Ban Mayors 2025: Chapter 1 Midsummer

I thought I had this city figured out.  In New Orleans, or at least in the New Orleans I grew up in, when you tell people an event scheduled in the middle of summer on a weeknight begins at 6:30, surely you don't mean for them to show up before 7.  Maybe that's different now.  I don't know.  Anyway, I certainly wasn't the only person who calculated incorrectly the best time to arrive for VOTE's mayoral forum a couple Thursdays ago. By the time I got there, a sizeable crowd of my fellow stragglers had already been locked out of the over-capacity event. 

It's a shame too. People really seemed to be looking forward to this. I swear I saw couples on dates waiting outside. Or at least a lot of people were overdressed.  Mid-summer isn't exactly high social season around here. School is out. The Saints don't kick off for a few months. The Pelicans have been done for a while. It's too hot to spend much time outside. At the time of the forum, Essence Fest was still a few weeks away (and now that it's here, has turned out to be something of a dud anyway.) Politics is basically the only game in town right now.  And a good number of us couldn't get a ticket. 

That wasn't really anybody's fault. VOTE headquarters isn't a large space. They did the best they could. But maybe the next mayoral forum can book the Smoothie King Center.  One man who didn't make it in was giving the volunteers at the door a hard time about all of this. There was no need, though, as we were assured the event would be live streamed on Instagram and then made available later. "But the video will be biased!" the man shouted. In favor of who or what, he didn't say. Or, at least, I didn't wait around to find out. I hurried off to find somewhere air conditioned where I could watch on a screen.  What follows is a brief summary of the event (accounting, of course, for whatever unseen "bias" the video may be harboring.)  

In the above screen grab from Instagram, we see seated on our left, former criminal court judge Arthur Hunter. Judge Hunter isn't really seen as a major contender in this election. But he is a respected figure in political circles and we can consider him a serious candidate. Or at least, he's not a crackpot. He does have a history of ducking in or out of municipal campaigns serving as either a stalking horse or strategic spoiler, although it's not explicitly clear to what purpose.  On the right, is Once and Current Councilman Oliver Thomas famous for, among other things, his gig as a local talk radio host, some dabbling with acting in community theater, and that one time he pleaded guilty to charges of accepting bribes in exchange for fixing city parking lot contracts.  In the middle, dressed as an orange traffic cone, perhaps to emphasize her concern with fixing the city streets, is current Councilperson At-Large Helena Moreno.  

Moreno and Thomas were especially energetic in their delivery at this event.  It's opening night of a high stakes campaign and, obviously they wanted to set a dramatic tone. The actual rhetoric could use a little refinement. I'm already tired of hearing Moreno talk about "outside the box solutions." Hunter answered nearly every question by saying he is all about "doing the work and bringing people to the table." So it's a little discouraging to see we haven't updated our go-to cliches since 1996 or so. Also everyone thinks they've hit on a winner with variations on "govern like it's the Superbowl every day."  I understand why they think that. But until I hear any of them actually push back against the way corporate mega-events like this year's Superbowl exploit the city and its people, all of that posturing rings hollow. 

The night's format consisted of questions prepared by VOTE and some submitted ahead of time by audience members and partnering organizations. I'll try to organize candidate responses around general topics covered in the questions.  

Housing: Moreno talked a little bit about city owned properties. For decades, the city has struggled.. or neglected.. to make productive use of the large number of vacant buildings it owns or properties controlled by quasi-governmental agencies. I believe I heard Moreno actually use the term "public housing" while referencing such properties. Normally you hear politicians stop at the more vague phrase "back into commerce."  So that's something to keep an eye on. Thomas said he wants to meet with realtors and owners of home construction firms to see what these "experts" have to say about the problem; a decidedly more conservative, or what the punditry typically terms "business friendly" approach. 

Homelessness:  All three candidates shifted the focus to supportive services for people dealing with mental illness.  That's a laudable point of emphasis in a vacuum, but in this context it is more of a dodge.  It's true that many people suffering from homelessness also need mental health care. But politicians tend to marry the two issues in a way that implies mental illness is the cause of homelessness in general. And that simply is not the case.  Too often, focusing the discussion here is a way to pretend a problem isn't really a problem. 

Short Term Rentals: Here we got a perfect encapsulation of the problem with this issue from the beginning: Strong rhetoric from elected representatives that in no way matches their actions or intentions in reality.  "The real issue is out of town corporations buying up tons of homes and pushing people out," Moreno complained. "STRs are pushing people out of their neighborhoods. It's not morally correct," said Thomas. That's all fine and true.  But those of us who have been watching city councilmembers get performatively mad at while actively enabling this problem for over a decade are going to need to see solid action before getting too excited. Thomas finished his answer by basically passing the buck on up to the state legislature.  Also this week we learned that both councilmembers voted to approve an exception to the temporary commercial STR ban which allowed the owners of a building at 1201 Canal Street to begin evicting tenants in order to convert their homes into new Airbnbs. 

