thousand miles away and reads the New Orleans newspaper online, following each day's campaign news convinced that the storm brought a chance to rescue the city he adopted and then reluctantly fled.
Some people in New Orleans are angry about the government response to Hurricane Katrina and want to render judgment as the city casts ballots for mayor, city council and most every other elected official, from sheriff to assessor. Many want to look ahead.
But trumping all that as Election Day approaches, race - and all the history that comes with it here - has become the defining line for this election, dividing the city by neighborhood and color.
Any verdict on Mayor Ray Nagin's leadership, or any of the proposals to move forward, has been swallowed up by recriminations, paranoia and anger. There is fear - and hope - that the city may elect its first white mayor in three decades.
The election on Saturday has been vehemently challenged by those who say it should be postponed until more of those who left in the city's diaspora - more likely black and more likely poor - can find their way back. But early voting, so far, mostly reflects the racial demographics of pre-Katrina New Orleans.
The logistics alone present an unprecedented challenge, like everything else that Katrina left behind - a hundred thousand voters or more scattered across the country, the mystery of how many will actually vote, and potential crowds and confusion if voters flock back to the city on Election Day itself.
This city is still trying to piece itself back together: huge piles of moldering debris wait uncollected at the curb, drivers creep past nonworking traffic signals or hit the gas and pray, the French Quarter's neon burns bright while many restaurants and hotels are sadly quiet.
"Everything is so broken and destroyed. Everybody's in limbo," said Mark Fowler, manager of an Uptown co-operative that helps musicians replace instruments and find apartments. "The city's been traumatized."
Half the city is homeless - living somewhere, maybe within a half-hour's drive, maybe across the country - making it a guess as to who will vote.
"This is the most unusual mayoral election in American history," said Susan Howell, a University of New Orleans pollster. "When have people in 50 states been able to vote for the mayor of one city? This is a logistical nightmare."
And one that's likely to be repeated, since the nonpartisan election is almost sure to narrow the crowded field of Nagin and 22 challengers to two front-runners. If no one gets 50.1 percent of the vote, the runoff will be May 20.
Nagin won in 2002 as a black candidate supported by the white business community. His toughest opponent was the black police chief.
Now, his most serious challengers are two white men. Pre-storm, blacks, with 70 percent of the population, were the decisive vote. The last white mayor, Moon Landrieu, stepped down in 1978.
Everyone uses the city's geography to talk about race: Uptown and the French Quarter are the mostly white neighborhoods that survived with less damage; the Ninth Ward, Central City and New Orleans East are the majority black neighborhoods that suffered the storm's brunt.
"Right now, we have Uptown trying to reclaim its ideology," said Barry Ranski, an Uptown campaign worker bluntly laying out the mind-set of the scores of candidates who've jumped in for races far beyond mayor.
"When you take 65 or 70 percent of the citizens and displace them, they're not going to go through the hassle of registering absentee ballots."
At least that's the hope of some.
And others' fear. "The powers that be want black people out of here," said Beverly McKenna, publisher of the New Orleans Tribune, a newspaper that writes about black issues. "That's what's happening demographically, economically ... It's insulting how transparent it is."
Beard thinks such sweeping denunciations are unfair. An art gallery owner, he sees a chance for the city, black and white, to recognize how badly it had failed over the past half-century.
"If you pull back the curtain at all, and say this has been an increasingly unsuccessful welfare state for 50 years, and a devastatingly unsuccessful one for 25 or 30 years - your timing lines up with the last white mayor of New Orleans. So it's a racist statement, how dare you," he said.
"But it isn't. Everybody's equally guilty, white and black."
He is voting absentee, even as he sold his gallery and moved his wife and young son to New York City. Is he coming back? Not right away. It depends on the vote and how the city recovers.
Nagin's white challengers say race doesn't matter.
Nagin famously stirred up the racial pot when he called New Orleans a "chocolate" city, and he stands by the comment. Critics said he was race-baiting. Nagin says he's convinced "the black vote is definitely coalescing" around him.
Some candidates have gone even further. Peggy Wilson, a former city councilor given little chance of getting into the runoff, threw out incendiary words like "pimp" and "welfare queen" that drew groans from other candidates at a televised debate.
Forman says outsiders and the media have injected race into the campaign. Landrieu looks at the camera and says he's proud of his biracial support - a reminder that his father helped integrate New Orleans.
For many, black and white, the election is about the past year, not the past 30 years.
When it comes to the actual task of voting, there's bound to be even more confusion.
The city has revamped its voting system, reducing somewhere around 300 polling sites to 93 "mega" sites, to try to make the process more efficient. Absentee ballots are going to Baton Rouge.
