Looks like maybe the "making amends" step?

Or maybe something else is going on. Anyway, here is Karen Carter Peterson, still serving a prison sentence for defrauding the state Democratic Party, asking the state to take back one of the last public-private partnership schemes she signed off on before the downfall.  

In early 2022, shortly before she resigned her post amid a federal investigation into her embezzlement of Democratic Party and campaign funds, state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson helped earmark $7 million in state funds for the Odyssey House in New Orleans to create southeast Louisiana’s first residential gambling treatment center.

More recently, less than seven months into her 22-month prison sentence, Peterson was moved from a minimum-security camp in Dallas to a re-entry facility in New Orleans, and she quickly became a central figure in the project. She is now pushing to get the state money moved from Odyssey House, a nonprofit, to the Metropolitan Human Services District, a state-run entity.

Peterson, who is working as an advisor to the Davillier Law Group, says she believes the Human Services District, which gets state money annually for gambling treatment services, is better equipped to stand up the facility.

Peterson goes on to say she "has no financial role in the project."  And we have to assume that is true... now. At the time she approved the earmark? Who knows. Since that time, a lot has changed. Peterson is where she is and the real estate deal Odyssey House had in mind isn't looking viable anymore for some reason not quite given. 

For its part, Odyssey House, which runs treatment centers around the state, raised concerns about the proposal last week, with its CEO saying he wasn't given a rationale for transferring the money. Peterson and the Louisiana Department of Health have asked Odyssey House to sign off on transferring the funds through a mid-year transfer process that requires buy-in from area lawmakers and all parties involved in the transaction. 

But on Monday, Ed Carlson, CEO of Odyssey House, said his board has decided to go along with the request and sign off on the deal. (Note: The deal signed off on here is Odyssey House giving the money back)

Carlson said Peterson approached him about the project ahead of the 2022 legislative session. She put the nonprofit in touch with a real-estate agent to look at a building, but it wasn’t suitable for the project, he said. With most of the money still not available, Odyssey House has so far been unable to move forward, he said.

Carlson said he found out only a few days ago that Peterson and the LDH wanted to see the money transferred to the Human Services District — a division of the LDH. He said no one had discussed it with him beforehand. 

"At this point, we just want to get as far away from this as possible," Carlson said Monday.

Anyway whatever the original plan was is in the trash now.  We'll never know who was kicking what back to whom.  One footnote that didn't get mentioned in the article is Ed Carlson was the third candidate in this year's bizarre and acrimonious District 91 race for State Rep.  For some reason, he still thought he needed friends in Baton Rouge as late as this fall.  Interesting.

I wonder what Billy was threatened with

Until very very recently, Billy Nungesser was very very certain he would be running for governor.  And then all of a sudden he wasn't.  Wonder how that went down?  

I just had the Lt. Governor on, and he didn’t mince words regarding Louis Gurvich of @LAGOP.
“He is a disgrace to the Republican party. He’s a disgrace to Louisiana. He’s a dictator. He ought to resign. He is an embarrassment.”
-@BillyNungesser

— Newell Normand (@NewellWWL) January 19, 2023

Update:

Meanwhile, back in the much less dysfunctional Louisiana Democratic Party, their chairperson is set to launch a (perhaps her own?) campaign... 

NEWS: Team Louisiana PAC has placed a $300K statewide TV buy for a spot featuring Dem Chair Katie Bernhardt, according to AP Marullo, the PAC's underwriter. Ad offers a bit of a cliffhanger in terms of what to expect on Dem side of #LaGov race. Major air time begins Mon. #LaLege pic.twitter.com/PmmT47IdOU

— Jeremy Alford (@LaPoliticsNow) January 20, 2023

That seems super-ethicsy.  Nothing like what the disgraced former chair would have done, I'm sure... 

Will they get what they paid for?

There was an update this week on the law firm contracted by Louisiana Republican leaders in the legislature to help them draw up their redistricting maps. This week, the legislature interrupted its regular business to hold a one day special session during which it overturned the Governor's veto of their congressional district map. Civil Rights groups have immediately sued in response.  So now we will find out whether or not that legal advice was worth what the legislators paid for it. 

Which raises the question, how much did they pay and what did they even pay for in the first place? Recall back in February, Republican leadership was being coy with reporters about this contract and, as the Illuminator also pointed out in that story, they had been trained to be as secretive as possible about such matters through "email hygiene."  Well, there's an invoice now but it doesn't really say much. 

 An out-of-state law firm has charged the Louisiana Legislature $78,081 for providing “redistricting advice,” according to an invoice obtained Thursday through a public records request. It’s unclear when the law firm performed the work and what type of services it provided.

BakerHostetler sent the Legislature a bill that only provides the lump sum of money it’s charging the state for assistance on new political maps. There is no itemized list of  expenses on the invoice, such as individual attorneys’ billable hours or a breakdown of what portion of the bill might have been spent on the lawyers’ travel.

The invoice also doesn’t detail the any range of months or specific dates during which the law firm performed its work. The Legislature received the bill March 14 and it must be paid by April 14, according to the invoice. Money Louisiana makes from taxpayers and state fees will be used to cover the cost.

Well whatever advice that money bought, we'll see if the courts think it was worth it. If they decide to re-up the contract, maybe it will come with a refresher on how federal laws apply to the states. It's not clear the legislators have a terrific grasp on that right now. 

Another gaffe from Stefanski came Wednesday when he was arguing for a veto override in the House for the congressional redistricting bill Gov. John Bel Edwards rejected. Stefanski’s comments came after Rep. Royce Duplessis, D-New Orleans, had just finished telling colleagues how the failure to add a second majority-minority seat in Congress was a clear violation of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“The Voting Rights Act is federal law. It is not (in the) Louisiana Constitution,” said Stefanski, who had started his floor speech with what he called a “constitutional lesson” about the veto override process and separation of governmental powers. 

After the House voted 72-31 to override the governor’s veto, the bill moved to the upper chamber where Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, called out Stefanski for those remarks.

