Election Day
The twin spans of the Mississippi
The graphic above doesn't really have anything to do with the election, it's one of mine and I just like it. Voting is always fun here. The elections are always filled with wierdness; today's ballot for mayor had 10 people listed, including one guy whose nickname was "Chevrolet" and another whose nick was "Superman", and they were listed as such on the ballot. I swear to you, I am not making this up! The story below, from the New York Times, gives a good picture of this years election.
February 2, 2002
New Orleans, Amid Revelry, Makes Time to Vote Today
By DAVID FIRESTONE
EW ORLEANS, Feb. 1 — They cannot intrude upon the fantasy world of a Mardi Gras parade without defying a local taboo against Carnival campaigning. They can barely claw onto the airwaves without being engulfed in a fog of news about the most carefully guarded Super Bowl in history.
So a huge field of candidates who want to run this slightly ungovernable city have had a hard time making their voices heard before Saturday's mayoral primary election, which ends less than 24 hours before the football championship. Politics here has always been as much theater as policy, but this year the audience is otherwise engaged. According to the polls, nearly a third of voters have yet to decide on a candidate from among the 15 jostling to succeed Mayor Marc A. Morial.
The field mushroomed in October after Mr. Morial's bid to bypass term limits in search of a third four-year term was defeated by the voters. Some of the candidates are linking themselves to his continued popularity, while others are distancing themselves from his reputation for patronage. But even the clear front- runner, Richard J. Pennington, the police superintendent, has only about 20 percent of the vote, most polls have found. So a runoff on March 2 between the top two vote-getters in the nonpartisan primary on Saturday is considered a certainty.
Most of the tussle has been for the No. 2 spot, and the insurgent candidate now considered most likely to get it is C. Ray Nagin, an executive with Cox Communications, which operates the local cable television system. Mr. Nagin won endorsements from The Times-Picayune and the popular political and cultural publication Gambit Weekly by promising to move away from the patronage that has perennially filled municipal jobs and contracts here.
"The city and state have a reputation for being pretty free-spirited," Mr. Nagin said in an interview today as he tried to shake hands with actual voters among the football throngs on the streets. "It's not like people offer you bags of cash in dark alleys, but I think we need to change the nature of politics here by being more customer- and business-friendly."
That approach has propelled him out of the pack in recent weeks and into the front ranks. For years, the city was preoccupied with a high crime rate, but during the tenure of Mr. Morial and Mr. Pennington, murders and other felonies have dropped sharply. Mr. Pennington continues to campaign on that accomplishment, but the race has turned more on economic issues.
"The city is getting smaller, and voters are increasingly concerned about its future," said Edward Renwick, director of the Loyola University Institute of Politics. "We're down to one Fortune 500 company, and many businesses have left the city. People want to hear what the candidates will do about it."
Mr. Pennington says crime reduction and a new emphasis on education will strengthen the city's economy. "I always felt that before you could have economic development, you had to have a safe city," he said. "Now that we have that, we can concentrate on bringing businesses back to the city."
Mr. Nagin, on the other hand, has proposed selling or leasing Louis Armstrong International Airport and using the revenue to rebuild decaying infrastructure and create jobs.
Another candidate, State Senator Paulette R. Irons, has been the most explicit in tying the shrinking of the economy to municipal patronage; she promises to revamp the city's contracting system completely. But her standing in polls dropped after she said she understood the nature of crime in the city because her brother had been murdered. It turned out he had been shot by the police while robbing a supermarket.
A few classic traits of New Orleans politics have not been drowned out. A grocery produce manager on the ballot as Manny (Chevrolet) Bruno says he will have no friends to pay off because he has no friends.
And the negative advertising and campaigning that might be unsettling elsewhere are expected here, particularly because it is often unclear who is paying for telephone messages that bash various candidates. Mr. Nagin, who like Mr. Pennington is black, is often portrayed on the telephone as a tool of the white business community in this predominantly black city, but among the most vicious things said about him is that he personally raised cable television fees.
I'll try to get the lava came running again, yesterday the computer just balked and crashed over it. Two cameras seem to confuse things and I haven't been able to figure out why yet.