Criminal Justice and policing: All of the candidates spoke favorably of care economy interventions like universal Pre-K although Moreno added that day care facilities funded by a recently dedicated property tax millage "aren't being built fast enough."  Hunter boasted that as a judge he took charge of standing up "re-entry courts" to smooth the transition of incarcerated people back to civilian life. Moreno was quick to claim credit for the legislation creating these courts. Thomas tried to make a point about the economic impact of "lost production" from people excluded by incarceration histories. He has a valid point but there's something dehumanizing about conceiving of people in terms of their potential labor input. 

Oliver Thomas is currently pushing an ordinance that would expand NOPD's use of invasive surveillance technology such as facial recognition cameras and gunshot detection microphones.  The Washington Post recently reported that New Orleans police were already violating local laws banning them from using these tools and are, in fact, creating the most expansive surveillance dragnet in the US right now. This is most acutely concerning as the newly passed Republican budget greatly expands ICE's reach into cities like New Orleans where information gathered by surveillance tech will no doubt lead to more outrageous abductions of local residents like that of this 64 year old Iranian immigrant arrested at her home in Lakeview last month. 

It was in this context that we heard the most shocking comment of the evening from Thomas. When the candidates were asked how they would protect immigrant communities from ICE, Thomas bluntly stated, "illegal aliens who are criminal don't need to be here." Although he did express a desire to find "a humane way" to do deportations. So, good looking out, there.  

Infrastructure: Already mentioned this but I think it was Helena Moreno who first brought up the "Superbowl every day" bit with regard to street repairs. Later there was a question framed around that premise. But there are some problems with this slogan. It references a situation created by the Governor last year when he appointed business lobbyist Michael Hecht to lead a task force focused on making the city look nice for visiting media and corporate guests of the NFL coming into town for the Big Game. Hecht was given charge of some state funds but mostly just money out of the municipal budget to prioritize repairs to roads, lights and other things likely to catch the eyes of visitors in early February. But handing extraordinary power over to an unelected lobbyist to contract out tourist-facing rush jobs such as, in some cases, literally concealing blighted office towers behind wrap-around advertisements is a dubious model for our mayoral candidates to hold up as aspirational.   What Moreno (and Thomas who echoed these sentiments) should say is that they want quality, reliable infrastructure that works for every resident all the time.  It seemed like they wanted to make this point. But I'm not sure they've fully examined the full implication of the Superbowl example. 

Some other infrastructure points:  

Thomas, still on the equity kick, had a line about "fixing the streets in the 9th ward the same way they do in the Garden District."  I wonder if he's actually driven through the Garden District recently. Most of the streets there stay pockmarked. They're so bad, in fact, that I often wonder if the neighborhood wants it that way just to slow the traffic.  

Hunter mentioned "merging" the Sewerage and Water Board with the city Public Works Department. That would entail such a massive political and bureaucratic reorganization, though, that one has to wonder if he knows what he is saying.  On the other hand, I think Jacques Morial is an advisor to Hunter sometimes. So, maybe he does know. 

Moreno complained about the city's chronic problems paying its vendors on time, which, yep, good point. On the other hand, she says the problem here is "leadership," which... eh.. yawn.  

Odds and ends:  

The candidates were also asked about the funding the Public Defender's office, which they all support, about the state of the public schools, about which they all had decent but unremarkable points, and about the UMC nurses' labor dispute. All of the candidates claim to have pro-labor bonafides but didn't break any news with regard to the nurses' situation.  They were also asked to comment on the ongoing genocide in Gaza; a question which they all deflected via one or another version of "There needs to be ceasefire but I'm concerned about ceasefire in the streets of New Orleans..." to paraphrase both Moreno and Thomas's comments. The candidates may not want to grapple with this. But there are ways in which the mayor of a city like New Orleans can and does interface with the war crimes committed by the US military and its allies. So, like it or not, these candidates have a responsibility to think about that. Perhaps someone will ask the question in a way that is less easily brushed off. 

Speaking of brushing things off, the "lightning round" portion of the evening brought us the Yes/No question: "Do you support outright public ownership of public utilities?"  The room went silent for a good thirty seconds while Helena Moreno, gears visibly turning in her head, thought about this one.  Finally, the answer she came up with was, "Yes and no."  

Oof.

Of course, these three aren't the only candidates participating in this year's sweepstakes. The forum was well ahead of the qualifying period which actually begins this coming Wednesday.  According to VOTE, at the time, these were the only three candidates to file campaign finance reports which is why they were invited to appear on stage. 

Lingering around outside I noticed signage on the neutral ground planted by some of the more niche candidates some of whom were giving interviews outside. I thought this bit from James Finn's T-P write up captured the image well. 

Still, a handful of fringe candidates are mounting campaigns, several of whom arrived at Thursday's debate after protesting having been excluded from the event. Counselor Ricky Twiggs, a political independent, and businessperson Renada Collins shook hands with audience members before the forum began. Former 911 call center operator Tyrell Morris tried to enter the event but was turned away after the space reached capacity. He peered in through the space's sliding glass doors as the event got underway.