“This federal constitution, not the state – yeah, I get the difference – quoting the chairman on the other side (Stefanski) who made a point that we are Louisiana and this (override) is not federal law,” Peterson said. “I happen to disagree, that we do have to follow federal law, and what this bill represents is a violation of, yes, the U.S. Constitution.”

Winks and nods

The special redistricting session taking place in Baton Rouge this week is going just about as poorly as we thought it would. Because the legislature is dominated by the Republicans, we already know they are going to have their way with this process. It's possible the Governor could weigh in a bit. But notice that Republicans have already fired a warning shot at him. That's what last week's exercise in pretending to care about the Ronald Greene case was all about.  Someone really does need to hold the John Bel accountable for what is clearly a cover-up. But Republican leadership won't do that... unless he provokes them.

So it's basically a foregone conclusion that the Republicans are going to maintain the current number of majority-minority Congressional districts. It's also a foregone conclusion that the maps for the state House and Senate as well the PSC, Supreme Court and BESE will also maintain the status quo to the greatest extent possible. (Although there are a few instances where petty scores may be settled along the way.) 

This is all very depressing because redistricting is actually pretty important. This is the democratic infrastructure we're going to have to struggle under for the next decade. It would be great if there was any hope of making that not terrible somehow. But the numbers in the legislature are what they are and there's not much to be done about it now besides watch and complain. Next comes another several cycles of Democrats losing elections and turning around to blame people for not voting hard enough.

There's an outside chance that somebody could sue. Although, that chance seems more and more fleeting every time the Supreme Court takes another hack at what's left of the Voting Rights Act. But, just to keep their bases covered, the Republican leadership has retained legal counsel anyway. We're not sure who is paying for that.... or even who the lawfirm's actual clients are in the first place. Do they work for the Republicans or for the legislature as a whole? We do know who they are. 

BakerHostetler has worked in states around the country on political redistricting and election litigation, and it has earned a reputation for defending Republicans against voting rights lawsuits. One of its attorneys, Mark Braden, was general counsel to the Republican National Committee for a decade. 

Cortez and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, said the firm was not chosen for its work with Republicans, but because of its experience and expertise. Kate McKnight, the BakerHostetler attorney Hewitt said she spoke with about her map, was on a redistricting panel last summer organized by the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.

“It was the [law firm] that was best suited to our state, whether it was Republican or Democrat,”  Schexnayder said in an interview Sunday.

Yesterday, some of the Democratic legislators tried to get answers about the nature of the firm's contract during debate on the Senate floor.  It's still murky.  Page Cortez says the firm has been "hired for litigation purposes in the two lawsuits that have been filed against the state of Louisiana,” referring to redistricting challenges already underway. But if the state is the client it should be easy to determine how the firm is being paid and how much.  But Cortez also insists that "zero public money" has been spent on this. The Illuminator also reports that it is seeking public records on any public contacts with BakerHostetler but that might also prove difficult because these lawyers know how to keep their email voices down.

McKnight, the lawyer that Hewitt consulted, has advised state legislators, in general, to avoid a paper trail when it comes to redistricting, according to an article on the National Council of State Legislatures website.

“I will always talk about email hygiene. Please,” McKnight told lawmakers from around the country last summer. “If you can meet with someone in person, do that. If you can’t do that, call them. If you absolutely must, send them an email (that says): ‘Call me.’”

This, no doubt, will trigger most observers into reciting their favorite Earl Long quote that all Louisiana schoolchildren are required to learn by rote. 

"Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink.​"

Why lie when the facts are bad enough

Every year Joe Bouie tries to nudge us ever so slightly in the direction of untangling the corrupt nightmare system that runs our public schools "like a business."  Every year it fails.  No reason to stop trying, though. 

A state legislator who has a history of criticizing the way New Orleans schools are governed is pushing a bill in the upcoming session that would strip NOLA Public Schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. of his power to close or renew charter schools without an Orleans Parish School Board vote.

State Senator Joseph Bouie Jr. spoke briefly with board members during their meeting Tuesday about the bill, which he has prefiled for the 2021 legislative session beginning next month. Bouie’s bill aims to undo the charter school renewal system established by a state law passed in 2016 that brought the city’s charter schools — most of which had been overseen by the state-run Recovery School District after Hurricane Katrina — back under local control. 

That law, Act 91, gives near unilateral power to the superintendent to decide which nonprofit-run charter schools up for contract renewal with the district will remain open and which ones will close. Under the current system, the board can only overturn Lewis’ recommendation with a two-thirds supermajority vote within one month of a recommendation’s presentation. 

Bouie’s proposal would require board votes on all charter renewals.

One of the principal authors of Act 91 is congressional candidate Karen Carter Peterson who, over the weekend, (just barely) slipped into a runoff against Troy Carter.  During the primary, Carter tried to make hay out of Peterson's relationship with the charter school movement. Those links do exist and voters should consider them during the runoff.  They should also, consider, however, that Troy Carter also supported Act 91 and does not appear to have taken a stand against the charter movement that meaningfully distinguishes him from Peterson. 

On the other hand, at least his attack ad acknowledged the devastating effect the charter movement has had on teachers. Leaving aside the question of his sincerity about that, it matters that it's something Peterson does not talk about unless she is refuting an opponent's accusations. Which is what happens in this article. 

Only days before Saturday’s primary, Karen Carter Peterson is calling foul on Troy Carter for a television ad that slams her and her husband on education matters.

“Troy Carter’s latest attack is a lie,” Peterson, who like Carter is a state senator from New Orleans, said in a statement.

She is correct.  Carter's ad does lie. It cherry picks certain events and compresses their timeline to imply a stronger causal relationship than the viewer would otherwise infer. I'll try to summarize this as clearly as I can.  

In 2004 Peterson sponsored a bill called Act 193 which empowered the state controlled Recovery School District (RSD) to take over so-called failing schools in Orleans Parish. Shortly after Katrina, a second bill (Act 35) enabled the RSD to take all of the schools in Orleans Parish. Peterson voted against this bill. RSD took over 102 of 117 schools and immediately fired 7000 teachers and support staff. This move effectively destroyed the teachers union and gutted what most people considered a core piece of the city's Black middle class at a critical moment. Those teachers, their union, and in many ways the whole city has never really recovered from that. The state then re-made the New Orleans Public Schools according to an experimental model of privatized autonomous charters working with largely non-union labor (although a very small number of charter school staffs have since been organized.) In 2016, Act 91, again, authored by Peterson, returned this reconfigured system to local school board's nominal control but locked the RSD's changes into place.  

