The plutonomy is permanent

Here's David Dayen on the "K shaped economy."  It's a phenomenon that, as he points out in the article, has been understood for a long time now. But its acceleration coming out the other side of the pandemic has brought us to a place of acute pain for many, even as that pain isn't well reflected in the numbers measuring the overall economy. 

How can we hold together the concepts of soft employment numbers, higher inflation, and climbing retail sales? You can search for reasons to explain why U.S. consumers are lying, spending with abandon even as they despise the economic picture. Or you can simply reject the average and look to the differences within the income distribution. If you do, you reveal the K-shape: Consumer spending is being driven by the top 10 or 20 percent, and unemployment, food insecurity, and gloominess are driven by everyone else. Both groups are experiencing inflation, but only the lower-income earners truly feel it. Higher-income folks are happy to spend more money on goods and services, bolstered by fat wallets and stock portfolios.

This is not that novel an analysis—like I said, Citigroup, among many others, figured it out 20 years ago—but it has huge implications. First, on inflation, if the primary buyers of goods and services (the richest 20 percent) are not price-sensitive, there is no reason to moderate prices to ensure that customers have an ability to pay. If inflation is not going to meaningfully reduce volume of sales, you can keep marking up higher. This is consistent with the story of higher corporate earnings, with companies “raising prices when they can.”

The same companies are also finding ways to ditch workers, moving to “human-light” operations, in the bloodless parlance of corporate-speak. Some of this reflects productivity gains from automation, but much is out of the necessity of doing more with less, because investment is seen as folly with Trump changing his mind every few seconds on policies where companies need certainty to invest. CEOs are also drunk on DOGE-ing their workforces, aping what the administration did to its federal workforce this year. The results of grinding remaining employees to the bone are likely to be unsustainable, but the spending appetites of wealthy consumers will conceal this.

Is it "likely to be unsustainable," though?  I'm not so sure. That the economy runs entirely on wealth circulating only among the wealthy as they trade on increasingly abstract speculative assets is pretty much taken for granted at this point.  The 21st Century has been characterized by one massive calamity after another and yet no amount of human suffering has managed to shake us off this path.  It's certainly why your democracy, such as it is, doesn't seem to be hooked up to anything that matters anymore. I can't see any reason it won't just go on like this forever, really. 

"Debate me bro"

The key here is we're talking about the same problem we run into with "both sides" journalism, which, I think is something people understand better than they once did. None of this is intended to help the participants or observers achieve a better understanding of the topic. Rather, the idea is to legitimize morally indefensible acts and policy through false equivalence. 

Klein is eulogizing not a practitioner of good-faith political discourse, but one of the most successful architects of “debate me bro” culture—a particularly toxic form of intellectual harassment that has become endemic to our political discourse. And by praising Kirk as practicing “politics the right way,” Klein is inadvertently endorsing a grift that actively undermines the kind of thoughtful engagement our democracy desperately needs.

The “debate me bro” playbook is simple and effective: demand that serious people engage with your conspiracy theories or extremist talking points. If they decline, cry “censorship!” and claim they’re “afraid of the truth.” If they accept, turn the interaction into a performance designed to generate viral clips and false legitimacy. It’s a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition that has nothing to do with genuine intellectual discourse.

The fundamental issue with “debate me bro” culture isn’t just that it’s obnoxious, it’s that it creates a false equivalence between good-faith expertise and bad-faith trolling. When you agree to debate someone pushing long-debunked conspiracy theories or openly hateful ideologies, you’re implicitly suggesting that their position deserves equal consideration alongside established facts and expert analysis.

This is exactly backwards from how the actual “marketplace of ideas” is supposed to work. Ideas don’t deserve platforms simply because someone is willing to argue for them loudly. They earn legitimacy through evidence, peer review, and sustained engagement with reality. Many of the ideas promoted in these viral “debates” have already been thoroughly debunked and rejected by that marketplace—but the “debate me bro” format resurrects them as if they’re still worth serious consideration.

Perhaps most insidiously, these aren’t actually debates at all. They’re performances designed to generate specific emotional reactions for viral distribution. Participants aren’t trying to persuade anyone or genuinely engage with opposing viewpoints. They’re trying to create moments that will get clipped, shared, and monetized across social media.

Actually I don't even like that "marketplace of ideas" gambit. I think that's actually part of the grift.  Asking everyone to conceive of a "marketplace of ideas" implies a state of nature defined by competition rather than collaboration. It's a kind of anti-social nihilism. But it's also deeply ingrained in American life in particular.  

Anyway, the real lesson here is an old one. Don't feed the trolls. 

"Qualified"

I wonder what what Pierre Villere is getting at here, specifically.  