Advocates are busing out-of-state evacuees to polling centers set up across Louisiana, and the state has expanded deadlines for absentee ballots. Still, many worry that the city's mail problems will lead to lost votes and complain that the state should have set up voting centers in places such as Houston and Atlanta.
Early voting - which ends a week before election day - drew 9,213 ballots by mid-day Thursday. The racial breakdown is roughly the same as New Orleans before Katrina: One-third white, two-thirds black, and 2 percent declaring themselves "other." So far, 14,760 voters had requested mail-in ballots.
Some question how fair any election can be when the city that was here eight months ago is not the city that's here now.
Irma Williams knows firsthand. It took her seven months to get home. She was rescued from the floodwaters by helicopter, swept away to Corpus Christi, Texas; then Houston, then Shreveport, La. She finally got back to her Central City neighborhood last month, living with her 78-year-old mother in the driveway.
On her house, a head-high waterline still marks the spot.
The election was already delayed from its early February date, and Williams asks why not wait longer so more residents can return.
"It's not fair to have an election and everybody's not back," she said, standing on the thin trailer steps after campaign outreach workers knocked on the screen door. "Half the people can't get here to vote."
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20060415/D8H0JH1G0.html?PG=home&SEC=news
<font size="4">"The powers that be want black people out of here,"
said Beverly McKenna, publisher of the New Orleans
Tribune, a newspaper that writes about black issues.
"That's what's happening demographically, economically ...
It's insulting how transparent it is."</font size></center>
Apr 15, 2:16 PM (ET)
Associated Press
By ROBERT TANNER
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - High heels echoing, Ruby Ducre-Gethers crosses the floor of her airy but unlivable home - ear on her cell phone, eyes on the workers replacing her flooded-out walls, and mind on payback at the ballot box.
Across town, Irma Williams says the election for mayor this Saturday isn't truly an election without her neighbors to vote - but she says it's past time for street lamps to work outside her temporary trailer.
Alex Beard wakes up a thousand miles away and reads the New Orleans newspaper online, following each day's campaign news convinced that the storm brought a chance to rescue the city he adopted and then reluctantly fled.
Some people in New Orleans are angry about the government response to Hurricane Katrina and want to render judgment as the city casts ballots for mayor, city council and most every other elected official, from sheriff to assessor. Many want to look ahead.
But trumping all that as Election Day approaches, race - and all the history that comes with it here - has become the defining line for this election, dividing the city by neighborhood and color.
Any verdict on Mayor Ray Nagin's leadership, or any of the proposals to move forward, has been swallowed up by recriminations, paranoia and anger. There is fear - and hope - that the city may elect its first white mayor in three decades.
The election on Saturday has been vehemently challenged by those who say it should be postponed until more of those who left in the city's diaspora - more likely black and more likely poor - can find their way back. But early voting, so far, mostly reflects the racial demographics of pre-Katrina New Orleans.
The logistics alone present an unprecedented challenge, like everything else that Katrina left behind - a hundred thousand voters or more scattered across the country, the mystery of how many will actually vote, and potential crowds and confusion if voters flock back to the city on Election Day itself.
This city is still trying to piece itself back together: huge piles of moldering debris wait uncollected at the curb, drivers creep past nonworking traffic signals or hit the gas and pray, the French Quarter's neon burns bright while many restaurants and hotels are sadly quiet.
"Everything is so broken and destroyed. Everybody's in limbo," said Mark Fowler, manager of an Uptown co-operative that helps musicians replace instruments and find apartments. "The city's been traumatized."
Half the city is homeless - living somewhere, maybe within a half-hour's drive, maybe across the country - making it a guess as to who will vote.
"This is the most unusual mayoral election in American history," said Susan Howell, a University of New Orleans pollster. "When have people in 50 states been able to vote for the mayor of one city? This is a logistical nightmare."
And one that's likely to be repeated, since the nonpartisan election is almost sure to narrow the crowded field of Nagin and 22 challengers to two front-runners. If no one gets 50.1 percent of the vote, the runoff will be May 20.
Nagin won in 2002 as a black candidate supported by the white business community. His toughest opponent was the black police chief.
Now, his most serious challengers are two white men. Pre-storm, blacks, with 70 percent of the population, were the decisive vote. The last white mayor, Moon Landrieu, stepped down in 1978.
Everyone uses the city's geography to talk about race: Uptown and the French Quarter are the mostly white neighborhoods that survived with less damage; the Ninth Ward, Central City and New Orleans East are the majority black neighborhoods that suffered the storm's brunt.
"Right now, we have Uptown trying to reclaim its ideology," said Barry Ranski, an Uptown campaign worker bluntly laying out the mind-set of the scores of candidates who've jumped in for races far beyond mayor.
"When you take 65 or 70 percent of the citizens and displace them, they're not going to go through the hassle of registering absentee ballots."