Carter's ad presents this story as 1) Peterson voted for Act 193 and then 2) All of the teachers were fired. Obviously that isn't how it happened. In between those events there was a hurricane, a flood, and a thorough takeover of the schools that Peterson voted against. However, it does not get her off the hook for writing and supporting Act 91 which we can see as a validation of all of those events after the fact. She is further implicated by the close involvement of her husband and brother-in-law in the leadership of RSD and Orleans charter schools during this period although Carter's ad also fudges the facts on this so as to make it appear even more sinister. 

Which, again, causes us to question Carter's integrity as much as Peterson's.  The facts are bad enough.  But Carter is as culpable as Peterson for much of the situation being what it is so he has to lie to make it sound even worse. 

Anyway, I'm not sure when Bouie's bill is due up in the session or if Senators Carter and Peterson will be available to vote on it when it does.  The legislative session begins on April 12 and the runoff election is April 24 so it's a real tight window. Which is a shame because we might miss a key moment of truth for both of them.

Okay well check back next week

Tyler Bridges writes this in a pretty definitive tone so maybe it really is set in stone this time.  But, you know, Mitch has a habit of jumping into things at the last minute so maybe let's check back during qualifying just to be sure.

Mitch Landrieu, who served two terms as mayor of New Orleans, was elected statewide twice as lieutenant governor and has a national following after taking the lead in removing four Jim Crow-era monuments in New Orleans, long before the death of George Floyd led to a rethinking about racial injustice in the United States. Landrieu also had a personal reason to run – he could have avenged his sister’s defeat in 2014.

But Landrieu is staying out, even though national Democrats tried to coax him in, said a person close to the former mayor.

Landrieu did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did his chief political adviser in Louisiana, Ryan Berni.

Also there was something of a buzz going around last week that KCP might be looking into a run at this after she stepped down as state party chair. But that might have just been light speculation.

Anyway, one would think that, despite the seemingly long odds, the Democrats would want to fight for every available Senate seat this year.  But, well, you know..

Sharp elbows

Whoa hey watch out!

On Monday, in an extraordinary power play, Peterson ousted the highly regarded chairman of the gambling board, Ronnie Jones, during a private session of the Louisiana Senate where senators could exercise a little-known authority to veto appointees of Gov. John Bel Edwards and other statewide elected officials to dozens of boards and commissions.

Besides representing New Orleans in the Senate, Peterson is the long-time chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party, so her surprise decision also puts her at odds with Edwards, the state’s most prominent Democrat. On Tuesday, he sharply criticized the failure to confirm Jones without mentioning Peterson.

Peterson’s move, which she has not explained publicly, targeted Jones and four other appointees, including Walt Leger III, a former colleague in the Legislature and speaker pro tem who has now lost his job as chairman of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

The Advocate spends a lot of space in this article focusing on KCP's personal gambling problem which she has publicly admitted to and sought help for. The implication is that Jones was responsible for leaking that information originally and this action is from Peterson is payback for that.  While that might be possible, it seems a bit petty and I would rather think there is something more than just that going on.

And anyway, KCP's dispatching Jones isn't even the really interesting thing going on here. Her ejecting Walt Leger from the Convention Center board is. 

Leger, meanwhile, was an influential member of the state House for 12 years before term limits last year sidelined him. Edwards tabbed him to chair the Convention Center. The governor had to choose him from a list of names forwarded by the hospitality industry.

“I couldn’t have been more surprised to hear that I wasn’t confirmed and how that went down,” Leger said Tuesday. Asked about his relationship with Peterson, he said, “We’ve worked very closely to represent the same constituencies.”

This part of the story seems like the much bigger deal and we would hope to find more follow-up on it soon. The Convention Center and its slush fund are a major flash point in city politics right now.  This Lens op-ed from representatives of the Fair Fund coalition explains.

As in previous emergencies, the COVID-19 crisis brought out the best in many of us. Countless heroes distinguished themselves from a handful of people who put their own narrow business and political interests first.  Such was and continues to be the case with the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and its governing board, the Exhibition Hall Authority (EHA).

A group of recently laid-off hospitality workers, unions, and advocacy organizations knew the board could do more to help our city. We formed the Coalition for a Fair Fund for Hospitality Workers and formulated the demand that the board of the Convention Center transfer $100 million, the equivalent of $1,000 per hospitality worker, to an independent fund with robust community oversight that could administer relief directly to all tourism and hospitality workers in a fair, legal, and transparent way.

Asked by these activists to put some of the $200 million plus ($235 million according to this article) they've stolen from the public over the years to good use helping out hospitality workers displaced by the pandemic, the Convention Center board recently voted instead to "donate" an infinitesimal fraction of that money to private non profit foundations managed by their wealthy compatriots. Not only is the amount an outright insult, when filtered through the usual con-profit money laundering circle of philanthropic elites and cronies connected to the board members, it's as if they're spending it on themselves anyway.

In days past, it would have been fairly simple for the board to roll over workers like this.  But the politics are a little more volatile these days and things get messy as the players scramble to reposition themselves.  This is cause for some optimism, I suppose, but it's also important to remain skeptical.  For example, many have taken notice of the city council's willingness to support the hospitality workers with words and with non-binding resolutions.  However, others of us are not impressed yet.  I mean, at first, it seems like Kristen Palmer is saying the right thing here. But is she?

Earlier this month, City Councilwoman Kristin Palmer said, in an interview with The Lens, that there was a fundamental shift in power that had to occur within the industry. Palmer wasn’t speaking directly about the coalition’s demand for $100 million. But she said that the Convention Center should be more focused on direct short-term relief for workers and less focused on its long-term development plans worth more than $1 billion.

“Their value systems are wrong,” she said. “My shtick now is: Poverty is expensive and charity doesn’t work. That’s the reality. It’s a power structure. The power structure is ‘look how great it is we’re giving to these people.’ That’s a power structure that needs to be changed.”

