NEW ORLEANS – Eight months after
Hurricane Katrina wiped out large parts of this
riverside city, thousands of black voters cast ballots
in an historic post-Katrina election Saturday, which
resulted in a May 20 runoff between incumbent Mayor Ray
Nagin and Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu.
In the first election since Katrina,
Nagin held a comfortable lead Saturday with 38 percent
or 41,489 votes, but short of the majority needed to
secure a second term as mayor without the May 20 runoff.
Landrieu had 29 percent, or 31,499 votes. Nonprofit
executive Ron Forman followed with 17 percent, 18,734
votes, and 19 other candidates trailed far behind.
About 300,000 residents -- many of
them black -- are spread out across the United States
living in temporary housing. More than 20,000 cast
ballots early by mail, fax or at satellite voting
stations around the state. There are about
297,000 registered voters in New Orleans . Some black
voters, with help from Rev. Jesse Jackson and other
activists, traveled by bus or in car caravans from
Houston, Dallas and Atlanta.
Late Saturday night, Nagin, 49, told
his supporters that he is battled-tested, experienced
and prepared to rebuild and unite New Orleans and warned
that today is not the time to “experiment” with new
leadership.
"There have been too many people who
said we were dead, too many people who said we were way
too divisive,” Nagin said. “There were too many people
who said this city should go in a different direction.
But the people have said they like the direction."
Landrieu, 45, standing next to his
father, Moon Landrieu, the last white mayor of New
Orleans, said his campaign showed a racial diversity
that will unite the city.
"Today in this great American city,
African-American and white, Hispanic and Vietnamese,
almost in equal measure, came forward to propel this
campaign forward and loudly proclaim that we in New
Orleans will be one people," he said. "We will speak
with one voice, and we will have one future."
Dr. Silas Lee, a national pollster and
political analyst, said the runoff between a black and
white candidate highlights the undercurrent of race in
the city, but said ultimately, the election is about
rebuilding the city.
“The new mayor will have to articulate
a vision, have credibility in the community and offer a
strong sense of leadership,” Lee told
BlackAmericaWeb.com.
“The next mayor takes over May 29, and
hurricane season starts June 1,” Lee said. “The city is
on life support, and it won’t take much of a storm to
further devastate this city. What is the plan for
hurricane season?”
City Council member Cynthia Williard-Lewis,
who represents the Ninth Ward and is a frequent critic
of Nagin, said the city’s next mayor “must be a decisive
leader who must understand that neighborhood development
starts from the bottom up.”
“Whoever prevails should understand
that he speaks for the people with a collective agenda,”
she told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Jackson, who was in New Orleans,
described the election as a “spiritual crusade” and said
despite thousands of black disenfranchised black voters,
it was a time for “healing and rebuilding.”
After the nation's worst natural
disaster, which caused the largest displacement of
blacks and the largest housing crisis since World War
II, New Orleans residents voted after several months of
campaigning by a corps of 21 candidates, which included
an out-of-work actor, a woman who was arrested and
jailed last month and a former city council member who
campaigned on a platform to rid the city of “welfare
queens.”
The May 20 showdown sets up a dramatic
finale between Nagin, who is black, and Landrieu, who is
white, in a city experiencing racial friction at a time
when New Orleans is facing the largest rebuilding
project in U.S. history.
Of the ballots cast prior to
Saturday's election, about two-thirds were cast by black
voters, but analysts caution the numbers may not reflect
overall turnout. AP reported Sunday that Nagin, the
black incumbent, who received most of his support from
white voters in the 2002 election, garnered less than 10
percent of the vote Saturday in predominantly white
precincts, according to GCR & Associates Inc., a
consulting firm analyzing demographic data for the New
Orleans Redevelopment Authority.
The critical issue facing New Orleans
today is rebuilding the city, creating housing for
displaced residents and opening schools for many black
students.
If elected, Landrieu, whose father,
Moon, retired as mayor in 1978, would be the first white
mayor of New Orleans in 30 years. Landrieu, whose sister
is Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), has the political and
family prestige and is also liked among many black
residents.
Black activists say race played an
important part of the election because many blacks in
New Orleans feel disenfranchised after Katrina and could
be faced with financial ruin if insurance companies
don’t make timely settlements. Many black businesses in
the city have closed because black professionals have
lost their clientele.
