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Bank On It
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John Boutté: Living for “The Eternal Now”
By Robert Gagnier

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George Curry
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Our Town

A Commentary Turning
a new page . . . Really?

Political leaders leave legacies. That concept is not so difficult to grasp at all. Still as Mayor Mitch Landrieu settles into his new role as the city’s top leader, making decisions and changes that we all hope are in the city’s best interest, the constant negative commentaries on the part of mainstream media and so-called journalistic examinations of his predecessors’ tenures have become abhorrent nuisances.

As Mayor Landrieu shared his words of hope and unity and his plan for moving the city forward on May 3, the sheer excitement that had been filling the air since his easy election in February all but bubbled over, and with good reason. After all, it signaled a new chapter—perhaps a brand new book altogether—in the saga of a wonderful city that has endured its share of shake up, disaster, trouble, pain, scandal and destruction.

Since taking office in early May, the mayor has changed the organizational chart of the city’s administration, dubbing his top-level assistants “deputy mayors.” That is great, especially if it is good for the city. As the city’s top leader, it is also his prerogative. He gets to appoint who he wants, call them what he pleases and define their responsibilities as he sees fit.

Our new mayor is also establishing a new budgeting process which allows for more citizen input; we see that a plus, as well.

He is ordering a review of all city contracts, presumably to assure evenhandedness in the process and to ensure that taxpayers are getting their money’s worth. That is just fine so long as the examination process is fair, honest, transparent and not based on some unproven, if-not racially-charged notion that every city vendor chosen during the last eight years did not deserve the job.

Under his administration, the city’s URL is even being re-examined. For some reason and after many years, the website name has somehow emerged as an outlandish public relations gaffe that must be dealt with, as if New Orleans doesn’t have bigger fish to deep fry. Nonetheless, we welcome the URL renaming. In fact, let’s not stop there. Let’s completely redesign the entire website if it will be good for N-O, umm, New Orleans, that is.

What is not welcomed are the musings in the city’s media that would lead us to believe that New Orleans has been on a slow train to hell since 1978 and that the train became an express ride in 2002.

For every story about something the new mayor is proposing, the local daily seems drawn to ridiculing former Mayor Ray Nagin and other mayors, particularly Black mayors, who predated him. In fact, even when the current mayoral administration is not making news, someone finds a way to cast a negative light on Nagin and other past administrations.

Double Standards

In a stark contrast, other far more embattled politicos appear to get genteel treatment by local news outlets, when their troubles are mentioned at all. For instance, Jefferson Parish’s Aaron Broussard, whose political predicament was so cumbersome that he had to resign his elected post, has been described in the local daily Sunday fluff piece as having “quietly returned to practicing law” and “relieved to step aside from his long life in local politics.”

No such luck for Mayor Nagin. No sanguine stories about his returning to business or enjoying more time with his family since leaving city hall. No soft ball comments about him having weathered a malestrom of post-Katrina critisisim or "a bruising re-election" in 2006. And the one report detailing the fact that the former mayor had signed on with a national speakers’ bureau couldn’t even steer clear of taking a pot shot, hinting that there was some degree of irony in his signing on with the agency that finds clients to pay for speakers to share their experience or knowledge because the mayor’s words during his time in office were “a constant source of shock, anger and amusement.”

The very fact that Nagin’s words were so often attacked by media point to what has always appeared to be an unexplainable disdain (only after Katrina) for the mayor. Among other utterances, he was denounced for referring to New Orleans as a “chocolate city” and attacked for vehemently demanding that the federal government gets down to the Gulf Coast and provide some relief in the wake of Katrina.

It seems quite odd that when a Black mayor strongly urges the federal government, who is personified by a White president, to get down here and do something when it was so clear that something needed to be done, he is ridiculed for talking that way. Fast forward five years later, and the likes of newcomer to our city, political strategist James Carville and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser are allowed to go off at the mouth on national television on countless occasions, calling out President Obama and making demands on what they expect him to do in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. The whole scene smacks of double standard.