Being concerned about how the political power structure affects poverty in New Orleans, is your new "shtick" now?  That's nice. Please give us some notice when you want to workshop the act again sometime.

Mayor Cantrell is also trying to make sure her act plays to the right crowd in these changing times. Although the mayor is frequently a lighting rod for criticism, she's proven more than adept at navigating difficult political situations over the course of her first term. By which we mean she has a fantastic instinct for duplicity. Cantrell spent much of 2019 appearing to wrangle with the hospitality industry over various piles of dedicated funds. The fight may have embellished her "populist" image in the media but the deal she struck actually ended up being a huge capitulation to the tourism owners.

This was accomplished thanks, in no small part, to Walt Leger who, as a State Rep. wrote and shepherded the legislation that allowed Cantrell to claim "victory" while also legitimizing the convention center's reserve fund of misappropriated tax revenue.  As a reward for these services, Leger was given a seat on... chairmanship of, even... the Convention Center board immediately after leaving the legislature. By the end of 2019, the tourism cabal was happy, LaToya was happy, Walt was doing well. Working class people in New Orleans were still being victimized by the political aristocracy.  Everything was in equilibrium.

But then a series of new crises came along and knocked everything apart. The Hard Rock collapse created new points of tension between the mayor and the city's land development and tourism class, exposed her to new political flack, and opened a crease in city finances. All of this was exacerbated by a Carnival season fraught with multiple tragedies and the city's controversial handling of its response. By the time the COVID crisis turned the whole world inside out, the happy feelings between the mayor and her sometime friends in business community had all but disintegrated.

So, despite all of the previous year's efforts, the mayor still finds herself at odds with tourism promoters.  This week, even as the city cautiously prepares to move into a "Phase 2" reopening, the reactionary crowd of tourism business tyrants has grown bolder in criticizing the shutdown. Critics have become so bold, in fact, that rumors had been circulating about a possible "Business Community" candidate challenging Cantrell in the next election. That would seem ill advised for a number of reasons but there's no accounting for these people and their sense of entitlement.

In any case, it's interesting that we find Cantrell's friend and ally, KCP taking a sharp elbow to Leger now given this context. Was she sending a message? It's been a busy week since, so this story has faded into the background a bit but we'd like to hear more.

Do the collapse

Turns out they have to blow more stuff up. Terrific way to ring in the New Year. Don't worry. The football and tourism related events will still happen, of course.

City officials presented a timeline for when the implosion of the failed Hard Rock Hotel construction site would happen shortly after they announced the demolition of the building would move forward at a press conference Tuesday evening.

Fire Superintendent Tim McConnell told media the building should be imploded in nine weeks, with recovery of the bodies of two still-missing workers and further investigation to follow. A three-month cleanup will also take place after the planned implosion.

The only factor that could move the demolition past the nine weeks is the College Football Playoffs and New Year's Eve events, McConnell said. "We will not let it interfere with CFP," McConnell said.

This also says they're going to stabilize the "Alpha" crane that has been dangling over Canal Street since the last time they set off explosions down there.  That one collapsed into the now-condemned building while the other broke in half and nose-dived into Rampart Street where it punctured a sewer line.

This result was different from the elegant "umbrella closing"  effect officials said they were going for beforehand. Nonetheless, we were all told immediately afterward that the crashing and dangling was, in fact, exactly what they meant.  McBride also noticed this discrepancy and points us to this video where the contractor continues to say that it happened just like they planned.  McConnell even said at the time that after the demolitions, the dangling Alpha crane was "very stable." It's weird though that the thing they did on purpose just left something that still needs to be stabilized hanging off the side of the building for a month. Sounds fishy to us. But it was good enough for the sages at Georges Media where the moral of the story was, as usual, everyone in charge is doing a great job.

For a different take on that, please see this month's Antigravity where Jules Bentley offers this counterpoint. 

It’s not surprising that Mayor Cantrell now wants to raze the whole structure to the ground, since this murder monument indicts her entire political class. What a towering tribute to its enablers the Hard Rock Hotel presents, a great slumping sundial whose gnomon points to their collective moral lodestar, unquenchable greed. It celebrates the greed not just of its developers but all who collaborated on, encouraged, profited from, and rubber-stamped this deathtrap. The list of the guilty is long, and every name on it is written with the blood of the building’s laborers—for Mammon, whose temple this is, desires human sacrifice.

Yeah you are going to want to read the rest of that. Jules is probably the only writer in town who can so, um, lovingly pull together the threads of New Orleans power, politics and exploitation that run through this story.  (Others who lack the patience and craft can only blurt stuff out into the void.)

I do feel compelled to add one bit, though.  In this passage, where Jules is describing one of the Kailas family's several scandalous entanglements with the corrupt polity, we learn what became of their Bayou St. John home.

Because the Kailas family is one of metro New Orleans’ biggest landowners and developers, almost everyone’s in bed with them, including former Governor Jindal, whose various campaigns they provided with tens of thousands of dollars of donations, monetary and in-kind.

In just one year under Jindal’s tenure (2011-2012), the Kailas-owned Lago Construction firm got more than $1.5 million of taxpayer money through state contracts—contracts which, thanks to the hard work of WWL’s investigative team and David Hammer, we now know were variously improper and fraudulent. On dates they charged taxpayers for long days of public service work, Lago employees were instead laboring on the Kailas family’s multi-million dollar Bayou St. John mansion. You won’t find them there now, alas. In 2016, they sold that property to Metro Disposal CEO Jimmie Woods for ten dollars.

Woods immediately put the Kailas house to use as a venue for political fundraising events. This one was for JP Morrell who was considering a run for mayor at the time.  Look at all the folks who showed up.

In addition to Gov. Edwards, the $250-per-person fundraiser at businessman Jimmie Woods’ home on the bank of Bayou St. John drew a host of other Democratic officials — U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond and Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, who is running for U.S. Senate, as well as City Councilman Jared Brossett and current and former members of Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration. The packed event suggested an unusually strong coalition around a term-limited state senator, and Morrell acknowledged there is widespread speculation around who will run in New Orleans’ upcoming mayoral race.

