New Orleans mayor C. Ray Nagin was re-elected Saturday by a vote of 52 percent to 48 percent against his challenger, Mitch Landrieu, the current lieutenant governor of Louisiana. And, Nagin said in his victory speech, for all of the “folks who went to the other side, who went to the red-light district, I forgive you.”
Nagin’s surprise victory, bringing in just enough white voters to win by 5,329 votes, has sent analysts’ heads spinning. Even Nagin himself says that people really have no idea about New Orleans politics.
“The nation is being entertained. This is a big reality TV show,” Nagin said of New Orleans and himself. “They don’t get it. They don’t get the people of New Orleans. They don’t get what really happened during Katrina. They really don’t get Ray Nagin. Sometimes I don’t get Ray Nagin, so it’s all right.” — Houston Chronicle
But I can explain it easily: Nagin was the lesser of two evils. As a moderate Democrat, Nagin, despite being widely criticized for incompetence in his handling of Hurricane Katrina, frightened the business owners a lot less than Landrieu, whom they perceived as a corrupt liberal wacko with too many of his family members in high places.
“Some people were seeing a vote for Nagin as a way of stopping Mary Landrieu when she runs for re-election in 2008,” said Errol Laborde, editor of New Orleans Magazine and producer of a weekly television news roundtable.
“Then there was this rather liberal use of the word dynasty,” he said. The Landrieus have never had a hint of scandal associated with them, he said, but the word “dynasty” was loaded.
“I also think that what was going on is Nagin is term-limited,” Laborde said. “People in the business community thought it was better to ride out Nagin’s four years than elect a young Mitch Landrieu for eight years who could indeed build a dynasty.”
“Electing Mitch might have affected the course of politics for the next 30 years,” Laborde said. — Ibid.
The mayor of New Orleans can only serve two four-year terms.
All that’s left to do now is go down to the French Quarter, drink like mad, and wait for the next hurricane.
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Karl Marx would love the popular moves among politicians in various state governments and the federal government to ban so-called "junk" food in schools, and to "put healthy food in" convenience stores and on the tables of those they define as poor. It's a very elitist and arrogant mindset that promotes this ideology, and it needs to be addressed.
Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.
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Lenny Zimmermann
May 22, 2006
One of the local Louisiana bloggers, Chad Rogers (or http://www.thedeadpelican.com although it’s not so much a blog as a Louisiana-related newsand editorial site, with occasionaly commentary by the webmaster), stated that when all was said and done that the primary/run-off system used in New Orleans (most of Lousiaiana, rally) just doesn’t server voters well. It takes a field of candidates then reduces the voter to one of the choices that they can only hope gets into a run-off. The problem comes when you end up with two similar candidates (such as this last Mayorial race, as many folks were commenting on the difficulty in deciding between two fairly similar Democrats). Of course his answer was to ensure a two-party race, which I don’t think is the right answer, either. I emailed him that Louisianans really should take a good hard look at the different Preference Voting formats out there as a TRUE alternative, but he never bothered to comment (except to further criticize those who were defending the current method.)
In all I think that is where not just Louisiana but so much of this country really need to move towards in order to really provide people with a voice when they vote so we’re not constantly stuck in the never-ending mantra of voting for the “lesser of two evils.” Unfortunately I think much of this state is so mired in two-party politics nobody seems to want to bother considering such things.
Mark Jaquith
May 22, 2006
Lenny,
The whole country is mired in the two-party system. Preference voting would be fantastic, but neither of the two parties in power now wants a third party with which to do battle.