At least that's the hope of some.
And others' fear. "The powers that be want black people out of here," said Beverly McKenna, publisher of the New Orleans Tribune, a newspaper that writes about black issues. "That's what's happening demographically, economically ... It's insulting how transparent it is."
Beard thinks such sweeping denunciations are unfair. An art gallery owner, he sees a chance for the city, black and white, to recognize how badly it had failed over the past half-century.
"If you pull back the curtain at all, and say this has been an increasingly unsuccessful welfare state for 50 years, and a devastatingly unsuccessful one for 25 or 30 years - your timing lines up with the last white mayor of New Orleans. So it's a racist statement, how dare you," he said.
"But it isn't. Everybody's equally guilty, white and black."
He is voting absentee, even as he sold his gallery and moved his wife and young son to New York City. Is he coming back? Not right away. It depends on the vote and how the city recovers.
Nagin's white challengers say race doesn't matter.
- Mitch Landrieu, the son of the last white mayor, brother to a U.S. senator and himself the lieutenant governor. He has reached out to those burned by Nagin's rebuilding commission, which proposed not rebuilding some low-lying neighborhoods. His family has traditionally reached across racial lines.
- Ron Forman, who built a can-do reputation with his oversight of the city's Audubon Zoo and construction of a downtown aquarium. In the public arena for decades, he's made powerful alliances without ever going before the public for a vote. The city's newspaper, the Times-Picayune, endorsed him.
- Ron Forman, who built a can-do reputation with his oversight of the city's Audubon Zoo and construction of a downtown aquarium. In the public arena for decades, he's made powerful alliances without ever going before the public for a vote. The city's newspaper, the Times-Picayune, endorsed him.
Nagin famously stirred up the racial pot when he called New Orleans a "chocolate" city, and he stands by the comment. Critics said he was race-baiting. Nagin says he's convinced "the black vote is definitely coalescing" around him.
Some candidates have gone even further. Peggy Wilson, a former city councilor given little chance of getting into the runoff, threw out incendiary words like "pimp" and "welfare queen" that drew groans from other candidates at a televised debate.
Forman says outsiders and the media have injected race into the campaign. Landrieu looks at the camera and says he's proud of his biracial support - a reminder that his father helped integrate New Orleans.
For many, black and white, the election is about the past year, not the past 30 years.
Ducre-Gethers, like so many of the black middle-class already hiring workers to rebuild, intends to vote on how the storm was handled and plans for the future.
"The leadership we have, I'm not pleased with," she said, her gentle words delivered with the sharpness of a slap. She scoffs equally at speculation that black voters won't make their voices heard, or that they're coming together along racial lines.
"A lot of people are assuming the African-American voters are gone. That's not true," she said in her house in a gated community next to a golf course in New Orleans East, home to much of the black middle-class. "The black vote is going to kick Nagin to the curb."
She'll move back to the city from across Lake Pontchatrain, she promised. Once her home is rebuilt, once her teenage boys are out of school. She's putting her money behind her words, spending $200,000 to resurrect her home.
She wants New Orleans to be made whole, dismissing plans that pick and choose neighborhoods, or accept that it will be half the size it once was. "Right now, we need somebody to fix the city. I don't care if they're green," she said. Her candidate? Landrieu.
"The leadership we have, I'm not pleased with," she said, her gentle words delivered with the sharpness of a slap. She scoffs equally at speculation that black voters won't make their voices heard, or that they're coming together along racial lines.
"A lot of people are assuming the African-American voters are gone. That's not true," she said in her house in a gated community next to a golf course in New Orleans East, home to much of the black middle-class. "The black vote is going to kick Nagin to the curb."
She'll move back to the city from across Lake Pontchatrain, she promised. Once her home is rebuilt, once her teenage boys are out of school. She's putting her money behind her words, spending $200,000 to resurrect her home.
She wants New Orleans to be made whole, dismissing plans that pick and choose neighborhoods, or accept that it will be half the size it once was. "Right now, we need somebody to fix the city. I don't care if they're green," she said. Her candidate? Landrieu.
When it comes to the actual task of voting, there's bound to be even more confusion.
The city has revamped its voting system, reducing somewhere around 300 polling sites to 93 "mega" sites, to try to make the process more efficient. Absentee ballots are going to Baton Rouge.
Advocates are busing out-of-state evacuees to polling centers set up across Louisiana, and the state has expanded deadlines for absentee ballots. Still, many worry that the city's mail problems will lead to lost votes and complain that the state should have set up voting centers in places such as Houston and Atlanta.
Early voting - which ends a week before election day - drew 9,213 ballots by mid-day Thursday. The racial breakdown is roughly the same as New Orleans before Katrina: One-third white, two-thirds black, and 2 percent declaring themselves "other." So far, 14,760 voters had requested mail-in ballots.