Not long after that Woods hosted a similar event for Karen Carter-Peterson.  She didn't run for mayor either. But that's not the point here so much as it is that, politically speaking, New Orleans is a small town where the money does seem to go around and around in a very tight circle. You can get a pretty good glimpse of it behind just about any building you knock over.

One may be given to wonder what is the purpose

John Bel signed the abortion bill just like he said he would. Despite what you might here from some of his Democratic apologists, there's no reason to believe he absolutely had to sign the bill.  There are any number of arguments a Blue Dog "Pro-life Democrat" like John Bel could have made for vetoing this extreme and cruel piece of legislation. He signed it anyway because he really wanted to.

The specific purpose behind the bill was to be as maximally cruel to women as possible.  KCP came back and gave the legislators a chance to deny this. They didn't deny it.

The ultimate hypocrisy! #lalege won’t fund the healthcare for women forced to have a child after rape or incest. @TheDemocrats @LaDemos https://t.co/aUSTlgJVvt

— KarenCarterPeterson (@TeamKCP) May 30, 2019

Consultantocracy

When it comes to disentangling this knot, who even knows where to begin?

The New Orleans City Council has relied almost exclusively on outside consultants to regulate Entergy New Orleans for over 30 years. And it is those consultants that have largely decided what direction the city takes on a wide number of energy-related issues: How much can Entergy charge customers? How should the city generate or source electricity? How should the city prepare for hurricanes and deal with Entergy’s frequent outages?

But Councilwoman Helena Moreno — who chairs the council’s utility committee, which regulates Entergy — told The Lens she wants to break that structure. Specifically, she wants to expand the council’s in-house staff and expertise in order to become less reliant on contractors

That's going to be much more easily said than done. And, frankly, it's not even that easy to say.  Moreno isn't even entirely sure what she is asking for.

It remains unclear what the document will recommend, how fast Moreno will be able to move, or whether she will remain at the helm of the utility committee long enough to see the changes through.

“No one’s ever done this,” said Moreno’s Chief of Staff Andrew Tuozzolo. “New Orleans has never had this, really.”

We want to have some confidence that City Council can regulate Entergy competently and independently.  For decades they've mostly outsourced this function to consulting law firms.  During this time, the consultants have had longstanding relationships with prominent political organizations frequently cycling employees in and out of political office and/or in and out of employment by the utility itself.  So the public might be forgiven for wondering which side of the three way revolving door Jay Banks or Karen Carter Peterson is on at any given moment.  They promise they know how to keep it all straight but it can be difficult to parse as KCP demonstrates here.

Clint Vince’s law firm, Dentons, also gave $25,000 to the Louisiana Democratic Party’s political action committee between 2013 and 2018, according to state campaign finance records. State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, the chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party since 2012, was hired by Dentons in 2014.

“Dentons does not have a relationship with the Louisiana Democratic Party,” Peterson said in an email to The Lens. “Separate and apart from my role with Dentons, I serve as chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party.”

It's kind of like trying to pull apart a dozen mardi gras beads that have gotten twisted together. They're all really just the same strings of the same lawyers, lobbyists, and political hangers on. Who knows where one begins and the other one ends?

Moreover, how do we even know who to trust with the task of sorting it all out? My favorite bit from the Lens feature article explaining this stuff comes where we learn about a critical Inspector General's report put together by.... yet another opportunistic third party consultant soliciting a job.

Vince questioned the conclusions in the Inspector General report.

He noted that the report was funded through a third-party grant. And its author — an outside consultant hired by the Office of Inspector General — later used his own findings to try and solicit a city job. According to a 2015 story by Fox 8 News, shortly after the report was released, the consultant wrote a letter to the city that said, in part, “I suggest you retain me immediately to address those issues.”

So, yeah, good luck figuring this out.  Moreno wants council staff to outline a plan by June. In order to put that together, I guess they're going to need to hire some consultants. Probably there will be lot of expertise at Dentons and Legend they could put to use... for a fee, of course.

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. 

It was all those dang mayors

According to Danae Columbus, the "many many friends" urging Karen Carter Peterson to get into the mayor's race were America's other mayors who wanted her in their club.

During her recent trip to the U.S. Conference of Mayors convention, several mayors from around the country encouraged her to run and made commitments to help with fundraising. Bolstered by their support and the large number of self-proclaimed undecided voters in the early mayoral polls, Carter Peterson began making phone calls to potential supporters on Friday.

After several days of reflection, Carter Peterson realized her path to victory was not clear enough.

In particular, Peterson's path would have been most occluded by her "dear friend" Cantrell who is counting on a similar (though not identical) base of support. And since nothing in politics is worth doing if it isn't super super easy to do, KCP decided not to do it.

At least that appears to be Columbus's take.  I'm still willing to entertain other theories.  For instance, one would think someone of KCP's stature and experience would know how to explore her prospects in a quieter way that doesn't embarrass her "dear friend." So there must have been some purpose to the very public deliberation.

I've seen it suggested it may have been an attempt to push LaToya out of the race. I've also seen it suggested the purpose was actually to boost LaToya's chances.  Yet another theory I've heard is that the feint was more about feeling the landscape out generally. Somebody wanted to see which donors or backers might rethink their approach to the race if Peterson's head suddenly popped up. Or maybe it's something else entirely.

One thing we should mention in light of Columbus's offering is that the new President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors is Mitch Landrieu. If the push to get KCP in the race was coming from that direction, it's reasonable to assume Mitch's hand was in there somewhere. Why? Well, who knows? (See all above) But whatever it is it probably isn't good.

Here is a video of Landrieu's speech at the conference.  Before he gets too far into his pretty goofy remarks about the awesome might of the mayors or whatever, he takes a minute to thank his "mentor" Michael Bloomberg who is among others he cites as, and I am not making this up, "the mayors who are Making America Great Again." Mitch is on record saying that he is "not going to walk away" from city politics. And his NOLAPAC has about $140,000 cash on hand as of the June filing. If his involvement in the election is going to be purposed toward furthering the cause of Bloombergism in New Orleans, that's worth keeping a wary eye on.