Nagin, however, won his first election
with a majority of the white business community, but
today, because of his controversial “Chocolate City”
comments last month, he has been branded by some as a
radical. Nagin was referring to his commitment to help
the city remain predominantly black after Katrina.
One white New Orleans political
analyst said during the first election Nagin ran “as
Clarence Thomas” and on Saturday, he ran "as Al Sharpton.”
Donna Brazile, a Democratic consultant
and political analyst, told BlackAmericaWeb.com
that housing for Katrina survivors and rebuilding New
Orleans must be the focus for the city’s leadership. She
called Saturday’s “historic” election a potential
“rebirth” of New Orleans.
At polling precincts across the city,
blacks were streaming in to vote, some of them driving
from Houston and other cities in Louisiana where they
are living in temporary housing.
Inside one large polling place in the
city’s predominantly black Ninth Ward, film director
Spike Lee lead a camera crew around the precinct
Saturday afternoon, presumably part of his upcoming
documentary about the aftermath of Katrina.
Saturday marked the first city
election since Hurricane Katrina ruined polling places,
and scattered thousands of voters. More than 300,000
residents -- many of them black -- are living in
temporary housing in more than 40 states. There were
about 455,000 residents living in New Orleans before
Katrina. Today, there are 297,991 registered voters in
New Orleans.
Whoever emerges as the city’s new
mayor, according to experts, will have a tremendous,
historic challenge: Parts of the city’s infrastructure
has been severely damaged and will take billions of
dollars to repair, many schools in black areas have yet
to reopen, thousands of displaced residents are being
stalled by insurance companies who are slow to make
financial settlements and many black folks who have
returned to the city are homeless while landlords, in
some cases, have raised apartment rents by nearly 200
percent.
To make matters worse, the City
Council voted last week to set an August 29 deadline for
residents to start repairing their homes or risk the
city seizing their properties and demolishing them.
Activists say many black people do not have the
financial means or transportation to return to the city.
Civil rights leaders had protested
Saturday’s election and called for the election to be
postponed because, they said, with so many displaced
blacks scattered across the country, they were unable to
vote, which violated The 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In the Lower Ninth Ward, a black
low-income community that was leveled by Katrina, the
entire area is devastated with homes still knocked off
their foundations and mounds of toxic debris that
stretches for miles.
Some blacks fear that whites will not
include them in the rebuilding process, and many point
to the fact that there have been no major contracts
awarded to blacks, aside from a controversial plan that
emerged last month to transform the Lower Ninth Ward
into a park or a golf course.
Many blacks say the undercurrent of
race was a back-drop to the election as Katrina, they
say, exposed the city’s racial divisions. One mayoral
candidate, Peggy Wilson, said the city should not
welcome back “welfare queens,” a characterization many
considered racist.
Jacques Morial, a longtime community
activist and member of St. Augustine Church, one of the
nation’s oldest black Catholic parishes, told
BlackAmericaWeb.com the next mayor “must hit
the ground running. It will be the shortest transition
in history.”
Dr. Lee agreed.
“There needs to be a strong sense of
urgency to get things done quickly,” Lee said in an
interview. “The next mayor must articulate a vision for
recovery.”
Edmund W. Lewis, editor of The
Louisiana Weekly, the state’s oldest black
newspaper, has been critical of Nagin and said in a
recent editorial that blacks should consider candidates
who will support their interests.
“When the tide turned and Nagin fell
out of favor with whites, a shameless Ray Nagin began to
reach out gradually to blacks,” Lewis wrote. “For the
most part, those overtures have been unsuccessful, right
up until the storm hit, and blacks became increasingly
concerned about whites waging a campaign to regain
control of the city while displaced black evacuees
looked on helplessly from other states.”
“If we don't use this election to find
someone who can deliver all the things,” he wrote, “we
need to survive and prosper, we will have no one to
blame but ourselves when we find ourselves in the same
situation or worse four years from now.”
Meanwhile, at the Back Street Cultural
Museum, a two-room testament to black New Orleans
history located near the French Quarter, black men sat
on the outside steps Saturday and, as usual, talked
politics.
“If [former Mayor] Marc Morial came
back today to run for mayor,” said one black man pumping
his fist in the air, “I’d vote for him right now.”
