John Bel Backs Banks in B

It's a bit out of the ordinary for a governor to endorse a city council candidate or, really, anybody at the municipal level.  John Bel likes this guy, though.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards pledged Friday morning to help Jay H. Banks win the District B seat on the New Orleans City Council, but said he does not intend to make an endorsement in the hotly contested mayor’s race.

Edwards appeared with Banks at a prayer breakfast Friday morning at Delgado Community College. After an introduction by representatives of several different faiths, Edwards praised both Banks’ character and his decades of public service in city government.

“You may not think there’s much tie-in between the governor of the state of Louisiana and a district councilman in New Orleans,” Edwards said. “But the truth is, it takes teamwork at all levels.”

A moment later, however, Edwards said he would not be endorsing in any other city-level races.

“You won’t see me involved in any other race in New Orleans,” Edwards said. “But I felt the need to be here for Jay, just like he was there for me.”

This has to be good news for Banks that he has the backing of the state's highest ranking elected Democrat as well as the Chair of the state party. Unfortunately they allowed her to speak too. 

State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson was among the speakers, and she among her praise for Banks’ readiness to lead District B, she also took a thinly veiled jab at Seth Bloom’s disclosure of a past opioid addiction.

“It is important that you have people who can spend full time on this, and not have to be focused on recovery in other ways,” Peterson said. “We all have issues. We all have times when we have suffered, and our families have suffered. People have depression, people have other issues in their family, and those need to be tended to very carefully. I don’t take that lightly, but in this role, with what we are facing in this community, we need somebody who is competent and is of the community, and who has character.”

Come on, man, there are plenty of legitimate things to go after Bloom for and this personal (and frankly, humanizing) issue is what we're gonna fixate on?  Do better. When Michelle Obama told Democrats to "go high" this is not what she meant.

Also it's pretty funny that Derrick Edwards was in the room watching the party big wigs who haven't lifted a finger to help his statewide campaign spend their morning on this district level council race. That must have been fun for him.