Some question how fair any election can be when the city that was here eight months ago is not the city that's here now.
Irma Williams knows firsthand. It took her seven months to get home. She was rescued from the floodwaters by helicopter, swept away to Corpus Christi, Texas; then Houston, then Shreveport, La. She finally got back to her Central City neighborhood last month, living with her 78-year-old mother in the driveway.
On her house, a head-high waterline still marks the spot.
The election was already delayed from its early February date, and Williams asks why not wait longer so more residents can return.
"It's not fair to have an election and everybody's not back," she said, standing on the thin trailer steps after campaign outreach workers knocked on the screen door. "Half the people can't get here to vote."
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20060415/D8H0JH1G0.html?PG=home&SEC=news
<font size="5"><center>New Orleans vote raises fairness issue</font size></center>
The Boston Globe
By Leslie E. Gerwin and David C. King | April 18, 2006
NEW ORLEANS will vote for a mayor on April 22, but with many of the city's citizens temporarily scattered out of state in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana's election infrastructure is proving antiquated, dilapidated, and unfair. If the election proceeds as planned, the winner will be chosen by a minority of residents determined by the luck of location, race, and economic status.
The fundamental problem is that voting in the United States is not a constitutional right; rather voting is a reward for successfully navigating a complex bureaucratic maze. Contrast that reality with the one in Iraq. During the recent Iraqi national elections, Iraqis as far away as Los Angeles were allowed to vote. These expatriates waved their purple thumbs in celebration, while displaced citizens of New Orleans are wringing their hands in frustration.
Voting, the United States assured Iraqis, is a basic right. However, US officials have no legal obligation to ensure that citizens displaced from their homes still have a meaningful opportunity to cast their ballots.
The US Supreme Court reminded us in Bush v. Gore that there is no federal constitutional right to vote. Government officials are not held to a legal standard of effort, such as a maximum feasible initiative, to ensure that citizens can cast ballots. While the Constitution prohibits election officials from discriminating against would-be voters on the basis of race and gender, these prohibitions do little to inspire concerted efforts to reach potential voters. Only about half of eligible voters participate in national elections, thanks partly to cumbersome and unnecessary election rules. The April 22 turnout in New Orleans may be more embarrassing.
New Orleans needs good leadership, yet tens of thousands of eligible voters will not even receive ballots for the upcoming election. Election officials have tried to notify eligible voters, but the whereabouts of many voters are unknown. Those seeking to vote by absentee ballot must first decipher rules for requesting a ballot and then depend on the US Postal Service, which is barely operational in parts of New Orleans. Worse, Louisiana is one of five states still requiring people who register by mail to appear in person when voting.
New Orleans offers America a laboratory for democratic experimentation. Located in a state noted for electoral corruption, the city offers the opportunity to develop a strong political infrastructure. What is required?
First, Louisiana officials should set up polling places in major metropolitan areas where New Orleanians are temporarily housed. The technology to accomplish this is already in place in Houston, where thousands are living, thanks to the work of Hart InterCivic, a Texas-based voting machine manufacturer. The federal government should have allowed the April 22 elections to be delayed for a few months while similar systems are placed elsewhere.
Second, New Orleans needs to embrace a new representative model for its City Council. Current district boundaries are based on the 2000 Census. This mocks the concept of ''one person one vote" because entire neighborhoods are now empty. One fair solution is not to divide the city into districts. All candidates should run ''at large" with voters being able to cast more than a single vote. This will allow communities to vote their interests as well as elect candidates that are responsive to the entire electorate. New Orleanians should be allowed to choose a new representative democratic model, choosing from among the many approaches that are used across the United States and around the world.
Third, Louisiana should abolish the requirement that folks who register by mail have to appear in person when they vote for the first time. Forty-five other states have better approaches, and the Louisiana system is particularly onerous for college students who cannot cast their first vote by mail while they are away at school.
Finally, America should learn from Louisiana that all citizens deserve a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. Barriers to voting, which arepervasive throughout the United States, should be eliminated. Let's start in New Orleans.
Leslie E. Gerwin is a student at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School. David C. King is the associate director of Harvard's Institute of Politics
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...04/18/new_orleans_vote_raises_fairness_issue/
The Boston Globe
By Leslie E. Gerwin and David C. King | April 18, 2006
NEW ORLEANS will vote for a mayor on April 22, but with many of the city's citizens temporarily scattered out of state in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana's election infrastructure is proving antiquated, dilapidated, and unfair. If the election proceeds as planned, the winner will be chosen by a minority of residents determined by the luck of location, race, and economic status.