Finally we should note all of this took place a week before another big name candidate shook up the entire field with this announcement.  

Business owner Frank Scurlock announced his run for New Orleans mayor on Thursday, saying that if elected, he would ensure a safe, business-friendly city. 

Scurlock is running as an independent and his campaign is self-financed, according to a press release issued Thursday and his campaign website. Scurlock, who is known for his family's inflatable party attractions business and his attempt to acquire the former Six Flags site, ran for mayor in 2017 and for governor in 2023. 

Also, Royce Duplessis is running. He says he has to for some reason. 

“Six months ago, I made the very difficult decision not to run for mayor,” Duplessis said in a post on Instagram Sunday evening. “But after continuing to listen to the people of this city, your frustrations, your disappointments, your confusion, and most of all your lack of faith in the future, it became painfully clear that I have to run.”

It's painful for him to have to do this. Sounds like somebody's been twisting some arms. Who, though? and why?  During a sweaty kick-off speech to a packed house at the Ashe center, Royce wasn't long on specifics but he did emphasize three points: 1) Port expansion. This is a major priority for state and local business leaders struggling with neighborhood opposition in St. Bernard Parish, Trump tariff chaos internationally, and competition from modernized facilities in Mobile and in Houston. 2) Support for service industry workers. There was some implication that this would be a priority within the city budget somehow, but nothing specific. 3) "Build 40,000 new housing units." Again, not much information as to who will be building them or for whom or how. Rhetorically, the thrust of his speech was basically, "we wouldn't have so many problems if it weren't for all these dang politics." Which is a weird thing for a politician to say on the day he is getting into a political race. Especially one he says he didn't want to run in. 

Which brings us back to the question of why is Royce running? We'll learn more about that as the campaign goes on and we find out which funders and powerbrokers line up in his corner. But we can see why he might be an appealing option to some still looking in from the outside.  At the outset, I think the rhetoric about "putting politics aside" might be the key to understanding that. Royce could offer a viable third lane in what had been shaping up as a field polarized, not only by race, but by matters of professionalism vs. patronage, transplants vs. locals, etc. Familiar dynamics that map out in a way Royce can kind of float above, or at least appear to. 

Allies of Governor Landry seeking an entry point to "bring the city to heel," might take advantage of that.  Royce is seen as a vocal opponent of the Governor in Baton Rouge. But he's often been receptive to Landry's designs on reforming local governance; putting more decision making power in the hands of state controlled boards rather than locally responsive entities, that sort of thing. Let's watch and see what he has to say about Sewerage and Water Board reform the next time that comes up.  Royce has also been a friend to big business and real estate money in New Orleans. One example we've already mentioned is the port expansion plank he launched his campaign with last week. Another example, he was instrumental in getting tax breaks authorized for the controversial (possibly imperiled?)  "River District" development. 

On the more Democratic side of things, Royce has had alliances with the Ike Spears-Cedric Richmond-Troy Carter... um... what is the term for this? It's not a "machine" really. More of a gravitational center - a blob, maybe(?) of patronage fed by bail bonds and oil and gas money along with some other unsavory interests.  Anyway, it makes up a key part of the Democratic Party establishment (such as it is) in Louisiana.  Likely this support would have ended up with Moreno. Now it may be back up for grabs.  If it shifts to Duplessis, that may also signal to conservative crime panic reactionaries who aren't thrilled that their closest ideological ally in the race, Oliver Thomas, is an admitted felon, that Royce might be someone they can compromise with. 

Anyway, it's subtle but we can see how Duplessis's candidacy might appeal to both liberal and conservative establishment donor bases. It's only been a week but it's tempting to call him the front runner already.  But let's wait and see where the money goes from here.  As of a week ago, Moreno still had a commanding lead there.   We still have a long hot summer ahead of us. 

Somebody should really do something

Does Troy Carter know what that is?  Doesn't seem like it. 

Attendees told Carter that they felt helpless, confused and worried about the federal government’s actions. In response, Carter told the concerned residents to take to social media and to call elected officials in Louisiana and other states to express their dissatisfaction with Democratic leaders in Congress.

One attendee, Andrew Cosgrove, asked Carter how to increase political engagement among residents. Carter’s response — encouraging voting and organizing among church groups and on social media — did little to satisfy Cosgrove or other attendees who spoke with Verite News.  

“It seemed like he had no plan and no answers,” Cosgrove told Verite News after the town hall. “He’s saying, ‘Make sure you vote next time,’ but he’s talking to a room of folks who voted and then took time out of their night to go to a town hall meeting, so that didn’t make any sense to me.”

You see, Troy is simply the elected representative to the US Congress.  He's not really there to do anything difficult.  It falls to you, then, to exercise your much greater power to... vote sometimes and also do posts.  Whatever you do, don't yell at him about it.  Remember, he just wants all this stuff off of his desk. 

