Magic moments

If you can't put a price on magic, why is it something you are able to go to court over?

“For me, it was not simply a question of breach of contract,” Bagneris testified. “It was also a matter of disrespect. We felt disrespected.”

The perks, and the status those perks afforded – such as watching performances from onstage – are nice, too, he said: “You can’t put a price tag on those kinds of magic moments. That’s the irreparable harm.”

Is that what this is about? Magic moments and feeling disrespected?  Or is it something else? 

But in an appeal filed Friday with Louisiana’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeal, the foundation’s attorneys argue that Sheppard erred in granting the injunction. The foundation requested expedited consideration from the 4th Circuit, given that the 2022 Jazz Fest opens April 29. No hearing date has been set on the appeal.

If Sheppard’s preliminary injunction remains in place, the foundation must provide Mercadel and Bagneris with 70 free Jazz Fest tickets and the opportunity to purchase 100 more at half price. They’d also each receive a free parking spot on the festival grounds; four laminated badges that grant access to viewing areas on the sides of the festival’s three main stages; six “silkie” stick-on passes for access to guest viewing areas near the main stages; four wristbands for access to a private lounge on the festival grounds; and the privilege to buy Jazz Fest posters at a discount.

Bagneris can't use all of those tickets himself to go look at the "magic." More likely what he's worried about here is somebody might lose some money. Anyone with a connection to recipients of these perks and a little bit of entrepreneurial pluck could certainly make something out of a wad of free and discounted tickets. The "irreparable harm" the injunction is meant to prevent likely stems from the threatened interruption of this commerce. 

If the injunction stays in place, Bagneris and Mercadel would apparently be the only recipients of those packages anymore. The perks rules, even for current board members, have been scaled back somewhat. But it's worth considering just how much of this is in circulation given the number of "Past Presidents" and board members receiving perks which, even under the new rules, carry substantial value.

The benefits received by current members of the board are now capped at $9,000 in total value and are reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Each laminate badge is reportedly valued at $1,950, so a board member who accepted all four available laminates could then accept only another 15 or so regular admission tickets, which have a gate price of $90 apiece.

Fifteen free tickets valued at $90 a piece plus the badges is still quite a haul. But 70 tickets with the option to buy 100 more at a discount is a big business worth suing over. Looks like this ruling came in just in time to save that business. 

UPDATE: Whoops maybe not!

On Wednesday, Louisiana’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. It reversed Civil District Judge Nicole Sheppard’s April 13 decision, which had granted Demetric Mercadel and Michael Bagneris the preliminary injunction they sought against the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation Inc.

 

Mercadel and Bagneris, the 4th Circuit judges said, “failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they would suffer irreparable injury if they did not receive injunctive relief." They “have not demonstrated anything more than inconvenience.”

Maybe the state supreme court could still weigh in. But they'd only have a week to do that before Jazzfest opens. If there are any pending deals for vacation packages hinging on this, the suspense is building.

Wonder how that time sensitive irreperable harm manifests

Sounds to me like somebody has turned their Jazzfest perks into a lucrative business of some sort. 

The newly revealed court documents indicate Mercadel is seeking a preliminary injunction against the foundation before the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival opens at the Fair Grounds on April 29.

The issues “are time sensitive, particularly given that the Jazz Festival is set to begin later this month,” Mercadel’s attorneys wrote, arguing that a ruling on her request for an injunction should come before the event takes place. “Should the hearing be continued, there is a risk that the relief requested in the motion would be rendered moot and, as a result, irreparably harm Ms. Mercadel.”

In opposing Mercadel’s request, the board’s attorneys contend that she “incorrectly suggests that she will suffer such irreparable injury if NOJHFF does not provide her with ‘personal tickets to Jazz Fest, parking privileges, and options to buy additional tickets at discounted prices.’”

Mercadel, the board notes in the court documents, “is not prevented from buying tickets or parking passes to Jazz Fest, which are available to the general public.”

Bagneris and Mercadel attended an April 8 closed-door hearing in Sheppard's courtroom about Mercadel's request for a preliminary injunction, as did Francis.

I wonder how many Jazzfest vacation packages Mercadel and Bagneris are trying to sell and to whom?  I wonder if they have any short term rental properties involved.  I wonder why this whole city runs on various modes of "non-profit" exploitation of tourism for the benefit of a very small privileged class.

I wonder why the Jazzfest foundation got away with this graft all the way up until 2019.

However, those former presidents still received 70 free Jazz Fest tickets annually, according to sources familiar with the board’s operation. They could also purchase an additional 100 tickets at half-price.

The at-the-gate price of a Jazz Fest ticket this year is $90, meaning the 70 free tickets alone had a total face value of more than $6,000.

Past board presidents also reportedly received four laminated badges that granted access to reserved viewing areas in the wings of Jazz Fest’s three largest stages.

The board’s bylaws were amended after the 2019 Jazz Fest to eliminate these benefits. In a prepared statement released last week, David Francis, the current president of the Jazz & Heritage Foundation board, said that bylaws were changed in order to "preserve the 501c3 status of the foundation” and keep the foundation "in line with best practices for nonprofits."

 I wonder who finally threatened them.

In the Bags for LaToya

This is kind of funny in a few ways. Bagneris could have gone the other way with this endorsement but it wouldn't have been worth anything.  The voters who pulled his lever in the primary were going to LaToya anyway. They were, first and foremost, an anti-Charbonnet vote and weren't really his to deliver.  Here, on The Lens's map,we find the bulk of the Bagneris vote. (Shaded blue) It is situated in Lakeview and in the deepest, whitest, wealthiest Uptown precincts around Audubon Place and the Garden District.