The fundamental problem is that voting in the United States is not a constitutional right; rather voting is a reward for successfully navigating a complex bureaucratic maze. Contrast that reality with the one in Iraq. During the recent Iraqi national elections, Iraqis as far away as Los Angeles were allowed to vote. These expatriates waved their purple thumbs in celebration, while displaced citizens of New Orleans are wringing their hands in frustration.
Voting, the United States assured Iraqis, is a basic right. However, US officials have no legal obligation to ensure that citizens displaced from their homes still have a meaningful opportunity to cast their ballots.
The US Supreme Court reminded us in Bush v. Gore that there is no federal constitutional right to vote. Government officials are not held to a legal standard of effort, such as a maximum feasible initiative, to ensure that citizens can cast ballots. While the Constitution prohibits election officials from discriminating against would-be voters on the basis of race and gender, these prohibitions do little to inspire concerted efforts to reach potential voters. Only about half of eligible voters participate in national elections, thanks partly to cumbersome and unnecessary election rules. The April 22 turnout in New Orleans may be more embarrassing.
New Orleans needs good leadership, yet tens of thousands of eligible voters will not even receive ballots for the upcoming election. Election officials have tried to notify eligible voters, but the whereabouts of many voters are unknown. Those seeking to vote by absentee ballot must first decipher rules for requesting a ballot and then depend on the US Postal Service, which is barely operational in parts of New Orleans. Worse, Louisiana is one of five states still requiring people who register by mail to appear in person when voting.
New Orleans offers America a laboratory for democratic experimentation. Located in a state noted for electoral corruption, the city offers the opportunity to develop a strong political infrastructure. What is required?
First, Louisiana officials should set up polling places in major metropolitan areas where New Orleanians are temporarily housed. The technology to accomplish this is already in place in Houston, where thousands are living, thanks to the work of Hart InterCivic, a Texas-based voting machine manufacturer. The federal government should have allowed the April 22 elections to be delayed for a few months while similar systems are placed elsewhere.
Second, New Orleans needs to embrace a new representative model for its City Council. Current district boundaries are based on the 2000 Census. This mocks the concept of ''one person one vote" because entire neighborhoods are now empty. One fair solution is not to divide the city into districts. All candidates should run ''at large" with voters being able to cast more than a single vote. This will allow communities to vote their interests as well as elect candidates that are responsive to the entire electorate. New Orleanians should be allowed to choose a new representative democratic model, choosing from among the many approaches that are used across the United States and around the world.
Third, Louisiana should abolish the requirement that folks who register by mail have to appear in person when they vote for the first time. Forty-five other states have better approaches, and the Louisiana system is particularly onerous for college students who cannot cast their first vote by mail while they are away at school.
Finally, America should learn from Louisiana that all citizens deserve a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. Barriers to voting, which arepervasive throughout the United States, should be eliminated. Let's start in New Orleans.
Leslie E. Gerwin is a student at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School. David C. King is the associate director of Harvard's Institute of Politics
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...04/18/new_orleans_vote_raises_fairness_issue/
<font size="5"><center>FEMA won't pay for New Orleans election</font size>
<font size="4">"FEMA recently turned down Louisiana's request
for the extra $3-4 million it will take to hold the April 22
New Orleans municipal elections rescheduled in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina ... But the agency shelled out $7.9
million after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks delayed
New York City's elections."</font size></center>
The Associated Press
4/16/2006, 5:50 p.m. CT
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Secretary of State Al Ater wants to know why the federal government agreed to pay for New York City's municipal elections after Sept. 11, 2001, but refuses to pay for New Orleans' elections after Hurricane Katrina.
FEMA recently turned down Louisiana's request for the extra $3-4 million it will take to hold the April 22 New Orleans municipal elections, rescheduled in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
But the agency shelled out $7.9 million after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks delayed New York City's elections.
Ater said it's a double standard.
"After the election, I'm going to dedicate my life to this," Ater said. "I'm going to become very obsessive-compulsive about it."
Orleans Parish doesn't have the money to pay even the normal elections cost of $400,000 for the city. FEMA said the additional elections costs are outside the agency's authority and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has not responded to a request to meet with the secretaries of state of Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama.
FEMA spokesman Manuel Broussard of Baton Rouge said he would look into the issue, but the agency did not respond.
The Legislature allocated $3 million to pay the cost of the New Orleans election, originally scheduled for Feb. 4, but the actual cost could reach $4 million, and taxpayers statewide would have to foot the bill.
"We may have to ask the Legislature for more money," Ater said.
FEMA did agree to pay $733,000 to replace destroyed voting machines and related equipment, but the extra cost to locate and educate voters was not eligible.