This might be interesting if it wasn't so predictable. I think I'm just getting old now but I do get tired of watching a cycle stuck on repeat. I used to wonder if the latest turn of the ratchet would be the one the finally breaks it. But I don't know if I still think that can ever really happen. The Democrats, in the main, seem ready to make their same familiar move: not so much opposing the radical right as figuring out how to benefit from its ascendance.

Here is a recent interview with Minnesota Governor (and 2024 VP candidate) Tim Walz where he looks forward to Trump's unilateral and illegal shuttering of federal agencies as a new "opportunity."

How much can Democrats can rebuild, of what Trump is un-building right now? We’ve seen cases where employees are laid off, a court orders them back, but they’re still laid off. Do Democrats run in 2028 on re-establishing it?

I use the analogy of the car running out of gas. Car runs out of gas, you go get a can, you pour some in, you start it up, and it’s all fine. This is the car running out of oil, and it’s broken. And what I’m saying is, he is breaking it. This is a little bit in the Ezra Klein space: Democrats need to acknowledge that not all these agencies work perfectly. All of us who teach would agree to that. You know, we say how important the Department of Education is, how it does incredible work, but we would all argue there’s ways they could be better.

I think we need to start messaging right now. We need to put our experts on this. How will we build back next time? I think it’s an opportunity. I think it’s an opportunity to create the agencies the way we saw them in the first place, functioning better, without all the barnacles. So, Trump might be doing us a favor. He stripped it down, he blew the motor up. We’re going to put a new motor in it and take off. And I think that’s how we have to start thinking about it.

He's just articulating the thing we've known for a while. Democrats actually agree with Republican austerity policy. They, too, want to dismantle what's left of the welfare state. But they don't want to be the party seen as responsible for that happening. And, of course, they want to make sure they're in position to grab whatever coins they can that spill from the smashed pinata. 

None of this is new. It's just worse now than ever because, well, that's what happens when rot runs unchecked for so long. What is DOGE, after all, besides just the latest and most extreme form of neoliberalism. 

One important reason for the trend toward privatization is the long-standing, bipartisan belief in Washington that private-sector contractors are inherently more efficient than government employees. The Reagan administration embraced contracting with open arms, despite early warning signs, and eventually initiated a formal commission on privatization. This was followed up by the “National Partnership for Reinventing Government,” through which President Bill Clinton promised that he would “make our Government work better” with the help of the business world. This private-sector fetish remains strong within the Trump administration, which has encouraged government workers “to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”

Despite how widespread this perception of contractor efficiency is among policymakers, there has never been much strong evidence for it. In 1994, a Defense Department inspector general report noted that “Federal agencies often contract for services at a cost that is 25 percent to 40 percent greater than if Federal employees had been used to perform the services.” A 2011 report by the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight found that private contractors are often greatly overpaid in comparison to government workers. And in the situations where waste and abuse is identified in government programs, for-profit contractors are often the culprits.

We've been on this long path to destruction for a generation or so.  Politicians at every level of government and in both parties have specialized in smash and grab for longer than most of us have been eligible to vote for or against any of them.  Why are things so shitty? Because the entire era in which we've been alive has been about making things shittier and shittier for the sake of concentrating wealth in fewer hands. The thing that has been happening is still happening. It's happening in your city on a routine basis. 

Under the auspices of his charitable group, the Wisdom Foundation, and a newly created for-profit company called Civilized.ai, Wisdom and his team had been working for months with the city to integrate “newer technologies” with the city’s infrastructure. To do that, he planned to work with the city’s existing database of 311 requests. 

In late 2023, he rolled out FixNOLA, a website that catalogues and gamifies the city’s 311 data regarding road and drainage issues, creating a leaderboard to keep track of top “fixers,” a mix of contractors and volunteers who provide photographs and updates to existing 311 requests. Then, in February of this year, Wisdom launched ChatNOLA, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence that can help log 311 requests as well as provide updates on already submitted requests while communicating in a human-like manner.

Behind the scenes, Wisdom and his nonprofit have rankled some city staffers, who noted that Wisdom is doing this work without a formal agreement with the city government. They are also concerned about whether Wisdom’s team is getting access to the personal information, such as phone numbers and home addresses, that residents enter into the city’s 311 system when they make a complaint. 

Five city employees familiar with 311 systems and protocols told Verite News that they are concerned that Wisdom, who has no background in public service administration, is creating a parallel 311 system when the city is in the process of implementing an already purchased new system for processing 311 data. (The employees declined to be identified publicly for fear of retaliation.)

The city already publishes 311 complaints on a public-facing database. But it scrubs the data of personal information, such as the complainants’ names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

Neither the Wisdom Foundation nor Civilized.ai has any contract or agreement with the city outlining the terms of this work or setting limits on how it can use the personal data it collects.