Those are the voters and donors who locked in on Bagneris early when he went to Frank Stewart's house got all "both sidesey" about the monuments. Remember that?

Recall also that the anti-Desi "Not For Sale NOLA" PAC  was funded by a cohort of reactionary "business leaders" dead set against what upper class white people in this town snidely refer to as a "machine."  The Not For Sale group also donated heavily to Bagneris.

So really what we're looking at here are a block of white conservative voters with sympathies for old confederates who were looking at buying a primary candidate and will now buy a different one in the runoff. They are, themselves "not for sale" by anybody to anybody and they will be the first to tell you that.  The Advocate decided to accompany the story about this transaction with a photo that featured a "Black Lives Matter" banner in the background.  Somebody over there has a keen sense of irony.

Tuesday Night Debateball

The exciting action from the "John Georges Auditorium" on the campus of  Dillard University is available from WDSU here.  Now that the candidates are on TV all the time, we're well past the point where any of them is going to say or do anything substantive.  Not that we've been in much danger of that happening at all this year. But last night was almost entirely on-script and therefore devoid of meaning. The very first question specifically asked them to say what about their approach to crime would distinguish them from their opponents. When they all answered by repeating one another's platforms and the cliches that describe them, it was clear we weren't going to learn anything from this one.

But I took notes so let's run through those real quick. 

It is with a heavy heart and with great trepidation that I introduce this strained metaphor but it must be said.  Desiree Charbonnet is the Hillary Clinton of this election. She is well funded, well connected, some would say well groomed and prepared for the office, and is running the most bland,  playing-not-to-lose campaign of everybody.  While it's fair to say all of the candidates are playing a cynical triangulation game, Desiree's version of that seems the most pure. As we've written previously, her ads and website are calculated to target specific slivers of voters with an almost paint-by-demographic obviousness.

Last night she continued in this vein, robotically non-answering whenever possible. I think her opening statement was, "Greetings, Earthlings.."   The most interesting thing she said had to do with Sewerage & Water Board which she has decided she does not want to fold into a city department. The reason for this is the independent board has bonding authority and, if it can borrow, that means Desi can pledge not to raise fees and taxes to support its operations.  No, this probably isn't feasible. But it's a creative way to finesse a difficult campaign issue and that's really all we're here to do, right?

If Desi's technocratic reserve calls to mind Hillary Clinton, then LaToya's full on smarm can be said to evoke Bill.  On the campaign trail thus far she has frequently draped her rhetoric in a kind of false empathy designed to comfort audiences but not necessarily commit to anything.  She tells personal stories about crime in her neighborhood, or the time she rode a bus past a housing project, or the fact that she, too, once lived in an apartment. I've watched her talk to hospitality workers about how she understands their experience having once worked in a hotel herself. They seemed to eat it up despite the fact she promises nothing in the way of supporting their efforts to organize today. There's very little that comes out of this candidate's mouth that anyone should take at face value.  Even her signature line, "nothing stops a bullet like a job" is cribbed from an L.A. gang intervention program.

In her opening statement last night, Cantrell told us she is running in order to "spread the love" whatever that might mean. At the times when one could pull policy positions out of her syrupy ooze, they invariably derived from a dismal neoliberal playbook. On crime, she talked up her record of pushing for more surveillance cameras. On flood control she lamented that only property owners were shouldering the tax burden saying that, I guess, poorer residents need to have more "skin in the game." On affordable housing, she talked about soft second mortgages, "incentives" for landlords, and some bootstrappy sounding ways to encourage homeownership. When it comes to rising rents, LaToya's solution seems to be we should have fewer renters. Which is weird given that she also boasted of her efforts to secure PILOT tax giveaways to the developers of the South Market District apartments. Wasn't the idea there to bring more rental units onto the market?  Maybe not, actually.

Wisznia could be just one of many developers who — intentionally or not — have run afoul of HUD requirements, she continued.

Many of the city’s prominent developments are HUD-insured properties, such as the South Market District’s Paramount Residences and the Woodward Loft Apartments in the Warehouse District.

A search of the city's database found at least one unit at Woodward to be operating as a commercial short-term rental.

It's worth noting also that every candidate ducked a question about Airbnb. Each of them said some version of LaToya's meaningless call for "balance."  Also, to be fair, LaToya isn't the only candidate promising tax giveaways to developers and corporations in hope that the benefits will "trickle down."  Charbonnet presented a hypothetical pitch to Amazon where she said she would help them apply for new market tax credits. I think I actually shot myself in the brain at this point so excuse me if I'm missing some things.

I believe I heard Michael Bagneris say he was going to compile facts and clean things up several times.  Like all the candidates, Bagneris loves police and thinks we need more of them.  Like all of them he ducked the question about the monuments. They all basically said it was time to move on and have less "divisiveness." Like the other candidates, his housing answer centered on blight remediation and boot-strap type talk. Like all the candidates he agreed to give Payton and Brees one more season with the Saints. (Yes, this was a question.) He repeated the "nuts and bolts" manufacturing pitch he launched his campaign with. So, Bagneris was his typical boring self, right?  Not exactly.

For one thing, he was the only candidate to deliver anything like a direct attack on anyone.

In the most heated exchange of the evening, Bagneris took a shot at one of Henry's big talking points, that he is best positioned to reform the Sewerage & Water Board because he once served as a top official at a wastewater management company called United Water. Bagneris pointed to the brief period when the company ran Atlanta's water system, calling it a time of "customer complaints," "broken pipes" and "excessive chlorine in the water."