Angie LaPlace, Louisiana's Commissioner of Elections for the Secretary of State's Office, said the extra costs include up to $750,000 in media advertising in other Louisiana cities, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta and 11 other states where New Orleans evacuees are concentrated.
The Secretary of State's Office, which is running the elections, is going to spend more than $1.5 million on election day, setting up a command center at the Marriott Convention Center that will include a secure counting room.
There are billboards with the toll-free numbers for New Orleans voters to call to find out how they can vote, and, if they are going to vote in the city next Saturday, where their relocated precinct will be.
"This was an extraordinary event," LaPlace said. "We don't expect people to be election experts. We don't think the average person would know the election process well and how to get a ballot and how to vote."
All the extra costs are a direct results of Katrina, Ater noted.
"We're trying to keep the U.S. Justice Department, the Legislature and federal courts happy," Ater said. "These are extraordinary expenses, all due to Katrina."
___
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louis...s-24/1145228347117750.xml&storylist=louisiana
<font size="4">"FEMA recently turned down Louisiana's request
for the extra $3-4 million it will take to hold the April 22
New Orleans municipal elections rescheduled in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina ... But the agency shelled out $7.9
million after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks delayed
New York City's elections."</font size></center>
The Associated Press
4/16/2006, 5:50 p.m. CT
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Secretary of State Al Ater wants to know why the federal government agreed to pay for New York City's municipal elections after Sept. 11, 2001, but refuses to pay for New Orleans' elections after Hurricane Katrina.
FEMA recently turned down Louisiana's request for the extra $3-4 million it will take to hold the April 22 New Orleans municipal elections, rescheduled in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
But the agency shelled out $7.9 million after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks delayed New York City's elections.
Ater said it's a double standard.
"After the election, I'm going to dedicate my life to this," Ater said. "I'm going to become very obsessive-compulsive about it."
Orleans Parish doesn't have the money to pay even the normal elections cost of $400,000 for the city. FEMA said the additional elections costs are outside the agency's authority and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has not responded to a request to meet with the secretaries of state of Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama.
FEMA spokesman Manuel Broussard of Baton Rouge said he would look into the issue, but the agency did not respond.
The Legislature allocated $3 million to pay the cost of the New Orleans election, originally scheduled for Feb. 4, but the actual cost could reach $4 million, and taxpayers statewide would have to foot the bill.
"We may have to ask the Legislature for more money," Ater said.
FEMA did agree to pay $733,000 to replace destroyed voting machines and related equipment, but the extra cost to locate and educate voters was not eligible.
Angie LaPlace, Louisiana's Commissioner of Elections for the Secretary of State's Office, said the extra costs include up to $750,000 in media advertising in other Louisiana cities, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta and 11 other states where New Orleans evacuees are concentrated.
The Secretary of State's Office, which is running the elections, is going to spend more than $1.5 million on election day, setting up a command center at the Marriott Convention Center that will include a secure counting room.
There are billboards with the toll-free numbers for New Orleans voters to call to find out how they can vote, and, if they are going to vote in the city next Saturday, where their relocated precinct will be.
"This was an extraordinary event," LaPlace said. "We don't expect people to be election experts. We don't think the average person would know the election process well and how to get a ballot and how to vote."
All the extra costs are a direct results of Katrina, Ater noted.
"We're trying to keep the U.S. Justice Department, the Legislature and federal courts happy," Ater said. "These are extraordinary expenses, all due to Katrina."
___
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louis...s-24/1145228347117750.xml&storylist=louisiana
<font size="5"><center>In New Orleans, Mayoral Race
Is Study in Black, White and Gray</font size></center>
Washington Postr
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 22, 2006; Page A02
NEW ORLEANS, April 21 -- No one has a firm idea where the voters in this half-destroyed city are, and as the mayoral election neared its Saturday climax, the unpredictability was putting clear strains on everyone involved.
Election organizers, required to make ballots available to eligible voters, say they have done all they can but are bracing for voting rights lawsuits. They have documented -- even filmed -- their own outreach activities for later court appearances.
Pollsters have struggled to find voters -- particularly black ones -- complicating any predictions. As for the candidates, they say they have been forced back to American electioneering basics, and on Friday morning, the three front-runners found themselves lurching into traffic at the exact same spot.
Commuters near the Crescent City Connection bridge, a busy bottleneck, were treated to appearances by Mayor C. Ray Nagin and his most prominent challengers, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and zoo and aquarium executive Ron Forman.
"You've got to run until 8 p.m. tomorrow, because we just don't know who will show up," Nagin said, guzzling a Gatorade and taking a minute to talk because the light was green. "Some of the conventional electioneering won't work anymore. You just have to keep working until you pass out."