You can see the continuance of this in evidence as the field of candidates for this year's municipal elections begins to take shape.  A group of donors, politicos, and other local heavy hitters is hoping to influence the campaign by publishing its own Project 2025 document of sorts.

The recommendations from the City Services Coalition, which was formed in 2024 by real estate developer Pres Kabacoff, attorney David Marcello and others, focus on streamlining the structure and management of city government.

They include a proposed overhaul of the Sewerage & Water Board, empowering the mayor’s top deputy to manage day-to-day city operations, reforming the civil service system and clarifying the role of the city attorney.

The effort comes seven months before voters head to the polls to decide who will represent them on the City Council and who will succeed Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who is term-limited and unable to seek re-election. 

The coalition, which released the 216-page policy manual during a news conference Monday afternoon, has already met with announced and prospective mayoral candidates, including Helena Moreno, Arthur Hunter and Oliver Thomas.

Basically what's going on among the local politicians, donors and consulting pros is they're all trying to maximize their potential for getting a piece of whatever new patronage conduits are created after the next round of privatization.  With all the vandalism going on at the national and state levels, locally we have opportunists not pushing back against any of that but rather positioning themselves to catch as much as they can of the money that gets shaken loose. Somebody should really do something about all of this, you say?  Well, that's what your favs are doing. The same thing they always do. 

Reformer's dance

Here is reform candidate for District Atttorney Jason Williams during the city budget hearings this month rejecting calls to defund police. 

City Council members were generally complimentary of the department, and did not signal that there would be any major changes to the proposed budget. 

City Council President Jason Williams — who is also running for Orleans Parish District Attorney, casting himself as a progressive criminal justice reformer —  addressed the calls to defund the police at one point, but he questioned whether or not there were ways to change public perception of police, rather than exploring the idea of cutting the department’s budget further. 

“Given the changing of culture, people crying out for defund the police, people protesting the departments — whether or not there has been a particular egregious situation in their communities or not — across the board there has certainly been a different perception of police officers and law enforcement,” Williams said. “What are we doing now, or what can the council do to start addressing that perceived lack of trust or actual lack of trust, to redefine the NOPD?”

Here is reform candidate Jason Williams suggesting that we put more cops in the schools, while also suggesting that everyone's "older brothers and siblings" are all in jail, maybe?

Williams suggested focusing recruitment efforts toward people who might not normally think to go into law enforcement, and outreach programs in elementary schools to change young people’s perception of the police.

“I would encourage you to figure out a way to get in front of elementary school kids before they have older brothers and siblings helping to frame their narrative about what police mean, and what police do in their community,” Williams said.

Here also is reform candidate Jason Williams helping us get a lid on NOPD's use of intrusive and unconstitutional surveillance technology by.... helping NOPD write a policy that lets them use intrusive and unconstitutional surveillance technology.  

Jones told The Lens that the NOPD only used facial recognition for “violent cases,” but that “documentation of frequency of use of Facial Recognition is not currently available.” Asked whether there was any written policy or procedure regarding the technology, Jones responded by saying that NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson “is currently working with Councilman [Jason] Williams on a policy as to when facial recognition tools should be used.”

Everyone agrees. Of the two candidates remaining for District Attorney, Jason is definitely the more inclined to speak out on behalf of reforming the criminal punishment system. So, you know, as the saying goes, with reformers like these, who needs anti-reformers?  

Well, it turns out, a lot of people think we do. 

Cannizzaro hasn’t endorsed in the race to replace him, but Williams made him a centerpiece of his attacks on Landrum on Thursday, calling her a “surrogate” chosen when the current DA realized he couldn’t win re-election. Cannizzaro did not qualify for the race.

Williams also sought to use against Landrum her stack of endorsements, a list that includes five of Williams’ six colleagues on the council and the BOLD political organization. “You shouldn't have to go through (Councilman) Jay Banks or the BOLD political organization to get to the next DA,” Williams said.

Landrum said Williams had sought the same endorsements she won, and she rejected the idea that Cannizzaro would have any hold over her.

Landrum has wrapped them all up, basically.  It's been something to see.  Not too long ago, Jason Williams, coming off of two overwhelming victories in citywide council races, seemed like he was on a fast track to unseating Cannizzaro, or possibly becoming the next mayor. But now it looks like the whole establishment is lining up against him. The only significant voice we're still waiting to hear from, in fact, is third place primary finisher Arthur Hunter's.  What does Arthur want? Well it sounds like he wants to watch the candidates dance between both sides of the reform question. 

Just out of the money was former Judge Arthur Hunter, with 28%. He has yet to endorse, but in a statement Friday he called on the contenders to prove they would “focus on violent crime while restoring public trust in the DA’s office.”

But dancing is what the so-called "reform" candidate Jason Williams has been doing all year. And look where that has gotten him. I wonder if he will recognize that.

