Stacy's move

Kind of figured this was coming. 

LaToya Cantrell was endorsed Tuesday morning in her bid for the District B seat on the City Council by Council President Stacy Head, a popular and influential voice in Uptown politics who twice won the seat in 2006 and 2010.


Head has been a political rival of Mayor Mitch Landrieu on a number of issues lately, and her endorsement of Cantrell stands in contrast with Landrieu’s earlier endorsement of Dana Kaplan, whom Cantrell faces in the Dec. 8 runoff.

This is a natural move. And this was precisely the right time for Head to make it. Beyond the obvious bit about Stacy not wanting to deal with a new person on the council who owes favors to Mitch, she's also trying to preserve the electoral coalition that put her where she is today.

Head's base is Uptown conservative white money combined with Uptown slightly more liberal, perhaps less wealthy, whites who are interested in "reform." Whites as a whole are a minority in New Orleans but this specific coalition of traditional conservatives with young (sort of) progressive professional class whites has been especially assertive in post-Katrina politics. Stacy Head has been the catalyst behind and primary beneficiary of that phenomenon. She's ridden that to a narrow victory in a city-wide At-Large election and may now harbor bigger ambitions.  But in order to realize those ambitions, she'll have to protect the base she's built.

The only way for Head to remain a major player is to keep all those Uptown white people on the same page. This can be tricky because there are natural fissures to exploit.  In their own ways, each of the District B candidates threatens to peel away the less conservative part of Stacy's coalition. But Kaplan is especially problematic for Head, in part, because she's another young white lady, but more importantly because she appears to be aligning with Mitch.

Mitch, obviously, also pulls strongly from among middle class whites. By backing Kaplan, he's laying a claim on a big chunk of Head's base. Head pretty much has to make a counter-claim here. So the stakes here are potentially pretty high. Head is trying to maintain her momentum while Mitch could seize an opportunity to break things up a bit and set the stage for some new realignments in District B... and by extension, citywide.

Gonna be a busy few weeks

Holidays plus work projects plus crashing hard drive could lead to lighter posting than usual here over the next few weeks.

I'd like to post something about the council runoffs if I get the chance.  But for now I can't go too far in depth about it other than point you to AZ with only this comment:

Every suspicion Dambala raises of Ms Kaplan could just as easily apply to Ms Cantrell had the powers that be chosen their horses differently. I expect either candidate will be every bit as amenable to going along to get along with Mitch's increasingly dominant agenda of selling us all out to the hospitality industry regardless of the winner.  Yeah, it's a little depressing.

Meanwhile, Eric Strachan, who owes his career to Jackie Clarkson and Stacy Head, and who ran a stupid and desperate last minute attack on Kaplan during the primary, has endorsed Cantrell. If I had to guess at what's going on here, it's this.  Uptown white yuppies who can be split up between old Peggy Wilson type Carnival aristocrats and  younger professional types who skew a bit more liberal in certain superficial ways.   Team Stacy has been successful at keeping all of those people on the same page as far as local politics are concerned. They probably see Kaplan as a threat to split up their base a little should Head run for mayor next time around.  Best for them to nip that in the bud.

Stupid dirty trick time

Eric Strachan is throwing some ugly Hail Marys here at the end.

Gloves are off in District B. Just got a Strachan mailer labeling Kaplan a "New York community organizer" 1/3
— Stephanie Grace (@stephgracenola) November 3, 2012

and attacking her mangmnt of "so-called Juvenile Justice Project, a pressure group that stands for letting juvenile criminals out of jail."
— Stephanie Grace (@stephgracenola) November 3, 2012

So this is a bit of a surprise

Up until this point in the race I would have thought Cantrell had most of the political establishment support locked up.  Not quite all of it, I guess.

A week after grabbing attention with the largest remaining fundraising war chest, Dana Kaplan bolstered her campaign for the open District B seat on the New Orleans City Council by announcing endorsements Wednesday from Mayor Mitch Landrieu, U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond and five other prominent elected officials.

Kaplan picked up Mitch, Cedric, Erroll Williams, Marlin Gusman, Helena Moreno, Jared Brossett, and Walt Leger.  That's quite a cross-section of heavy hitters singing the praises of someone who sells herself as a  grass-rootsy newcomer.

I'm not sure what to make of that. The next year is going to be a rough time in local politics.  Gusman is going to be dealing with federal consent decree oversight of his shoddily run prison. Mitch is getting ready to gut civil service and I'm guessing privatize some city services shortly thereafter. There will probably be another attempt at a "Ho-Zone" style giveaway to hospitality ownership. Water rates will be raised and raised again. The rent will continue to be too damn high.

The hope was that Kaplan wouldn't be on board with the big boys with regard to at least some of this stuff.  Or at the very least that she'd be less likely to buy into the bullshit than Cantrell or Strachan would. Now, who knows?

This is going to be an interesting race. I don't know if there's any polling data but if I had to guess I'd say Cantrell runs first with Kaplan making it a runoff. But that's just me throwing blind darts right now.

Update: I find this hard to believe but could this shift from Cantrell to Kaplan have really been all about the blunt? If so, our politics may be even dumber than we like to think they are.

But, at the same time, if that's really the explanation for these endorsements, think about what a significant distortion that minor event would have created in this race.

Upperdate: Speaking of polling data, Gambit is running one of those totally super-scientific online polls for the District B race right now.  When I looked at those results, Eric Strachan had over 50%.  But we already knew the online Gambit audience was a virtual "Faubourg Stacy" anyway.

Uppestdate: I could be way off base in assuming Cantrell to run first. At the beginning of this race I thought she would have been the overwhelming favorite but circumstances have changed as the race went on and I might need to adjust expectations a bit. It would be nice to see some polling data but that's asking for a lot in a council district race. Anyway, I still think this is headed for a run-off as long as the three major contenders stay in the race.

Other debate

No idea why the District B candidates agreed to a debate on the same night as the Presidential debate. But if you missed it, you can get the summary here.

So here's an interesting question

What's more difficult, collecting a verifiable signature from 1,000 individual people or collecting one dollar from 375?

Game on in District B

Neighborhood Association leader vs Juvenile Justice Advocate vs Stacy Head's errand boy.