"So that’s experience we can do without,” Bagneris said.

It might have been better if Bagneris had skipped the customer complaints and asked what, exactly, it is Henry did at United Water.  To hear him tell it, he was the "President" of the company.  It's been a few years since the last time anyone called him out for this particular lie.  Maybe in his mind there's a statue of limitations. In any case, Henry is more or less a flim flam artist. His function at United Water, whatever his title, was the privatization of water systems. The last time New Orleans was pushing in that direction under Ray Nagin, Henry was involved. Prior to that he was on the executive team at infamous energy deregulation profiteer Enron. Last month, Henry's name came up in a story about how a venture run by him and actor Wendell Pierce to build houses in Pontchartrain Park had defaulted on federal CDBG grants financed through..... wait for it..... yep, FNBC.

In previous mayoral forums, where the candidates were asked directly if they would consider privatizing Sewerage and Water Board, Henry has answered, "possibly."

Toward the end of this debate, Bagneris also dropped this little gem on us. 

Bagneris would raise eyebrows a second time before Tuesday night's debate ended, during a "lightning round" closing out the event. In response to a question about whether the city is in a “mental health crisis,” he replied, “Some of it is represented here.”  

He didn't specify who he meant. Given his earlier attack on Henry we can reasonably assume that was his target. Although, in this field who could blame us if we asked for a more specific answer?

Uberize

It's fair to say every candidate for mayor has been unseemly in their fetishizing of both the tech driven "sharing economy" and of local law enforcement.  But only Frank Scurlock managed to distill the essence of this in a single word and act.

New Orleans mayoral candidate Frank Scurlock is facing a misdemeanor count of lewd conduct in Santa Monica, California, where he is accused of masturbating in an Uber vehicle in February.

Scurlock, whose splashy campaign ads have pledged to “Uberize” the New Orleans Police Department, was allegedly caught masturbating by a driver taking him to a hotel in West Hollywood on Feb. 10, Santa Monica Chief Deputy City Attorney Terry White said.

If you had been wondering what a candidate might mean when he says he wants to "Uberize NOPD," well, now you know it is even worse than you thought.  What's worse than even that, though, is it's not just Scurlock who wants to go around Uberizing over cops.

Desiree Charbonnet is doing it too.  This absurdly stupid ad even mimics Scurlock's cops-but-with-an-app-or-something premise. Her website puts it in even more alarming terms. There we find proposals to defund consent decree compliance monitoring as well as the Neighborhood Housing Improvement Fund in order to pay for more police. It also doesn't help that her plan has the support of New Orleans's proto-facist District Attorney as well as some of its notoriously corrupt bail bondsmen.

The Cantrell campaign took a few minutes away from promoting prison labor to try and make some hay out of that last point recently. We're still trying to figure out how they ever thought they had any room to talk, though. Anyway, Cantrell is as Uber-enthused over tougher policing as any of these candidates.  Maybe not as intense as her Uberizing over Airbnb but it's close.

Troy Henry is also doing it. At the most recent forum, he indicated his vision for NOPD would involve creating a "strike force" that goes after "bad dudes." He and Charbonnet also criticized consent decree restrictions on paid details. Charbonnet even said that NOPD officers are "demoralized" by the fact that Saints game detail gigs go to Jefferson Parish law enforcement.  We agree. It was extremely demoralizing when a Jefferson Parish Levee Authority officer told us to stop banging on the wall during the Saints-Patriots game last weekend. The way that game was going, we'd have much preferred to have NOPD just come by and shoot us.

And, of course, Michael Bagneris is Uberizing over the police as well. His website features a plan to hire 300 more cops by recruting heavily among military vets, install more surveillance cameras, and create a not-at-all scary sounding "Crime Analytics Department" to  "proactively identify violent criminals."

Yesterday Scurlock said he was going to "evaluate" the status of his campaign after having grossed everybody out this week.  If he drops out, he won't be missed. But we do have to thank him for leaving us this word with which to describe how grossed out we are by the rest of the field as well.

All about Mitch

The juicy rumor this morning is that Mitch Landrieu's PAC interviewed LaToya and Desiree last night with an eye, one supposes, toward deciding which to endorse, or at least support in some way since an explicit endorsement might not be not be the most welcome gift to any candidate.

Anyway, as Grace kind of points out here, it looks like Mitch has already partly decided on the basis of what's best for Mitch.  In this case, that would be snubbing his opponents in the previous two elections.

The letter Alford quoted omitted Michael Bagneris, the former Civil District Court judge who ran a harshly critical challenge against the mayor when he won reelection in 2014, as well as businessman Troy Henry, who ran against him in 2010.

Money for Bags

Michael Bagneris won what Tyler Bridges is calling the "Frank Stewart Primary." 

Michael Bagneris has won the Frank Stewart primary, and that could pay dividends for a New Orleans mayoral candidate who has lagged in the polls and in raising money.

Stewart, who built a nationwide funeral home and cemetery business that was sold in 2013, is not only supporting Bagneris but also organized a breakfast for the former judge last week with some three dozen friends and associates capable of writing big campaign checks.

“My candidate knocked the socks off all 38 people,” Stewart said Wednesday. “They all said he was so impressive that they would support him. I was overwhelmed.”

Stewart's profile in New Orleans politics got a lift earlier this year after he published full-page newspaper ads denouncing Mayor Mitch Landrieu and his decision to push for the removal of four Jim Crow-era monuments, including the statue of Robert E. Lee at Lee Circle

I wonder does this mean we have to ask Bagneris about the monuments now? Actually, wait, we did do this. Or at least Bridges did in an earlier article.