The twin spans of the Mississippi
The graphic above doesn't really have anything to do with the election, it's one of mine and I just like it. Voting is always fun here. The elections are always filled with wierdness; today's ballot for mayor had 10 people listed, including one guy whose nickname was "Chevrolet" and another whose nick was "Superman", and they were listed as such on the ballot. I swear to you, I am not making this up! The story below, from the New York Times, gives a good picture of this years election.
February 2, 2002
New Orleans, Amid Revelry, Makes Time to Vote Today
By DAVID FIRESTONE
EW ORLEANS, Feb. 1 — They cannot intrude upon the fantasy world of a Mardi Gras parade without defying a local taboo against Carnival campaigning. They can barely claw onto the airwaves without being engulfed in a fog of news about the most carefully guarded Super Bowl in history.
So a huge field of candidates who want to run this slightly ungovernable city have had a hard time making their voices heard before Saturday's mayoral primary election, which ends less than 24 hours before the football championship. Politics here has always been as much theater as policy, but this year the audience is otherwise engaged. According to the polls, nearly a third of voters have yet to decide on a candidate from among the 15 jostling to succeed Mayor Marc A. Morial.
The field mushroomed in October after Mr. Morial's bid to bypass term limits in search of a third four-year term was defeated by the voters. Some of the candidates are linking themselves to his continued popularity, while others are distancing themselves from his reputation for patronage. But even the clear front- runner, Richard J. Pennington, the police superintendent, has only about 20 percent of the vote, most polls have found. So a runoff on March 2 between the top two vote-getters in the nonpartisan primary on Saturday is considered a certainty.
Most of the tussle has been for the No. 2 spot, and the insurgent candidate now considered most likely to get it is C. Ray Nagin, an executive with Cox Communications, which operates the local cable television system. Mr. Nagin won endorsements from The Times-Picayune and the popular political and cultural publication Gambit Weekly by promising to move away from the patronage that has perennially filled municipal jobs and contracts here.
"The city and state have a reputation for being pretty free-spirited," Mr. Nagin said in an interview today as he tried to shake hands with actual voters among the football throngs on the streets. "It's not like people offer you bags of cash in dark alleys, but I think we need to change the nature of politics here by being more customer- and business-friendly."
That approach has propelled him out of the pack in recent weeks and into the front ranks. For years, the city was preoccupied with a high crime rate, but during the tenure of Mr. Morial and Mr. Pennington, murders and other felonies have dropped sharply. Mr. Pennington continues to campaign on that accomplishment, but the race has turned more on economic issues.
"The city is getting smaller, and voters are increasingly concerned about its future," said Edward Renwick, director of the Loyola University Institute of Politics. "We're down to one Fortune 500 company, and many businesses have left the city. People want to hear what the candidates will do about it."
Mr. Pennington says crime reduction and a new emphasis on education will strengthen the city's economy. "I always felt that before you could have economic development, you had to have a safe city," he said. "Now that we have that, we can concentrate on bringing businesses back to the city."
Mr. Nagin, on the other hand, has proposed selling or leasing Louis Armstrong International Airport and using the revenue to rebuild decaying infrastructure and create jobs.
Another candidate, State Senator Paulette R. Irons, has been the most explicit in tying the shrinking of the economy to municipal patronage; she promises to revamp the city's contracting system completely. But her standing in polls dropped after she said she understood the nature of crime in the city because her brother had been murdered. It turned out he had been shot by the police while robbing a supermarket.
A few classic traits of New Orleans politics have not been drowned out. A grocery produce manager on the ballot as Manny (Chevrolet) Bruno says he will have no friends to pay off because he has no friends.
And the negative advertising and campaigning that might be unsettling elsewhere are expected here, particularly because it is often unclear who is paying for telephone messages that bash various candidates. Mr. Nagin, who like Mr. Pennington is black, is often portrayed on the telephone as a tool of the white business community in this predominantly black city, but among the most vicious things said about him is that he personally raised cable television fees.
I'll try to get the lava came running again, yesterday the computer just balked and crashed over it. Two cameras seem to confuse things and I haven't been able to figure out why yet.