Normalcy in our time, normalcy in our town

Did we talk about the Democratic convention on here yet?  It's been such a weird year in so many ways. Too often I find myself falling behind the noise before I can write enough of it down.  That's not good. Keeping good notes on this website has been such a useful tool for me in just holding it together over the years, I am afraid if I let it go for too long I might dissociate completely from reality.  Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.... 

Oh wait. Here it is. Just a quick summary because I was probably in a hurry. 

But one theme the Democrats pushed relentlessly was Joe Biden's capacity for "empathy."  In Zoom video after dimly lit Zoom video, speakers testified about the times Joe personally had reached out to someone to let them know how well he understood their trauma, how much he cared about and validated their pain.  Almost nothing was said about what he planned to do about any of it.  In fact, one may have come away from the convention with the impression that nothing can be done.  It's a strange thing to offer to voters but it does seem to be in line with the Democratic brand. 

They're basically saying, yeah we know, your life sucks right now. Look at Joe. He's out there feeling your pain. He understands. Meanwhile the policy program is full of little ways to make it easier for you to get used to and cope with the shittiness. We're not out to change the shitty conditions. We're here to valorize your experience of suffering through them.

The hallmarks of this ideology of free market fatalism are visible throughout the mainstream of the Democratic Party.  For example, the same tone was easily detectable in Mayor Cantrell's "State of the City" address delivered just around the time of the convention this year.

“We are all well-versed in the unwavering focus, the hope, and the strength it takes to rebuild from what can seem like disaster,” she said. “I’m here to deliver a message of hope and point the way forward to our future beyond this pandemic.”

The city is now five months past the initial outbreak, which trailed a range of side effects including rampant unemployment and evictions and a city budget now estimated to be more than $100 million in the red. Frequently harkening back to the 1853 yellow fever pandemic, which claimed 8,000 lives, and other, more recent tragedies, Cantrell framed the city and its people as among the most capable of rising to the challenge the current crisis presents.

“We are no strangers to trauma and disruption, you know better than me,” Cantrell said, noting next week will be the 15-year anniversary of the levee failures and flooding set off by Hurricane Katrina.

Again, the message is, our lives are marked by trauma but the mayor knows it and wants us to have "hope."  What, specifically, should we hope for? Well, it's murky.  She says we shouldn't have to worry about making rent.  But her policy response is embedded in trickle-down economics and charitable fundraising projects administered by private non-profits.  And, above all else, great pains are taken to ensure we do not saddle our landlords with worries of their own.

Acknowledging a tripling in the eviction rate, Cantrell touted various rental assistance programs — including a fundraising effort by the nonprofit set up for her transition into office — and said she is fighting for federal assistance.

“The time of a pandemic is not the time for our people to lay awake at night wondering how to make next month’s rent,” Cantrell said. “It is also not the time for landlords to face missing mortgage payments or losing investments they spent a lifetime to build.”

The Dem convention and Cantrell's speech took place a week prior to the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's arrival in New Orleans. That week, a New York Times feature called attention to the long term effects of that disaster and what everyone should know by now are the harmful consequences of the unjust and ineffectual "recovery" policies implemented in its wake.  Sorry to pull such a long quote here.

Pre-Katrina, there was already a considerable shortage of affordable housing in New Orleans. The situation has only become worse, as many of the affordable units the city had were never rebuilt after the storm and the urban core became whiter and wealthier.

New Orleans now has roughly 33,000 fewer affordable housing units than it needs, according to HousingNOLA, a local research and advocacy group. There are opportunities in every corner of the city to fix this, argued Andreanecia Morris, the executive director of HousingNOLA, when we met in her office in Mid-City on South Carrollton Avenue.

Most New Orleanians are renters. Pre-Katrina, the market rate for a one-bedroom apartment was around $578 monthly. It has roughly doubled since then, meaning a full-time worker must now earn about $18 per hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment.

Real wages, however, have stalled, and many of the places that employ New Orleanians remain closed. Tens of thousands of workers in the city’s beloved music, drinks, food and tourism businesses — who were the most likely to lose their livelihoods both after the storm and now during the pandemic — make a minimum wage of $7.25.

In some other cities, Ms. Morris explained, unaffordable rent “is the result of a housing stock shortage, but in New Orleans we have a vacancy rate of about 20 percent!” In total, there are about 37,700 vacant units. I could feel it biking and driving through the curvilinear streets that weave from the river to the lake, passing by elegant, unfilled properties on otherwise vibrant blocks, then by neatly rebuilt houses sitting lonely in areas frozen in 2007: three empty lots for every six homes you see.

Residents like Terence Blanchard, the Grammy Award-winning trumpeter, who resides in a thriving midcentury neighborhood along Bayou St. John, live this dichotomy. “People talk about the recovery,” he told me as we stood on his dock overlooking the water and City Park. “But if you go to my mom’s house in Pontchartrain Park, there was no real recovery.”