Michael Bagneris, a former Civil District Court judge, lamented that the debate over whether to take down the monuments “divides the races.” He said Landrieu should have put the decision to the city’s voters.

“Everybody would have had a chance to express their view,” he said. “Whichever way it would have come down, people would have been satisfied.”

Bagneris declined to say how he would have voted.

Asked for a clarification of his views, he chose to have a spokesman issue a written statement. “At this time,” it said, “there is nothing further to say on the subject as it distracts from the real issue facing our city: solving the violent crime problem.”

Tut tut at the "divisiveness," fail to take a stand on the issue, and go full bore into "Murders Not Monuments."  That's some bold leadership right there. No wonder Stewart and friends are impressed. They also like a guy who isn't here to coddle the damn kids today.

Besides Stewart, Jay Lapeyre, another prominent New Orleans businessman, hosted a meet-and-greet with Bagneris at his Uptown home on Aug. 3 with about 20 friends. Lapeyre said that afterward he decided to support Bagneris and contributed the maximum $5,000.

“Michael has the personal accomplishments needed to understand how important it is to create opportunities that are aspirational for other people,” said Lapeyre, who runs a major manufacturing company and has headed powerful business associations such as the Business Council of New Orleans. “You can’t think it’s just about what do we need to do to make it more comfortable. It’s about how to challenge people, especially young people.”

 Geeze.

Meanwhile, here is Peter Athas's debut column at the Bayou Brief. It's a brief summary of some recent mayoral elections with some good commentary on the candidates and their coalitions. I'm not 100 percent in agreement with Peter's characterization of certain people and events but it's a very worthwhile piece.  I've been looking specifically at 2002 as a comparable scenario to this election for a few months now.  Peter seems to agree with that.

There were two frontrunners at the start of the 2002 campaign: State Sen. Paulette Irons and Marc Morial’s respected police chief, Richard Pennington. Irons’ well-financed bid to be the city’s first female mayor fell apart because of a somewhat casual acquaintance with the truth, as pointed out by the Gambit‘s Allen Johnson in a piece entitled “The Perils of Paulette.” Irons was also the subject of an intense opposition campaign. As to the late Chief Pennington, he was a great cop, a nice man, and a terrible politician. His biggest mistake was allowing Dollar Bill Jefferson’s organization to run his campaign. White voters still took a dim view of the Congressman in 2002, and with good reason. His friends and relations spent the aughties looting the school board. Dollar Bill’s finger in the Pennington pie meant that the man who should have been the perfect racial cross-over candidate was viewed with suspicion by white conservatives and goo-goo reformer types alike. It didn’t matter that he’d reduced crime dramatically and cleaned up a corrupt department. Palling around with Dollar Bill killed his chances.

Typically, New Orleans mayoral elections end up being less about individual candidates and platforms and more about the interest groups and power player who coalesce behind the campaigns. In a year like this year, when none of the candidates is a dominant personality, the behind the scenes jockeying becomes even more important.  Broadly speaking, though, the pattern tends toward a struggle between two broadly defined power bases. And, yes, those broad bases have a lot to do with race. There's always a "black" candidate and a "white" candidate regardless of the actual races of the individuals.

To explain this a little, let's look back at this (rather hostile) Advocate article  from a few weeks ago about Desiree Charbonnet's donors. The article points out, as most people will, that Desiree is pulling in a large share of the donations from contractors who do business with the city. That's worth raising an eyebrow at. But it is also true that these firms always put money into elections and that they do this because they believe it's a way to remain in good standing with the winners. (Notice a lot of them are hedging their bets by dropping Cantrell a little money as well.) Still, yes, there is a pay-to-play aspect to this even if it is merely implicit. And, yes, this is quite obviously an inherent and pervasive problem not only in local New Orleans politics but in.. you know... politics everywhere you go.

Charbonnet was always going to be the primary beneficiary of this from the moment she got into the race. The reasons for this have to do with her family name, and her institutional connection to a system of political organizing and patronage. This system can justifiably be criticized for the climate of petty corruption and insider dealing it tends to engender. But keep in mind that it has also played a significant role in achieving some semblance of racial and economic parity in a city where the levers of power and influence were traditionally reserved for an insular class of white plutocrats.

So to bring this back to 2002, Pennington at that time, ran with basically the backing Charbonnnet has now.  It's more complicated than just that. But it was generally understood to be a continuance of the Morial administration and so everyone who was benefiting there would naturally want to stay the course.  Pennington was opposed by Ray Nagin who had the support of the "business community" such as the cabal of tech bros who founded Idea Village as well as the philanthropic clubs and old line Carnival types.  "Goo-goo reformers and white conservatives" aren't always in the exact same camp but they do tend to find each other during mayoral elections. When the runoff comes, they will almost certainly be on the same side.

Right now, though, the white vote is pretty loose and all three major candidates are scrambling to nail down what bits of it they can.  It looks right now like a the "goo-goo" side which I would define as middle class white liberals are still kicking the tires on LaToya while the plutocrats haven't been fully accounted for.  That is, until Bagneris started picking up a few of them this week.

Anyway, I hope all of this helps put this last quote from Bridges's article into context.  It's about where the players are lining up.. or at least where Bagneris would like them to. 

Asked if he made any promises to the businessmen at Stewart’s gathering, Bagneris said, “What promise would you give to any of the individuals? They are already independently wealthy. These are not contractors who need a city contract.”

