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The mayor's election
of 2010
by Lovell Beaulieu

The Elite Re-capture Of City Hall: End Of An Era,
Beginning Of An Era
by Dr. Mtangulizi Sanyika

Slavery And The Episcopal Church In The Diocese Of Louisiana
by Orissa Arend

The State of Public Education in New Orleans
A Progress In Work?
by Lovell Beaulieu


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The mayor's election of 2010:
Neither mandate nor milestone

 

It’s been 41 years since Moon Landrieu was elected mayor of New Orleans with overwhelming Black support.

Back then, as he prepared to take the oath of office, a White politician whose election would mark the last of a White mayor for the next 40 years, he could easily surmise he would be re-elected four years later with little White opposition and certainly none from Blacks.

Landrieu’s premise was not without merit. New Orleans was neither ready for a Black mayor nor, given the racial demographics of the time, likely to elect one.

As for any viable White opponents for his second term, Moon Landrieu simply promoted their candidacies on a statewide level, thereby removing any strong local White opposition and he knew full well the idea of a strong Black opponent was not a consideration.

Despite African Americans being elected mayor in major urban areas such as Cleveland, Ohio and Gary, Indiana, in New Orleans they didn’t have their sights on the mayor’s office. Instead, it was legislative, district level, school board and other municipal offices that were targeted, as these were the ones where Black voting strength was concentrated and Black political organizations had a stronghold of sorts.

While the notion of an African American occupying the mayor’s office was still farfetched, these were also the waning days of the activist civil rights movement. Although the 1970s would carry a share of political and social unrest, from the Black Panther standoff in the Desire Housing Project to the sniper incident involving sharp shooter Mark Essex atop a downtown hotel, it was not until the end of the decade that African-Americans saw a real chance of winning the mayor’s office. That victory came in 1977 when Dutch Morial defeated Joe DiRosa with overwhelming African-American support and 20 percent of the White vote.

The more things change...

African-American voters in New Orleans today share many of the same challenges, frustrations, perceived victories and verifiable defeats that their counterparts faced four decades earlier. Much as was the case then, Blacks in New Orleans are looking once again at a 5-2 White-Black composition of the city council, eerily similar to the days when there were only two Blacks on the council during some of this city’s most turbulent, in terms of racial strife. Given the racial dynamics of full equality, fairness in the awarding of city contracts, the push to turn back the clock on African-American entrepreneurs and the newly minted oversight of the Inspector General’s office, African-Americans in New Orleans today are facing the sort of institutional racism and resistance that permeated the community some three decades ago.

Police brutality remains as virulent today as it was then, with even more rogue officers being taken down in federal investigations. A lack of economic parity remains as much a critical issue facing African-Americans in 2010 as it did in 1970. As for city contracts, not too common for African-Americans in the 1970s under Moon Landrieu, any mention of landing a contract under the outgoing African-American mayor wrongly warrants the outrage of a local political pundit and self-anointed guru of African-American politics who recently called for the cavalry in the name of U.S. Attorney Jim Letten. In this pundit’s eye, any contract awarded by Mayor Ray Nagin between February 6 and May 3, 2010, is cause for extra scrutiny, for White dissent, and even federal indictment.

As Moon Landrieu’s son Mitch prepares to take the office of mayor on May 3, similarities abound between what his father inherited from outgoing mayor Victor H. Schiro and what he is about to step into after eight years under Mayor Ray Nagin. They are strikingly similar in many ways, from the unfavorable media coverage afforded Schiro and Nagin and the borderline boosterism of today’s daily and weekly alternative newspapers as the inauguration of another Landrieu approaches.

There is one glaring distinction, however. Moon Landrieu received the overwhelming support of a majority of African-American voters and he also managed to win with a large turnout of Black voters. Conversely, Mitch Landrieu’s victory also included heavy Black support but a far smaller Black turnout. In the recent mayoral election, some 80 percent of African-American voters exercised their right NOT to vote for any candidate, including Mitch Landrieu, by staying home.

To be sure, by the time the polls closed on Feb. 6, 2010, Mitch Landrieu had won the mayor’s election after a mere 20 percent of African-American voters turned out. Those voters who didn’t go to the polls either felt disenfranchised or dissatisfied; history will determine which. But Mitch Landrieu’s victory was neither “landslide” nor “mandate,” favorite code words of the local media and columnists.