A dozen of Moreno’s donors have contributed $12,000, the maximum allowed by state law. They include a mix of local donors and out-of-state donors, among them Zelia LLC, which is affiliated with Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson, and Houston-based FMJR Management LLC. 

Three of Moreno's maximum donations came from financial consultant Pierre Villere, his children or corporate entities affiliated with the family. Villere described Moreno as a longtime friend and said she "is, without a doubt, the most qualified candidate we've had for mayor since Moon Landrieu."

"I moved to Mandeville 32 years ago because I got completely fed up with the crime and the potholes. And 32 years later, nothing has happened," said Villere, who consults for the construction industry. "It's hugely, hugely frustrating to see the lack of progress." 

You know the mayors who came after Moon and didn't happen to be Moon's son all had a particular thing in common. Maybe that's what this guy who has lived on the northshore for three decades is talking about with regard to "qualifications." It's hard to say. 

Ban Mayors 2025: Chapter 2 Qualifying and Disqualifying

Lovely late summer in New Orleans when the crepe myrtles are full and the candidate signage is in bloom. 

On a recent late July Thursday, New Orleans municipal government took the day off.  The reason for this was it allowed people to prepare for the approach of a weather system that could have possibly developed into a tropical storm but thankfully did not. Instead the city saw a few hours of moderate thunderstorms but little else. Sometimes when this happens, people like to make wisecracks about official over-caution. But it's always better to err on the side of safety.  In a Twitter thread that same week, Matt McBride explained why. 

McBride always gets deep in the weeds with his analysis. But the general takeaway is that Sewerage and Water Board pumping capacity and power generation operates on a knife's edge even in times when it seems like things are relatively functional ahead of a weather event. On average, 20-25 pumps go down during a storm.  A turbine listed as "available" ahead of a weather event, may be available in name only. The chronic inoperability of this infrastructure stems from neglect and poor choices made after Katrina when federal funds were available to make the necessary repairs.  Anyway, if you're wondering why you get sudden school or office closures and urgent phone notifications whenever a summer afternoon thunderstorm begins to loom, this is the reason.  Luckily, nothing too bad happened this time around but it's a long rainy season so we'll circle back to this issue soon enough. And over the course of the long election season, candidates for municipal office with competing claims that they might handle these problems any better will continue to circle each other. Around and around like that, until we're all eventually down the proverbial drain.   

Speaking of which, this month's near disaster happened one week after the very real disaster that is Qualifying Week for the municipal elections. The cards are signed, the fees are paid, the lawsuits are (mostly, I think) over now and our field is official. Let's take a quick look at what we're dealing with here.  

First off, a hearty congratulations to District B Councilwoman Lesli Harris, Clerk of Civil Court Chelsea Napoleon, and Coroner Dwight McKenna on winning re-election to their posts outright by default.  As a constituent of Councilmember Harris's district I received a glossy mailer from her this week thanking me (and everyone else here) for not running against her.  

We did it!

Dr. McKenna pulled off a neat trick in somehow arranging for this story to break a few hours after qualifying had ended. 

A Civil District Court judge has found Orleans Parish Coroner Dwight McKenna’s office liable for “outrageous and reckless” misconduct after it failed to identify a body and notify the deceased's person's family, the second time this year a judge has rapped the coroner for such problems.  

A few days later, the coroner's air conditioner broke forcing the office to pause work for a while. McKenna says it's all fine now. Good luck to him in the coming term.

Napoleon is from a politically important family so it's no surprise to see her get the other free pass. The Clerk of Court positions are typically safe offices for pedigreed lawyers in the mix. Which is what makes the other Clerk of Court race, the Clerk of Criminal Court, interesting. Incumbent Darren Lombard has drawn a unique challenger. 

July was Calvin Duncan Month at The Lens. On the 8th, the website published an excerpt from Ducnan's newly published memoir. Duncan was wrongfully imprisoned for a murder charge and spent 28 years there studying the law in order to better fight for his release. The Lens also published on the 8th, this interview with Duncan by Bernard Smith about the book, his experiences, and what he takes from it. This line, in particular, was highlighted. 

Smith: What message do you hope your story sends to people inside the system now?

Duncan: Well, for the people on the inside, I hope my story serves as a guidance, to guide them through that dark period. That they don’t give up. That they stand fast in their belief that they’re entitled to access to the courts. That is a liberty that we got as a citizen of this country. And you don’t let nobody take that away. 

But people think the system is going to correct itself. That doesn’t happen overnight. My journey in prison showed that I was denied at every angle. That’s a harsh reality. The system is diabolical.