No, really.. What was it all about?

Tim Morris asks almost the exact same question here about Karen Carter Peterson that we asked yesterday. The closest he comes to an answer is speculating that maybe someone wanted to talk LaToya into dropping out. Who knows? There has to have been something more to this stunt than just KCP's goofy whim.

So what do we reckon that was all about?

Last week we learned that KCP was suddenly "very seriously" considering getting into the mayoral race. She took the holiday to think it over. And then, just as suddenly, she wasn't so serious about it anymore.   What was that all about? It's possible that she just wanted to take one last look at her prospects one week before qualifying. These political types do like to have their egos stretched as often as possible.

But the timing here was a bit weird. Even the idea was strange. Not that KCP couldn't have been a strong contender,  but jumping into the race at this point would have landed her squarely on the toes of her "dear friend" and presumptive front runner, LaToya.  Why would she do that?

This morning WDSU reported on a pair of polls one of which was conducted for the Cantrell campaign. Peterson's name does not appear in the results.

In the Cantrell poll, 600 people from various backgrounds were polled. If the elections were held today, here's how things would break down:

Cantrell has 23 percent, Charbonnet is at 14 percent, businessman Sidney Torres received 13 percent, Bagneris is at 8 percent and New Orleans-based state Rep. Walt Leger is at 6 percent.

Notice neither Torres nor Leger is an announced candidate. Was this poll question open ended or were respondents provided a list of names to choose from? If it was the latter, why were Leger and Torres included but not Peterson?

Was KCP ever really serious about running? Or was she putting her name in the mix temporarily for some other purpose? We may never know the point of this exercise but it sure  was odd.  Meanwhile,  there's still plenty room for someone else to jump in. We realky could use a few more candidates here. But there's only a week left to find them.

By the way, the good news for KCP is her hypothetical campaign qualified her to participate in the first edition of Wheel Of Mayors which debuted during the second hiur of this week's Hunkerdowncast. You can catch that here, btw.

Friends don't let friends run for mayor

Or maybe they do?  State Senator Karen Carter Peterson, who we thought had ruled this out, tells Gambit she is seriously considering running for mayor.

Peterson said she has been “encouraged by many, many friends” to enter the race based on the current announced field. That field includes former Judge Michael Bagneris, District B Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, former Municipal Court Judge Desiree Charbonnet and businessman Frank Scurlock.

Peterson says her due diligence includes polling, strategy, talking to potential campaign team members, assessing her own and her potential opponents’ skill sets — and meeting with at least one other announced candidate: Cantrell, whom Peterson described as “a dear friend.”

“Because we truly are dear friends, I had to meet with LaToya and let her know that I was seriously considering the race,” Peterson said, emphasizing that she has not yet made a final decision to run.

"Many friends.." are encouraging KCP to run. Other friends are the current presumed front runner. The only poll published to date has LaToya ahead with 21 percent. Here closest contender, in fact, is hypothetical candidate Sidney Torres which probably explains why someone like Peterson might see an opportunity.

QOTD

Karen Carter Peterson:

The Louisiana Senate is urging new federal Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to tour the state's public schools.

A resolution asking her to visit passed 24-0 Thursday (Feb. 16). Fifteen members of the state Senate were absent.

DeVos has raised unprecedented opposition on the left and center, in part, as a result of her limited experience in traditional education and emphasis on providing private school vouchers to students in sub-par public schools. U.S. Senate Democrats opposed her nomination across the board, joined by two Republicans. Her first visit to a public school was met by protests.

State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, head of the Louisiana Democratic Party, was wary of the resolution. She asked, acerbically, "Is it commending her for all the great work that she might have done that I'm not aware of?"

Newcomers (and oldcomers)

The headline to this Advocate article says "three newcomers" are running for City Council. But the term must be loosely interpreted when the so-called newcomers include Joe Giarrusso III,  scion of a well known political family, Eric Johnson, described as, "a former aide to Jim Singleton, a longtime leader of the BOLD organization" and Drew Ward who has been something of a political gadfly for the better part of a decade. In fact, Ward ran for council against Susan Guidry in 2014 in a campaign that will be remembered more for an unfortunate Twitter outburst than anything else.

This time around, Ward hopes to be remembered for a radical sounding idea.

Among other changes, he envisions a municipal assembly of 50 or more citizens that would have the final say on major decisions, rather than the mayor or the City Council. The council would still exist but only to draft proposals that the municipal group would approve or reject. Such a change could help eliminate corruption, he said.

Not likely to get that off the ground. But given the way high profile council meetings can devolve into shouty theater during public comment, maybe it would be fun to let more people shout from the other side of the dais for a while.

There's also some "will he or won't he" talk in there about Seth Bloom and Jay Banks but I think that's been mentioned previously.   The real big local political news this week concerns our latest run of our incredibly stupid and wildly unreliable Twitter poll of the mayor's race.

We began running these along with an early look at the mayoral field back in January. The methodology is this.  I put out a bunch of names in two separate twitter polls. (There are more candidates than can fit in one.)  Respondents are trusted to pick whichever of the eight they like although there is technically nothing stopping them from voting for one from each "heat."  This is obviously a terrible way to go about gathering data. So we're planning to do it all year.

The polls themselves are here. But I prefer to further muck things up by lumping the final results together in one big list as though this were a single ballot. This week, I think it might be fun to list each candidate in reverse order of the number of votes  received.

Michael Bagneris 1 vote (2%)

The judge hasn't been much in the news lately beyond just confirming that he is definitely running. So far the quiet campaign isn't doing much for his numbers in our fake poll. 

Jason Williams 3 votes (6%)

The Councilman-At-Large, to his great credit, was a vocal participant in a recent protest against Donald Trump's travel ban. 

Williams stood at the center of the rally as several speakers talked about their personal experiences with immigration policy and expressed solidarity with immigrants worldwide before it was his turn to speak.

“I’m here because many of your demands were things that I have worked on and pushed with Chief Harrison and with the Congress of Day Laborers before Donald Trump was ever in office,” he said. “Now more than ever, I think it’s really clear we can see how rights can be eroded.”