Chief among the issues for voters, of course, were hurricane and rebuilding matters: which neighborhoods will receive city services, how strong the levees will be, the fate of abandoned houses and whether the city is going broke. None of the candidates could give definitive answers to all of those questions because so much depends on the federal and state governments.
Each candidate instead has tried to assert that he would be the problem solver that would do best by the city. But making their qualifications known has proved particularly difficult, largely because so many voters are scattered around the country and hard to locate.
While candidates are typically reluctant to say how they're reaching voters, the challenges facing pollsters suggest the magnitude of the task.
Pollsters generally believe that half of the voters Saturday will be black, but locating them has been difficult. In a recent poll, organized by Tulane University, 571 people were contacted, about two-thirds of them white. Because blacks had been "undersampled," the results were weighted to fit the assumption that on Election Day, voters will be evenly split between blacks and whites.
"So many of them [black voters] are evacuated," said Brian Brox, an assistant political science professor at Tulane, who conducted the poll with a colleague. "So many who are back are not living where they used to. We were having trouble finding them on the phone."
The poll showed Landrieu leading the race with 26 percent, Nagin second with 21.4 percent and Forman third with 17.9 percent. More than 17 percent of voters were still undecided. The Tulane survey demonstrated the importance of race. A little more than 43 percent of African American respondents chose Nagin; he received the support of 5 percent of white respondents.
The question of whether election organizers have done enough to reach black voters has already been the subject of more than one lawsuit, and many expect that if the results on Saturday are at all close, more will follow.
To prepare for the potential lawsuits, election officials have taken photographs of the signs that will redirect voters from closed polling locations, logged every phone call to their toll-free hotline and filmed the delivery of voting machines to polling places.
"We have done everything humanly possible" to reach voters, Secretary of State Al Ater said. "We feel very confident that those who want to vote, can."
Voters such as Boris Ellis, 29, show how hard it is to reach the electorate. The kitchen supervisor at a local Cajun restaurant, Ellis used to live in New Orleans but now commutes from St. Charles Parish, where he lives with his grandmother. He expects to cast a vote Saturday, but his wife, who now lives in Houston with his three children, may not.
In the last such election, about 135,000 votes were cast. Already, election officials have counted more than 20,000 mail-in ballots and ballots from voting at polling places around the state. About two-thirds of those votes, officials said, were cast by African Americans.
"This election plan has been worked on for six or seven months now," Forman said. "Now our citizens have a responsibility to vote and repopulate this city."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6042101838.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
Is Study in Black, White and Gray</font size></center>
Washington Postr
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 22, 2006; Page A02
NEW ORLEANS, April 21 -- No one has a firm idea where the voters in this half-destroyed city are, and as the mayoral election neared its Saturday climax, the unpredictability was putting clear strains on everyone involved.
Election organizers, required to make ballots available to eligible voters, say they have done all they can but are bracing for voting rights lawsuits. They have documented -- even filmed -- their own outreach activities for later court appearances.
Pollsters have struggled to find voters -- particularly black ones -- complicating any predictions. As for the candidates, they say they have been forced back to American electioneering basics, and on Friday morning, the three front-runners found themselves lurching into traffic at the exact same spot.
Commuters near the Crescent City Connection bridge, a busy bottleneck, were treated to appearances by Mayor C. Ray Nagin and his most prominent challengers, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and zoo and aquarium executive Ron Forman.
"You've got to run until 8 p.m. tomorrow, because we just don't know who will show up," Nagin said, guzzling a Gatorade and taking a minute to talk because the light was green. "Some of the conventional electioneering won't work anymore. You just have to keep working until you pass out."
Chief among the issues for voters, of course, were hurricane and rebuilding matters: which neighborhoods will receive city services, how strong the levees will be, the fate of abandoned houses and whether the city is going broke. None of the candidates could give definitive answers to all of those questions because so much depends on the federal and state governments.
Each candidate instead has tried to assert that he would be the problem solver that would do best by the city. But making their qualifications known has proved particularly difficult, largely because so many voters are scattered around the country and hard to locate.
While candidates are typically reluctant to say how they're reaching voters, the challenges facing pollsters suggest the magnitude of the task.
Pollsters generally believe that half of the voters Saturday will be black, but locating them has been difficult. In a recent poll, organized by Tulane University, 571 people were contacted, about two-thirds of them white. Because blacks had been "undersampled," the results were weighted to fit the assumption that on Election Day, voters will be evenly split between blacks and whites.
"So many of them [black voters] are evacuated," said Brian Brox, an assistant political science professor at Tulane, who conducted the poll with a colleague. "So many who are back are not living where they used to. We were having trouble finding them on the phone."