Now, there is no concession in the following statement, only a hypothetical consideration. If Mayor Nagin were guilty of broken promises, cronyism, poor decision-making, questionable word choice or even an acute case of the delusions of grandeur, he surely did not invent them. He certainly was not the first New Orleans mayor to have his tenure marked by them. Neither were any of the Black mayors in the 24 years that preceded him.

Everything-Wrong-With-The-City-Under-Black-Mayors
Hype Is Growing Old

More importantly, if we are really at the dawn of a new day in New Orleans, let’s look to the sky. This “let’s talk about everything that was wrong with New Orleans under Nagin or Marc Morial” hype that has become almost daily fodder for the local media is growing old.

If we’re really turning a page, let’s turn the page already. Let’s save the historical analysis for some, well, historian to chew on, while the rest of us get on with the business of the city.

But, if we must talk about everything that was wrong with New Orleans before May 3, 2010, let’s be honest and remember that it didn’t start on May 6, 2002, or May 2, 1994, with the coming of Morial II as some seem hell bent on trying to suggest. In fact, a cursory look at the city’s leadership during the mid-20th century indicates that any problems in New Orleans government with respect to cronyism, patronage, unkept promises or other unsavory political circumstances are much deeper than any one man or mayor.

As much as there is hope that Mayor Mitch Landrieu signals a positive change for our great city, there is also a realization that fulfilling the promise of a better, brighter New Orleans for our children and our children’s children to enjoy will require the commitment and dedication that extends beyond the next four or even eight years. If New Orleans is in a modern mess, it’s is mess that is more than 50 years in the making.

In 1946, Chep Morrison, who ran for mayor and entered office by painting himself as a reformer disbanded much of the old political organization that ran the city’s government before his arrival. He fired holdovers from the previous administration. This act was quite necessary because once in office, Morrison built his own machine with friends and supporters of his campaign. Called the Crescent City Democratic Association, many of its members easily found their ways to jobs in city hall or landed city contracts, which were plentiful as Mayor Morrison spearheaded the construction of the New Orleans Civic Center, the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, and oversaw the expansion and new construction of a number of public schools and of public housing while in office. In fact, the Crescent City Democratic Association was so strong that Mayor Morrison rode into three more terms as mayor, serving the second-longest tenure in the city’s top political seat in the history of the city.

By the time the Chicago-born Victor Schiro, a conservative Democrat became mayor in 1961, the power of Morrison’s Crescent City Democratic Association was beginning to wane. Still, the CCDA became his group by inheritance. In other words, he quite likely lined the pockets of some of its members with city jobs and contracts until that organization faded. And let’s not forget that Schiro was at the helm when Hurricane Betsy all but destroyed the 9th Ward the first time.

Following Schiro, Moon Landrieu led New Orleans from 1970 to 1978 and is rightfully credited with doing more than any mayor before him to open up city government and economic development to Black New Orleanians. For good or bad, even he could not escape criticism for preferential treatment for his political supporters, friends and family in awarding city contracts and jobs.

In 1978, New Orleans begins the first of what would be 32 years under African-American leadership--Dutch Morial, Sidney Barthelemy, Marc Morial and Ray Nagin. During these 32 years, “patronage” became an ugly word, especially as the individuals and businesses landing contracts and being hired at top levels in city government started looking more and more like the majority of the city’s residents.

The fact is that there is an element that unapologetically believes that New Orleans has declined under four Black mayors, and perceives the first White mayor since 1978 as some sort of knight in shining armor. For the sake of the entire city, we hope that Mayor Mitch Landrieu keeps his promises and helps to move our city forward. But to think that the four Black men that preceded him did any more to hurt this city than the 56 White men that preceded them is ridiculous.

If we’re going to look forward, let’s look forward. Let’s move forward. Let’s think forward.

If we’re going to walk down memory lane, let’s not suffer from selective amnesia.