Williams said even though the new administration has only been in office for a few days, Trump’s intentions to make the country more racist, xenophobic, and homophobic have already become clear.

“We are not going to allow him to push progress back,” Williams said of Trump. “I say to Donald Trump, I say to Mr. Bannon, not on my watch, not in my city, not in my country.”

Recently, though, the rumors tend to suggest that Williams is more interested in becoming D.A. than mayor.  If that's the case, he may skip out on the mayor's race and run At-Large again to bide his time.

Karen Carter Peterson 4 votes (8%)

Another candidacy of which the rumors are running colder as of late. KCP is busy in Baton Rouge this week which is a shame because she may not appear in any parades this weekend.  And Jeremy Alford writes that she's not ready to give up chairmanship of the state Democratic Party just yet and is in fact looking to move up in the national party structure.  That doesn't necessarily exclude her from the mayor's race but it does make it sound like she has other priorities.

Latoya(!) Cantrell 6 votes (13%)

Latoya and her (but not really her) billboard appear to be all in. This week, she's fielding ladder complaints. A couple of years ago, Cantrell convened a Mardi Gras task force that was supposed to solve the ladder problem.  It hasn't. 

Sidney Torres 6 votes (13%)

Sidney's been busy debuting TV shows and writing letters to the editor lately. No reason to believe he isn't seriously considering getting in the race if the field shakes out favorably for him.

Walt Leger 6 votes (13%)

Like everyone else here, Walt is dropping hints.

Leger said Monday evening that he was not going to run for State Treasurer but had “another” race in mind. Like State Sen. J.P. Morrell, also a prospective candidate, Leger is focused on the upcoming special legislative session.  

In the meantime, he'll probably be too busy in Baton Rouge to comment further. Same goes for... 

JP Morrell 7 votes (15%)

Do you ever check out JP's podcast? It's pretty interesting.  Last week, during a talk with WWLTV crime analyst Jeff Asher about, well, a bunch of things, Morrell floated the idea of an elected Chief Of Police. Now that is a fascinating prospect.  Can't even imagine how many bad Twitter polls we'd have to take to figure that out.

"Matt" 13 votes (28%)

Well now this is a surprise, right? You see there was this guy at the MaCCNO meeting I attended last week named Matt. He introduced himself to the group, "Hi I'm Matt and I'm actually running for mayor."  Didn't give his last name. That seems like a mistake. He went on to talk about "community policing" for a few minutes. Anyway, I have almost no idea who he is but I threw him in the poll for kicks.  Consider his frontrunner status an indication of just how wide open the field is at this point.

Not polled in this round: State Senator Troy Carter, who appears to be telling people he is running. Also outgoing US Attorney Ken Polite is said to be interested. We'll throw them in the next poll if there's room.

Keep em talking

Karen Carter Peterson will neither confirm nor deny rumors she is thinking about running for mayor.

Alford reported that Peterson is candidate for a vice chairmanship in the Democratic National Committee. As for a mayoral run, Peterson didn't say much about where she is in the decision-making process when contacted by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.

"Fair assessment of where things are," Peterson said in an email asking her about Alford's report.

Just keep the options open, the speculation running, and the donations coming. That's the game right now.  KCP and fellow potential mayor LaToya Cantrell are scheduled to speak at today's Women's March in Washington Square (as well they should be.) Also potential Council At Large candidate Helena Moreno will be there.

They all go to Jimmie Woods' house

Guess we can move Karen Carter-Peterson out of the "could consider" category and put her squarely into the "might be considering" category of potential mayoral candidates.

Gov. John Bel Edwards is set to host a fundraiser for state senator and Louisiana Democratic Party chairwoman Karen Carter Peterson next week at the home of Jimmie Woods, whose company, Metro Service Group, holds one of New Orleans' major trash collection contracts.

Late last year, Edwards joined U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond in co-hosting another fundraiser at Woods' sprawling home by Bayou St. John, this one for one of Peterson's Senate colleagues, J.P. Morrell, who chairs the body's Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee.

What are they raising money for, exactly? Neither invitation said.

We're still a long way off from qualifying day so nobody has to commit to anything just yet.  Meanwhile, as Grace points out, you can raise a lot of money pretending to think about running for mayor even if you never actually jump in. 

By socking away some cash and promoting their big-time relationships, Peterson and Morrell are buying themselves time and positioning themselves to jump in too. Or not. It's starting to look as if the city's voters just won't know for a while.

If that's true, then we'll expect to see the list of maybes keep growing for a few more months at least... along with Jimmie Woods' catering bill. 

Only seven more months until qualifying day

There's no rest for New Orleanians weary of politics in 2017. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been a quiet year. But as it happens folks will need to keep their voting arms good and warm for a full round of municipal elections happening this fall.

The scheduling change was enacted a few years back in an effort to move the elections away from the busy winter/spring social season. This is probably for the best. But, since we aren't moving inauguration day until the following cycle, we do end up with a weird little one-time quirk.

The swearing-in switch would be delayed until after June 1, 2018, a political compromise that lets Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the current council serve full, four-year terms through May 2018 regardless of the vote's outcome. But that also means the next round of city leaders, if elected in October 2017, would have to wait more than six months to take office.

The first January inauguration would take place in 2022.

So, after the November run-off, we're going to go through an awkward transition where we have a newly elected government just kind of hanging around in the background all the way into May. Ray Nagin used to complain about the "shadow government" in this city but this takes things a bit literally. Imagine a local version of the uncomfortable dual Presidency we've been enduring for the past month and a half but extended for half a year. Should be fun.

That's just about the same amount of time, by the way, between now and the July deadline for candidates to qualify for these races.  So, sure, let's start trying to figure out who is running for mayor.

We're pretty sure LaToya Cantrell is in.  She was most recently spotted delivering this demagogic over-the-top praise of the city's latest installation of surveillance cameras.

The department won’t specify where the cameras will be located, but said they would be stationed first in high-traffic areas and crime hot spots.

“Crime is out of control, shootings are up,” said Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell. “We need to be proactive in terms of catching criminals and deterring crime.”

Cantrell stresses that the readers are not for profiling or harassing people on the street, but for tracking vehicles used in crimes.