The poll showed Landrieu leading the race with 26 percent, Nagin second with 21.4 percent and Forman third with 17.9 percent. More than 17 percent of voters were still undecided. The Tulane survey demonstrated the importance of race. A little more than 43 percent of African American respondents chose Nagin; he received the support of 5 percent of white respondents.
The question of whether election organizers have done enough to reach black voters has already been the subject of more than one lawsuit, and many expect that if the results on Saturday are at all close, more will follow.
To prepare for the potential lawsuits, election officials have taken photographs of the signs that will redirect voters from closed polling locations, logged every phone call to their toll-free hotline and filmed the delivery of voting machines to polling places.
"We have done everything humanly possible" to reach voters, Secretary of State Al Ater said. "We feel very confident that those who want to vote, can."
Voters such as Boris Ellis, 29, show how hard it is to reach the electorate. The kitchen supervisor at a local Cajun restaurant, Ellis used to live in New Orleans but now commutes from St. Charles Parish, where he lives with his grandmother. He expects to cast a vote Saturday, but his wife, who now lives in Houston with his three children, may not.
In the last such election, about 135,000 votes were cast. Already, election officials have counted more than 20,000 mail-in ballots and ballots from voting at polling places around the state. About two-thirds of those votes, officials said, were cast by African Americans.
"This election plan has been worked on for six or seven months now," Forman said. "Now our citizens have a responsibility to vote and repopulate this city."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6042101838.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
There is a run off and unless there is a tectonic shift in the earths crust, Nagin might need to not be smiling just yet. He got 38 percent but he didn't get the larger 46 percent that went to the other candidates. How much Nagin will get from those who didn't want his ass is anyones guess.
-VG
-VG
VegasGuy said:
ok I'll give a guess at it
Nagin and Landrieu, Landrieu is for lack of a better term a true democrat, Nagin is not, keep in mind dude changed parties right before running for mayor, I was listening to WWL last night after the election, Nagin was quick to name certian people who help his ass get in the mayor's seat 4 years ago, and on top of that there are shit load of whites in New Orleans who DONT like the Landrieu dynasty, many of Ron Forman's votes along with Robert Cohig's votes can go Nagin's way just by virtue of the fact that some people would hate for a Landrieu to take office.
I could be wrong.
Deuce could be right as his political sense of N.O politics has merit. On the other hand, Imma go wit you. I've worked a lot of campaigns and managed a few too -- and there's a rule that tends to hold true: those who like the incumbent (Nagin) tend to vote for them the first time around; hence, the votes the incumbent gets in the first round tends (but not always) to be the extent of his support in a run-off (plus a few more). The rule says Nagin loses. Or course, a backlash against Landrieu and enough of the other candidates votes going to Nagin and, who knows, Deuce's Wild. I think, however, those who wanted Nagin voted for him -- and the majority of those who didn't, rejected him.VegasGuy said:
QueEx
Duece,
There might be another wildcard: How did the absentee's (those who mailed/faxed in absentee ballots and those who returned home, just to vote - vote??? I know, until the precinct by precinct tally is released, its hard to know how different hoods and areas voted. With those "Super Precincts" where people from different hoods (wards/districts) voted at the same poll instead of their usual one, it might be even harder to tell how the vote broke down by race and eco-class. Whoever got the lion's share of the absentees, however, might have to be concerned. It might be difficult to get those done again in time for the runoff.
Regarding Nagin: He's Black. Beyond that, in my opinion he fucked up Pre-Katrina (his hurricane preparedness was shit and he didn't handle shit very well at the line of scrimmage when he had to make up the plays in the final hours as Katrina approached). Post katrina, he was shit. While the flooding was "Overwhelming" and would have been a challenge for whoever was mayor, Nagin waffled, didn't have a plan, and looked like he couldn't buy a damn plan. LOL. Those buses still in the parking lot was a telltale sign of his leadership.
QueEx
There might be another wildcard: How did the absentee's (those who mailed/faxed in absentee ballots and those who returned home, just to vote - vote??? I know, until the precinct by precinct tally is released, its hard to know how different hoods and areas voted. With those "Super Precincts" where people from different hoods (wards/districts) voted at the same poll instead of their usual one, it might be even harder to tell how the vote broke down by race and eco-class. Whoever got the lion's share of the absentees, however, might have to be concerned. It might be difficult to get those done again in time for the runoff.
Regarding Nagin: He's Black. Beyond that, in my opinion he fucked up Pre-Katrina (his hurricane preparedness was shit and he didn't handle shit very well at the line of scrimmage when he had to make up the plays in the final hours as Katrina approached). Post katrina, he was shit. While the flooding was "Overwhelming" and would have been a challenge for whoever was mayor, Nagin waffled, didn't have a plan, and looked like he couldn't buy a damn plan. LOL. Those buses still in the parking lot was a telltale sign of his leadership.
QueEx
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