Charbonnet, who had $645,000 in hand through mid-July, compared to Bagneris’ $180,000, has been criticized for taking numerous $5,000 contributions from city contractors.

Candidates agree flooding is bad

It's a bold stance, I know.  For what it's worth, Bagneris probably has the closest thing to a point here.

The clamor grew louder after revelations that the S&WB had put out misleading statements about the capacity of the drainage system during the flood, even as Mayor Mitch Landrieu called for senior S&WB officials’ resignations and said he would hire a private firm to find out just what went wrong and to temporarily run the embattled agency.

Bagneris on Thursday urged Landrieu to hire two separate firms to conduct an assessment of the S&WB’s failures and to manage its operations in the short term.

“If one firm does both, we will never get a TRUE picture of what happened, only one firm’s analysis and how they can supposedly fix the problem,” he said.

It's still very likely that it could happen that way. 

Dare to be stupid

This is gonna be a fun week.

The New Orleans City Council will hold a special meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday (Aug. 8) to discuss the flooding that resulted from as much as 9 inches of rain falling in parts of the city Saturday afternoon. It was the second extreme downpour in as many weeks that put storm water in vehicles, homes and businesses in multiple neighborhoods.

President Jason Williams summoned council members Sunday to call the meeting. Officials with the Landrieu administration, the Sewerage and Water Board, and the Army Corps of Engineers are expected to respond to questions about the city's vulnerability to quick inundations.

Well that was quick. Must be an election on. Actually, despite the obvious politically motivated buffoonery of it all, I'm glad to see city councilpersons and candidates all asking questions about the drainage. I mean, sure, they are asking a lot of dumb questions so far 

City Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell posted to Twitter early and often, going on a tweet storm as she talked about policy in the context of the flood. She had videos and photos to illustrate her point.

" ... We all deserve functioning infrastructure, and ensure that adequate infrastructure across our city is a TOP priority. We can do better, and we will. Rain events like this are more than Orleans Parish. We need to think and act regionally. NOLA gov't leaders have worked hard on this issue, and we will continue to work on this."

When they string it together like that, it sounds like it almost makes sense, even if it doesn't mean a whole lot.  But watching the candidates spit stuff out in real time this weekend was more like following a bunch of bots meant to spit empty phrases at random.  Here is LaToya working in "small businesses" to her rant.  Michael Bagneris seems almost more worried about "the biomedical corridor that will be a powerful economic driver for our city and region," than he does about anyone stuck in a stalled car or watching the water come into their home.  They all leave the impression that either none of them knows what they're talking about with regard to drainage or that they just fumbling for a way to shoehorn their lame ass campaign themes into the story, or both. It is both, actually. 

But as embarrassing as all that is for them, and as shameless and stupid as they all are, it is kind of their job to do this sort of thing and they have to start somewhere. There has to be a public conversation about what happened. Even a dumb one.

When flooding like this happens repeatedly something has to be done. And no amount of smug condescension about the designed capacity of the current system will change that. We know the rainfall was greater than what the pumps are designed to handle. But shut the fuck up about that for a second and consider that it is still worth asking:

1) Did the system actually perform even up to its presumably inadequate capacity? There's nothing but Cedric Grant and Ryan Berni's word to confirm that. Maybe you like ... um.. carrying water for those assholes. I don't see the use.

2) If this is the best the system can do and this kind of flooding keeps happening anyway, isn't that a problem too? There is a whole world of inquiry to be made into the efficacy of our proposed "resilience" strategy for re-thinking our drainage system. Right now there are some compelling ideas on the verge of implementation but it's important to stress what we're talking about in that regard can mostly be described as pilot programs. What we actually need is a total systemic reevaluation and overhaul and we need that to happen like several years ago.

Point is we aren't where we want to be. Something needs to change and the way to start the ball rolling with that is to let your idiot councilpersons ask their grandstanding and clumsy questions. And then try to help push whatever momentum that starts in the right direction.  Until today, the game in this election was seeing who could promise to throw the most "public safety money" away on more police, surveillance, and prisons.  But what if we had a chance to talk about spending that money on actual public safety instead?  Flood control seems like a great opportunity to have that conversation.

First NBC is having an interesting week

The thing about Ashton Ryan's money club that got it into trouble in the first place was it was specifically designed to be a conduit for turning post-Katrina rebuilding grants and tax credits into piles of money that well placed socialites in the local "philanthropy" circles could play with. It's complicated but it's basically the laundering process through which New Market housing credits end up financing something like the WWII Museum expansion. Accordingly, the swells made Ryan into a hero.

First NBC was the creation of Ashton Ryan Jr., who chose a name that recalled First National Bank of Commerce, a prominent New Orleans bank that was acquired by Bank One in 1998.

As the new bank grew, so too did Ryan's celebrity, earning him status as the city's best-known banker, even though his bank was far from the biggest. He earned roughly $1.6 million in total compensation in 2015.

Over the years, he's been a regular presence within many of the city's civic groups, including the boards of Greater New Orleans Inc., the University of New Orleans Foundation and Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans.

He's also been recognized for his civic contributions, including by the New Orleans Council for Community and Justice, which awarded Ryan its annual Weiss Award in 2014.

Now that the scheme has fallen apart, the direct line it draws through that whole scene is interesting.

Cantrell said the couple refinanced their home in 2013 in order to pay off the debt, with a portion of their regular mortgage payments intended to go toward their tax bill. Parish records confirm the couple obtained a mortgage from First NBC Bank that year for $210,000.