“It has nothing to do with profiling at all,” she said. “It doesn’t show you who’s in the vehicle, what they’re wearing, their skin color. It’s totally focused on that license plate as well as the make and model of the car.”

Cantrell said it will be a tool in the crime-fighting arsenal that the city so badly needs.

“My constituents are saying that crime is their number one issue. They not only want to feel safe, they want to be safe.”

Never mind the confused bit about racial profiling. That is, of course, always a concern. But it isn't the primary complaint against panoptic tracking of everyone's public movements by the police which we probably shouldn't have to point out is just inherently bad.   But it's that "My constituents not only want to feel safe, they want to be safe," comment that really floors me.  LaToya clearly doesn't recognize these cameras as the quintessential example of  ineffective, expensive security theater that they are. In fact, she seems to be describing them as precisely the opposite of that. This is worrisome.

We also know Michael Bagneris is in although nobody can figure out, exactly, why.  Back in October, Bagneris told Danae Columbus that running for mayor "is in my DNA." Medical science has not yet developed a treatment for this condition. 

J.P. Morrell might run. He was a vocal opponent of City Council's disastrous decision to legalize short term rentals last year. Affordable housing figures to be a major issue in these elections.  Morrell also recently held a high profile fundraiser at the home of wealthy trash magnate Jimmie Woods which could signal big plans.

Speaking of wealthy trash magnates.  This guy exists.

"One of the reasons I like private [solutions] is because I am looking at my bottom line," he said. "I'm not looking at what's politically correct. I'm not looking at what makes sense in how I am going to get to my next office or who's going to vote for me so I can keep my job as a politician."

Coincidentally, Landrieu's term ends in 2018, and Torres is said to be considering a run of his own. Until that decision is made official, "Trashanova" is returning to the trade that first proved profitable. With the noncompete clause from selling his waste business in 2011 expiring in June, Torres is launching a new waste-management company, IV Waste, slated to begin serving private customers in early August.


"Business leaders should get involved — not just financially involved, but get their hands dirty and find a cause to help out," he said. "I think it's important."

At first glance, Torres would appear to have at least two things working against him.  First, the local political memory still retains at least some of the lessons it learned from its last experience with putting a not-a-politician "business leader" in charge of stuff. Second, it's not clear that New Orleans voters really take Sidney all that seriously. He won "Best Potential Candidate For New Orleans Mayor" in the most recent Gambit "Best Of New Orleans" poll which most readers took to be something of a joke. Sidney took out a full page ad to thank them anyway.



At the same time, there's this annoying familiar feeling in the back of our minds here. Something about a wealthy, charismatic entrepreneur/reality TV guy who nobody took seriously until it was too late.  Can't quite place it, though. It's probably nothing.

Jason Williams is frequently mentioned as a potential candidate. This is mostly on the strength of the impressive victory by which he was elected Councilman At-Large in 2014.  In that seat, though, he's possibly dampened enthusiasm a bit. Councilman Williams often seems cautious to a fault.

When he ran, Williams was emphatic about his belief in the council's role as "a check and balance on the administration."  "It's not supposed be a rubber stamp," he said. And yet, during the STR debate, Williams proved to be among the more gullible followers of the administration's party line. Williams parroted the prevailing argument about the overwhelming imperative to "appease the platforms" insisting that we could always go back and "tweak" the permissive ordinance later.  Hilariously, at that very same time, Williams' Facebook page featured an obviously hollow statement of support for the DAPL protesters.

Right now "part of" Jason Williams is in Standing Rock asking if they can tweak the pipeline back out later maybe. pic.twitter.com/06mmu1G7KA

— skooks (@skooks) December 1, 2016

State Rep. Walt Leger has certainly sounded at times like he might be running. That shouldn't be too surprising given that things didn't go as he'd hoped in Baton Rouge last year.  He's also not the only member of our local delegation who might be fed up with the situation up there. Karen Carter-Peterson, for example, may have had quite enough of that cake already. There's also State Rep. Helena Moreno who, though her name has popped up regarding the mayor's race, is more likely to run for Stacy Head's Council At-Large seat.

Is that everybody?  Probably not. Clancy DuBos also mentioned Troy Carter and Nadine Ramsey during a recent TV blurb. We'll see about that.  There's also this guy @LarryLarmeu from Twitter who has threatened to run for various offices every few months or so for years now. Larry now says he is moving to England. We'll see about that too, I guess.

What we really need now, though, is polling data. It's never too early. This has been frustratingly difficult to come by in recent local elections.  So this year we're not waiting around for UNO or SMOR to throw out their one anti-climactic survey a week before the election. Instead we're making our own.  Poorly, of course, but so what. What is our method? Well, we just threw a bunch of names into a Twitter poll. There were... um...  problems with this.

First off, Twitter only allows you to create polls with four options.  But, as you can see from all of the above, we've identified quite a few more potential candidates than that.  So we had to put them into two separate groupings. The names appeared in these groups randomly in the order that I happened to think of them.  As it happened, the first grouping received almost 20 more total votes than did the second. Does this make the second group the "kiddie table"? Maybe. Is this in any way fair or valid? Hell no. That's not really our purpose here today or ever, really.

Suffice to say, even for a Twitter poll, the methodology here is highly suspect and pretty stupid generally.  So we're looking forward to doing more of these periodically at least until qualifying day. Anyway here are the results. You can click here to see the groupings. Or, if you like, I've tallied up the total number of votes for every candidate along with each candidate's percentage of the 126 total votes cast. And so, here is your very first, very blurry snapshot of the 2017 race for Mayor of New Orleans.

J.P. Morrell  19%  (24 votes)

LaToya Cantrell  17% (22 votes)

Larry Larmeu 15% (19 votes)

Jason Williams 14% (18 votes)

Karen Carter-Peterson 11% (14 votes)

Sidney Torres 9% (11 votes)

Walt Leger 8% (10 votes)

Michael Bagneris  6% (8 votes)

The big takeaway here, I guess, is that things are pretty tight at this early stage!  And, hey, look at all those votes that suddenly become available once Larry leaves the country.  Anybody's game, right?