The federal housing vouchers mostly known by the shorthand “Section 8” — which subsidize rent payments above 30 percent of participants’ income — fully cover “fair market rate rent,” which in New Orleans is calculated as $1,034 to $1,496 for a one-bedroom apartment. That means even in increasingly upscale, higher-ground areas of town there is little stopping developers and landlords with vacant properties from lowering rents by a few hundred dollars and still being able to generate revenue.

For Ms. Morris, the continued holdout by many landlords that want “a certain kind of family,” or Airbnb customers, has grown to “psychotic” levels of classism and racism. “At a certain point,” she said, “the math has to let you at least manage your prejudices.”

Whenever the post-2005 destruction and gentrification of New Orleans is discussed, I am obliged to point out again that none of it was an accident.  Since, literally days after Katrina landed, we were already trying to warn that this was going to happen and it would happen as a result of deliberate policy choices made by people who wield political power in New Orleans. Then it happened. It happened every day. Sometimes in very big ways and other times as part of a general creep. But the whole time, we were saying out loud to anyone who would listen, this is happening, the money power, the real estate, tourism and business owners were gutting the city.

And it didn't matter. They did what they wanted. Because that's what always happens. They have the power. We have nothing. You can see it, you can say it, you can object all you want. But they do whatever they want and you don't matter.  Even now, in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a depression, there is no such thing as housing justice. Because they can afford to be "psychotic" in their stubbornness and no one with any political power will stop them.

Even at the lowest point of crisis, political leaders emphasize the concerns of landlords holding them equal to or greater than the housing stressed poor. Today, a week after a Category 2 hurricane ripped through and knocked out everyone's power we're still struggling with worries over whether or not the polling locations can operate.  Guess what was back up and running immediately, though.

Public transportation is down, power is out for 90% of the city, but eviction court is open. We have monitors headed in to watch how the judges handle evictions after a category 2 hurricane, during a pandemic.

— Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative (@JanePlaceCLT) October 29, 2020

The thing about New Orleans politics people most misunderstand is how fundamentally conservative it is. The governing ideology in all the major power centers is pro-police, pro-landlord, anti-labor. It's rare to find any observer, let alone someone from out of town, describe it this way, though. Which is why this New Yorker piece by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is refreshing. Taylor is writing primarily about the superficial racial politics of the Biden-Harris campaign but within that argument we find this passage.

There is little consideration of how a municipal administrator’s class standing may complicate solidarities with those it is simply assumed they will represent. This is especially true for Black elected officials, many of whom come from working-class origins but whose class standing shifts when they move into political office. In May, 2018, LaToya Cantrell became the first Black woman to be elected as mayor of New Orleans. Cantrell, who first moved to New Orleans in 1990, in order to attend Xavier, a historically Black university, was deeply involved in community organizing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and served on the city council for six years before ascending to the position of mayor. Despite this background of community engagement, Cantrell has stood on the sidelines during a strike by a small group of Black sanitation workers, over demands for hazard pay and P.P.E. during the pandemic. Sanitation work is outsourced in New Orleans, allowing contracting companies to pay workers less than the city’s living-wage ordinance allows. In this case, when the sanitation workers decided to strike, one of the subcontractors procured a contract for prison laborers, who worked for even less than the striking workers. Even as these “essential workers” have called upon the mayor to help them secure P.P.E. and better pay, Cantrell has refused to intervene directly, saying that these issues are between the contractor and the workers. There is no inherent solidarity along the lines of race, and, when class conflict is introduced into the calculation, it is even more fraught.

This is a city where only a person who promises not to take from the rich and give to the poor and "all that kind of crap" can be mayor.  Policy can only be formulated through a distinctly neoliberal lens. Every problem can only be met with some sort of "business incentive" public-private partnership, or other such trickle down scheme to benefit the ruling classes.

Meanwhile, even within the (very small and insular) world of progressive activism you can't get agreement on basic principles like, for example, housing as a human right or that teachers deserve unions.  And, in any case, the decisions that matter get made at a 10,000 foot remove from any of that through deals between political careerists, tourism bosses, and real estate interests. The public side of the political process, such as it is, is just nonsensical theater.

Which brings us to today's elections.  If you've voted early, or if you've wandered into a polling location this afternoon, you may have noticed that there are a lot of things going on with your ballot besides just that dismal Presidential election.  What even is all that stuff?  Well, if you really want to know the details you should stop here and go read the excellent and extremely thorough Antigravity and DSA voter guides.  But if you want the short version, stay here and I will tell you. 

Basically three things are happening. A slate of reformist candidates mostly associated with the public defender's office is trying to win a bunch of judicial seats.  A few somewhat progressive minded challengers are trying to wrest one or two school board seats away from incumbent charter school privatizers with national corporate backing. And, all of this is happening in the context of various power brokering institutions trying to consolidate their positions as electoral and patronage gatekeepers ahead of next year's municipal elections. 