But the IRS apparently never received those payments from First NBC, and the agency put a lien on the property the following year, Cantrell said, blaming the bank for the error.

Cantrell said she expects the IRS to issue a letter soon indicating that the problem has been resolved, but she would not say whether she and her husband have paid off the entire tax bill at this point.

Whitney Bank took over the mortgage after First NBC went bust this spring, and Cantrell said she has asked that bank to provide a letter confirming her description of what happened.

I don't actually think LaToya's tax bill is a big deal. Bagneris's taxes are also in this story. It's not a scandal either. In LaToya's case it looks like a failed bank has screwed up her paperwork. It's not uncommon.  It is kind of a fun deal that the failed bank is First NBC, though.  Maybe that's a coincidence. It's a small town. 

Camera shy

Everybody hates those dang traffic cameras 

New Orleans Mayoral Candidate Latoya Cantrell generated a lot of buzz this week when she made a campaign promise to suspend the city's controversial traffic cameras.

The ticket-writing, photo-snapping, eyes in the sky are certainly unpopular with most drivers.

While some see them as a necessary evil for safer streets. Cantrell isn't convinced.

"We really don't know if it's actually reducing or making us safer," Cantrell said.

Well, OK, LaToya doesn't like them. Or so she says. There was some confusion. 

LaToya Cantrell's campaign went from a pledge to suspend the use of all traffic cameras to a more narrow policy targeting only the several dozen set up in the last year and then back again -- all over the course of a day.

Desiree also says she doesn't like them but, for some reason, doesn't approve of campaigning against them. 

Charbonnet agrees the matter needs more study, but she's not prepared to suspend the program.

"If in fact they are having a positive effect on public safety or traffic safety, if I went in and just pulled them out then that could be a mistake," Charbonnet said. "We need to be careful. We can't just ploy for votes."

Bagneris thinks they are "just a money grab." But, apparently, money grabs are good?

"I still believe the cameras are just a money grab," candidate Michael Bagneris said.

Bagneris maintains the money should be dedicated and not just go into the city's general fund.

"If we're going to grab that money, let the people use that money in a way that they think is necessary and that is fix our streets," Bagneris said.

Scurlock says he thinks they're "unconstitutional" but somehow is still OK with putting them in school zones. Maybe children are exempt from the sixth amendment? Who knows? 

Unfortunately, voters won't get a chance to find out the candidates' actual position on this matter until one of them is elected mayor and presents her first municipal budget. That is... unless one of them presents an idea for coming up with another $25 million between now and election day.

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.

Nobody actually lives there

The world's cities are becoming playgrounds for luxury travelers. People don't live in them anymore. 

Italian cities are the latest subjects of concern that Airbnb is pushing permanent residents out of historic city centres and aiding a trend in 'Disneyfication' in places such as Florence, according to a new report from the University of Siena.

The authors behind the report claim that up to one in five properties in the historic centre of Florence is being rented out through Airbnb, turning the feted city into a “theme park for tourists”.

“Almost 20 per cent of the entire housing stock in the historic centre of Florence is listed on Airbnb, which is a lot,” said Stefano Picascia, one of the authors behind the report. “Every single flat on a short-term let is one flat less in the regular long-term market.”

Picascia and his colleagues claim locals are increasingly being pushed out by tourism, which is affecting the character of Italy’s cities.

“The centre of Florence is now 'Disneyfied',” Picascia told Telegraph Travel. “It’s basically a theme park for tourists.”

Despite the fact that the STR market has been pressuring renters in New Orleans for several years now, it has only recently shown up on policymakers' radar.  But rather than doing anything helpful, last year, city council passed a massive liberalization of the city's enforcement regime becoming a partner in the "Disneyfication" of neighborhoods in exchange for what it hopes will be increased revenues collected in fees and property taxes.

Early in the process, LaToya Cantrell  signaled that renters would not be a priority to her. Speaking at this Tulane Hillel forum on gentrification two years ago, Cantrell answered questions about Airbnb driven displacement by saying only that she was interested in a "balanced" approach that would increase revenue. She also reminded the audience that it was important to remember New Orleans is a "destination city." She would go on to vote with the 5-2 majority of councilmembers who passed the (non)regulation package last December.

Today, Cantrell appeared along with Michael Bagneris at a mayoral candidates' forum hosted by Indivisible NOLA. From what I gleaned via Twitter, the Indivisibles did ask about housing this morning, but I didn't see anyone talk about short term rentals explicitly.  That's a shame since LaToya, especially should have to answer for her vote to approve the legalization during this campaign.  Plenty time left, I guess.

New old names

The Advocate mentions two new City Council candidates in today's political blurbs. The candidates are new to this race but the names are not.

They are Belden “Noonie Man” Batiste, a community activist and Yellow Pocahontas Mardi Gras Indian, and Kenneth Cutno, a community development and housing consultant. They say they will sign up for the District D and Division 1 at-large seats, respectively.

Add a Batiste to a ballot that already includes a Bagneris and a Charbonnet in the mayoral slot and you've got yourself one heck of an #authentic NOLA-branded field.  We should look into selling Brass Passes or something. If anything it further highlights the absence of any Landrieus whatsoever.  Especially strange given that there are millions of those.

Cutno's name is less familiar but he himself has run for office previously. Granted that was more or less what one might consider a vanity campaign against Cedric Richmond last year. Jumping into a citywide At-Large race with little experience or name recognition would seem much the same way.  But that's fine because minor candidates hoping to catch fire are important. Often they are free to focus on policy positions more established figures may find risky but which deserve to be heard.

