Mitchmentum?

Although we've spent the first half of Mitch Landrieu's term as Mayor getting to understand the ways he's really not so different from Ray Nagin, there's at least one aspect of the job in which he's been Nagin's polar opposite.

While Nagin's endorsement of candidates in other races was almost always a kiss of death, Landrieu has an "unblemished" record of "picking the ponies" as the headline to this NOLA.com item read before it was altered.

Since taking office in May 2010, Landrieu has an unblemished record in backing candidates for political office: Every candidate he has endorsed has won.

Although no decision has been made, a source close to Landrieu said the mayor is leaning toward (Cynthia) Willard-Lewis, who crossed racial lines in 2006 to back Landrieu in his failed bid to oust incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin.

The endorsement could be a big boost for Willard-Lewis who as of just a few days ago hardly had enough money in the war chest to boot up even one TV ad.

The move also would make sense for Landrieu. Even if it does put his perfect record at risk, it gives him an opportunity to pay back a favor to Willard-Lewis, thumb his nose a bit at sometime adversary Head, and slap Austin Badon for proposing to send the National Guard to New Orleans during spikes in the crime rate.

Mitch's cousin, Gary Landrieu, also a candidate, is running a commercial focusing on the city's much-maligned traffic cameras in which he says "I will guarantee you that these predatory cameras will be removed from our streets." Based on that alone, we know Mitch can't support his cousin's candidacy.

Backing Cynthia also helps Landrieu reinforce his reputation for "reaching across" the city's racial divide at a time when his police department continues to stir up tensions.

So it's a can't lose political proposition for Mitch, although we probably can't say the same for CWL. At the latest reporting, it appeared that Head basically had all the money as well as the backing of much of the city's business establishment up to and including this year's King of Carnival. So far, though, the only visible evidence of this, apart from the one TV spot is a proliferation of Head signs up and down Freret Street near her campaign headquarters as well as a massive ad buy at Uptwownmessenger.com. If you read Uptown Messenger via RSS feed, you get the ads mixed in with the stories. Last week, the Head items became so frequent that I began to think of it as the Stacy Daily.

Anyway, this Tuesday the 13th, the League of Women Voters is hosting a forum for the At-Large candidates at the First Universalist Church on the corner of Jefferson and Claiborne. Might be kicks if you're not doing anything.