The linchpin in the insider tug of war is the DA's race where Mayor Cantrell's alliance with BOLD, which did very well in the legislative races last year, is backing Keva Landrum. You can read a little bit about the dynamics of the race in this Advocate story about the fundraising. Landrum has positioned herself as the more conservative "law and order" candidate compared to Jason Williams and Arthur Hunter who she has criticized as "backed by third party special interests." Each of their platforms is invested in reforming the criminal legal system more aggressively than she would like.

As I type this right now, the polls are open for another twenty minutes. But my strong suspicion is the establishment candidates will win most of these judicial and school board races and Landrum will run first in the DA race.  Overall the theme of the night is conservative establishment results at home to match the general "return to normalcy" nationwide as Joe Biden becomes the next President.

Maybe that is disappointing.  But disappointment has pretty much been baked into this since March. Here is what I told the kids yesterday on a parallel internet. We know that the Biden Presidency only represents the replacement of one kind of conservatism with another. We know that, regardless of the election result, we are no nearer to overcoming the massive obstacles to human happiness posed by poverty, racism, disease, empire, and climate catastrophe. And we know these are all deeply embedded consequences of systemic capitalist exploitation and that the work of rooting them out has not even begun. 

But, if only for the sake of your own mental well being and that of your neighbors, please do not deny yourself the chance to revel in the pure and absolute joy of seeing Donald Trump ejected from the White House. Fuck that guy. He's almost gone. It's okay to enjoy that.

It's Friday, are we tuned?

Are we staying that way?

In his last two campaigns for DA, Cannizzaro filed to run on the first day of qualifying, according to records from the Louisiana Secretary of State. Reached by phone, Billy Schultz, who has worked as a political consultant for Cannizzaro, said he didn’t have any information about the DA’s plans.

“Stay tuned,” he said, “that’s all I can tell ya.”

If Leon really is bowing out, that could open up the dynamics of the DA race quite a bit.  Candidates will now have to build their cases as to what sort of "reform" they might stand for beyond just putting Not-Leon in the office. This article finds each of the announced candidates going out of their way to brag a little bit about their willingness to put people in jail, though. So we're not especially optimistic.  But, hey, stay tuned. 

Update:  Kind of an anti-climax here. 

In a statement posted on his office's website, he said “I have proudly devoted the past 42 years of my life to the cause of making New Orleans a safer place to live, work, raise families and visit. But after long discussions with my wife and family, it became apparent that my interest in serving another term has waned, outweighed by a desire to spend more time with my family, especially my nine grandchildren born since I first took office. This was not an easy decision, but it is the one with which I’m most at peace."

People had all sorts of wild theories going about Leon getting a federal appointment or running for some other office. But no, he's gonna spend more time with the fam.   That's what we had to stay tuned for?

Just make stuff up

The New Orleans D.A.'s office has an interesting approach to establishing the facts of a case.

One of the complaints accuses an assistant district attorney in Cannizzaro's office, Scott Vincent, of repeatedly trying to hoodwink higher courts, often by misrepresenting what happened in lower court proceedings.

The attorney, Thomas Frampton, cites Lewis’ case and 11 other Orleans Parish prosecutions over the past year in which he claims Vincent misstated or invented facts or the law in appellate briefs.

In his other complaint, Frampton takes aim at Cannizzaro, claiming the district attorney knows all about Vincent’s false statements in Lewis’ case and refuses to fix them.

Leon must be angling for Joe Biden's VP slot if he wants to put people in jail that badly.  He still hasn't said if he wants to be reelected D.A. or not. One assumes he does, but it's likely to be a more difficult race than usual now that Jason Williams has made it official. 

But Williams said Tuesday that New Orleans needs a shift away from the tough-on-crime style of prosecution that has defined the DA's Office starting with the 30-year tenure of Harry Connick Sr., who first employed current District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro as a prosecutor.

"At a time when criminal justice reform is being effectively implemented throughout the country, our DA continues locking up low-level, nonviolent offenders in the misguided belief that the more people we put behind bars, the safer we will be," Williams said.

The announcement means Williams is first out of the gate for a highly anticipated race. Cannizzaro has yet to say whether he will seek a third term, and recently retired Criminal District Court Judge Arthur Hunter also hasn’t declared his intentions, despite persistent chatter that he might mount a challenge from the left.

About that Arthur Hunter thing.  I'm no professional politics talking guy but I would venture to say his chances are pretty slim with Williams in the race. But it looks like there may be more personal reasons to consider stemming from that Lewis case. 

Frampton said his meeting with Cannizzaro featured some choice words by the district attorney for Hunter, the judge who presided over Lewis' case and ordered the disputed mistrial.

Cannizzaro described Hunter as “pathetic” and “incompetent,” according to Frampton.

“Mr. Cannizzaro stated that the mistrial had come about because the trial judge ‘didn’t know what the f--k he was doing,’” Frampton wrote. “He shared his belief that the trial court’s mistrial declaration occurred because ‘the judge just got lazy like he normally does over there.’”

Or maybe they'll just let Jason be D.A. now all on his own.  Okay that's a bigger whopper than anything Leon's ADAs could come up with.