Cutno is calling for the repeal of a comprehensive set of regulations for short-term rentals that the City Council approved last year, a $17 million investment in affordable housing programs and the removal of the city’s traffic cameras, among other things.

Not that other candidates aren't talking about housing. But few have directly called for a repeal of the STR regs even though it's already clear they will have to be revisited one way or another.  I also believe Michael Bagneris has criticized the traffic cameras. But is he even a major candidate at this point?

Nuts and bolts

Enter: Mr. Excitement.

Former Judge Michael Bagneris announced his second run for New Orleans mayor on Thursday (May 11), becoming the first mayoral candidate to announce his candidacy in a major event before supporters. His announcement was held at Dooky Chase's Restaurant in Treme.

This event was more of a formality than anything. Bagneris indicated he was running a long time ago and has remained open about his intentions. In this case, a kick off party is more useful in telling us what the campaign expects it will be about.

That's important because some may recall that this was a problem for Bagneris the last time around. Stephanie Grace called his 2014 run a "campaign about nothing."  (The Advocate's site is riddled with link rot so I can't find that column right now.)   I later wrote that it had been a campaign by listicle meaning that Bagneris appeared to have just pulled the top two or three issues named in voter surveys, and then mentioned them a lot without forming an overarching narrative.  So far he seems to be leaning toward a repeat of that. 

The quiet field in the two months before official qualifying in July gave Bagneris a jump on some early politicking, and he said on Thursday that he plans to begin rolling out new proposals to flesh out his campaign message. The early indications were that Bagneris would wage a heavily crime-focused candidacy, and he spent much of his announcement talking about either public safety or programs that would help address the issue.

Inevitably, the survey results say voters are worried about crime. Crime is an easy thing for candidates to talk about without really saying anything besides "Crime is bad." So they say that. They also say, "We need more police," in order to stop the crime although that is not necessarily true. But it's easy to say. In 2014, Bagneris' closing ads promised to somehow put 1600 more cops on the street in his first year.  This time he's saying he wants to bring back an unspecified number of retirees.

His first action to build the ranks of the police department, Bagneris said, would begin an outreach effort to retired New Orleans police officers.

"The pool of retirees is a fertile ground for recruiting officers," Bagneris said. "Many left when they could retire because of their differences with the administration. With a mayor that they don't have those differences with, many will be willing to come back, so we are going to recruit from those retirees first."

So far we're still very much in nothingville. The economic development portion of this talk is equally uninspiring. Here we see Bagneris touching on another issue that must be polling strongly this year and addressing it with basically nonsense. 

Bagneris rolled out several economic development ideas, first criticizing the primary industry in New Orleans, tourism, as a low-wage industry. He says New Orleans can't be a "one-trick pony," and questioned why the city hasn't capitalized on more activity from the Port of New Orleans.

"We import large qualities of steel," Bagneris said. "Why can't we manufacture nuts and bolts?"

It's encouraging to see a mayoral candidate willing to publicly criticize tourism this way. The poverty wages of our service economy combined with our ever-worsening housing crisis should be the central issue this year.  But Bagneris's solutions, (The Port! Manufacturing!) such as they are, indicate he probably isn't taking the problem seriously.  I mean, I'd be the first to agree that de-industrialization has been a major factor in spurring economic inequality in the U.S. over the past half century. But something tells me the Mayor Of New Orleans isn't going to have a lot of power to reverse those global trends. Maybe I'm being cynical. Maybe we're only a few years away from our dream jobs in Mayor Bagneris's Glorious Nuts And Bolts Factory. Probably not, though.  Besides, we produce enough nuts around here as it is.

Meanwhile, The Advocate's account of the announcement suggests the Bagneris campaign is at least trying to build a rhetorical theme this time out.

“Ours is a very noble cause. We are fighting for the very soul of New Orleans,” he said. “The soul of New Orleans is its people, and we the people are in peril.”

Holy crap, our souls are in peril! That is some heavy stuff. Although it isn't what one expects from the generally mild Bagneris. I wonder what it sounded like. It's also an odd thing to say if you propose to recover your "soul" through improved relations with Leon Cannizzaro. 

He also said he would improve community policing and suggested that beefing up staffing, rather than the crime cameras that form the basis of Landrieu’s recently announced security plan, is the way to reduce crime.

Bagneris also pledged to improve relations between the mayor’s office and Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman and District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, both of whom have clashed with Landrieu.

Still, there is that little bit of criticism thrown in about Landrieu's surveillance plan.  That and the knock against the tourism industry suggest this is a candidate who is listening for issues that might distinguish him from the field. Even if he gives no sign of knowing or caring how to actually address any of them.

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.

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?

Up up and up

This Advocate profile of Mitch Landrieu's ambitions now that he's in the home stretch of his term in office is very good. But it mostly tells us things we already know.

For example it tells us Mitch, the technocrat, doesn't think democracy is really very good. 

He pointed to the dramatic swings the state has had as it has lurched between Republican and Democratic governors with sharply different politics and philosophies over the last few decades as a contributing factor to the problems it now faces, and he argued for a smoother transition in the city itself.

“Cities work or entities work when there’s a good person running it and a good structure. They’ve both got to line up,” Landrieu said. “In terms of continuity, the city ought to decide what direction they want to go in and elect a person who’s going to do it.”

"Continuity" is better for "cities or entities" than all that inconvenient public input and government by assent of the people and such. But, again, we've known this was a core belief of Mitch's for years. It's one reason he's bound to fit in with the Clinton Administration when or if he gets a job there as Resilience Czar In Charge of Entrepreneurial Innovation or whatever. 

Landrieu has been a longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and there’s been speculation that he could be looking to move into a role with her administration if she wins.

Getting a position with a Democratic president’s administration could be a logical step for Landrieu, and it essentially would mean following in his father’s footsteps. Moon Landrieu, who was mayor in the 1970s, went on to serve as President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of housing and urban development.

Having already stumped for Clinton in the Democratic primaries in Virginia and South Carolina, Landrieu said he’s preparing to head back on the campaign trail between now and November.

“If asked, I’ll go. Even if I’m not asked, I’ll go,” he said. “I am very interested in her being the next president of the United States. And more interested in Donald Trump never getting close to the White House.”

But we've all been speculating about Mitch's next job for years so none of that is surprising either. The article also reminds us that the municipal election schedule has been changed. We vote for the next mayor next fall rather then during the spring of 2018 which means we don't get a year off from politics in 2017. So yay! or boo! depending on whether you prefer democracy or "continuity."  With regard to all that, we get this review of the likely candidates.

No one has formally declared their intention to seek the mayor’s seat, though there’s been widespread speculation about a number of potential candidates, including trash magnate-turned-crime app sponsor Sidney Torres IV; City Council members Jason Williams and LaToya Cantrell; a handful of state lawmakers; and former Judge Michael Bagneris, who ran against Landrieu two years ago.

Again, no surprises. But if we can do anything to promote the continued use of "trash magnate" as a modifier wherever Sidney Torres's name appears in print, please let us know how we can help.

Anyway, there is one new bit of information (to me anyway) in this article about Mitch's post-mayoral plans.  Whatever those may be, they're going to be well-financed. 

He recently launched a political action committee, NOLA PAC. An invitation to its inaugural fundraiser last month suggested donations of between $1,000 and $2,500 and billed the group as a “leadership PAC that supports people and activities that will keep New Orleans moving forward together.”

“I didn’t just give eight years of my life to just turn around and say, ‘Well, now that I’m not the mayor, I’m not even a citizen,’ ” Landrieu said. “I fully expect in my (post-mayoral) years — and I’m sure there are a lot of people who would rather I leave sooner rather than later — to be an actively involved citizen in the city of New Orleans, however that manifests itself. I’m not going to walk away and say it doesn’t matter.”

Citizen Landrieu is going to stick around distributing monies to allies.. you know..  for the greater good. That's nice.  But this brings up one point we would have liked to see this article address that got skipped o over somehow. Did anyone in this Advocate editorial board meeting with mayor ask anyone who attended the NOLA PAC fundraiser?  Might be neat to know about. They got hold of an invitation, after all.  Maybe Mitch forgot to send them a receipt afterwards. 

Congratulations, Mayor Bagneris

Guess that whole stupid campaign was not in vain after all.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu has dropped an ambitious $300 million plan to convert the old Charity Hospital building into a civic center housing City Hall and the Orleans Parish Civil District Court. Landrieu said Wednesday that  a lack of state funding and a skyrocketing construction budget led him to cancel the plan.

“The plans do not pencil out to build a new Civic Complex or to relocate to a new building.  My plan is to invest FEMA and capital funding into reasonable repairs of the buildings that will make them more efficient and safe,” Landrieu said in a statement. “Simply put, we cannot afford the project at this time, given our other critical needs.”

Legislature wouldn't kick in the money. Now Mitch has to drop another one of his favorite big ideas.  I notice Landrieu doesn't appear as either a "winna" or a "looza" at the end of the session. Since Michael Bagneris basically gets the only thing he wanted, I wonder if Mitch even won the election outright.

tl;dr

At the outset of the recent mayoral election, Stephanie Grace characterized Michael Bagneris's candidacy as  "a campaign about nothing."  In a way she was right. Bagneris's campaign was so nonchalantly run and often tone deaf that it might as well not have been.

On the other hand, had it not been such a terrible campaign, it could have been about something. Grace pointed us to what the campaign about nothing could have been about in her weekend column about Landrieu's inauguration. 

In fact, the speech contained numerous echoes of Landrieu’s chief challenger’s campaign — not the personal conflicts and interagency grievances, but the emphasis on crime and opportunity for all in a city where spotty prosperity coexists with chronic unemployment among African-American men.

Landrieu had acknowledged these ongoing challenges during his campaign against retired Judge Michael Bagneris, of course, but he also painted a more positive overall picture. His speech Monday suggested that, personal animosity aside, the two weren’t really so far apart in assessing the city’s most daunting problems.

Bagneris halfheartedly fumbled around these themes but never really seemed to grasp them.Which probably means he cared more about, "the personal conflicts and interagency grievances" than, "the city's more daunting problems." So Grace is correct. The two men really weren't very far apart.

Anyway, I could have saved myself a whole lot of typing last week by just linking to Mitch's speech and pointing out these two statements.

There's this.

After years of trial by fire, we as a people have changed – New Orleans, we as a people have now found a new way.

The old way of ‘divide and conquer’ is gone, replaced with a new unity of purpose.

Old mistrust between business and government gives way to the mutual benefits of cooperation

 And then later there is this.

Our mission is to create a City of peace where everyone can thrive and no one is left behind.

Four years from now may seem a long way away, but time flies.

Those 1460 days will pass in a second. And what will we accomplish in our short time together?

What will we have done to open the circle of opportunity and prosperity to all?

This whole bloated thing was basically a long way of saying that if you truly buy into that first statement, you'll never be all that committed to the second.