And, so, one week later, The Lens published this follow-up article on Duncan's next attempt to correct a system that won't correct itself. He's running for Clerk of Court specifically in order to help people who, like he once did, need access to records from the Clerk's office. 

“I decided today I was going to attempt to make a change by becoming a clerk so that we can help people get access to their records,” said Duncan, who has heard for years about loved ones who got “the run-around” when trying to get records, he said. “Family members that come here should be greeted with respect and dignity. It shouldn’t be a difficult task just to get records.” 

It's important that the Clerk of Court gets things right. One reason for this is the Clerk's office is where all of these candidates go to sign up for the election. That's why your social media feeds were jammed full of candidates posing and speechifying and hiring bands to stage Instagrammable moments outside of the courthouse during qualifying week. The week after qualifying, the Clerk's office is also where interested parties go to file legal challenges to the candidates who just qualified.  

The regularity with which this happens is almost funny. I say almost because it's actually a gatekeeping exercise managed by a ring of political fixers who know the process by rote.  Candidacies can be challenged on various technical grounds. Most often a candidate is disqualified for not properly establishing residency, for owing unpaid fines, or not having filed taxes in any of the five years prior to the election. It's that last one that trips people up the most.  Any voter in the relevant constituency can file a challenge. But the legwork is already done by certain familiar attorneys who know the ropes well enough to rummage through everyone's background and tax filings looking for snags.  

This year's fishing expedition netted four candidate disqualifications including the comically quixotic candidacy of disgraced former 911 director Tyrell Morris. 

Tyrell Morris, the indicted former head of New Orleans' 911 communications center, was disqualified from his nascent mayoral campaign on Monday, along with a host of other hopefuls for city office whose claims about filing their taxes were challenged in court.

Morris turned away a process server over the weekend and then failed to show up at Orleans Parish Civil District Court on Monday to defend his candidacy for city's top job. Voter Robert Collins had challenged Morris' candidacy, claiming Morris lied when he marked on his qualifying form that he'd filed his state tax returns for the previous five tax years.

Remember, any voter in a candidate's jurisdiction can file a challenge. But the plaintiffs in these cases are always plants.  The original version of that story hinted more strongly that the reporter understood the ruse.  "Collins, a diesel mechanic, testified that he'd 'read something online' about Morris and that is what prompted his challenge," has since been edited out of the story, as has this line: "(Attorney Bob) Ellis's firm, led by Stephen Gele, Gov. Landry's personal attorney, led challenges to a host of candidates who sought to qualify for office in Orleans Parish." 

Gele's lawyers also pulled Gabrielle Harris Thomas off of the board in the mayor's race. They removed Kevin Griffin-Clark from the District D City Council field and eliminated Willie Miller Jr. in District E.  They thought for a while that day that they had gotten one more.  But the case against District E candidate Danyelle Christmas was actually dismissed. It turns out Christmas had good reason for not filing Louisiana taxes for the years in question.  She had actually moved out of state for a time and came back.  Confusion about Christmas's status ensued for the rest of the day, unfortunately, because Darren Lombard erroneously announced she had indeed been disqualified before having to go back and correct himself. Another point for Calvin Duncan's argument about accurate records in the Clerk's office. 

That District E field is pretty crowded as it is. Nine candidates make it the opposite of B where nobody bothered. Cyndi Nguyen is here looking to reclaim her old seat.  State Rep Jason Hughes is in that number also. Former state rep and councilman Jon Johnson was in for a minute. But there were problems. 

Johnson admitted taking FEMA aid intended for restoring a flooded former Lower Ninth Ward school building – the old TJ Semmes Elementary – and redirecting it to his 2007 State Senate campaign.

In the factual basis for his guilty plea, a document Johnson signed, prosecutors alleged Johnson’s nonprofit at the time, Ninth Ward Housing Development Corp., redirected more than $16,000 in FEMA funds intended for restoring the Semmes Building, transferring it to another nonprofit Johnson controlled, which in turn used the money to pay Johnson’s Senate campaign expenses.

It's true that this is a race to fill the seat being vacated by mayoral candidate and admitted bribery felon Oliver Thomas. It's also true that the Trump zeitgeist and recent Supreme Court rulings have ushered in an era of virtually legalized corruption.  But running on a record of having stolen recovery funds at the same time New Orleans remembers the 20th anniversary of Katrina, might have been a bit much to overcome. Johnson withdrew from the race. But he does say in this story that "a lot of people" want him to run for Joseph Bouie's state senate seat next year. So stay tuned. 

Griffin-Clark's disqualification probably clears a path to reelection for Eugene Green in District D. His only opponents are Leilani Heno, following up her vanity run for mayor in 2021 with a vanity run for council, and another perennial candidate Belden "Noonie Man" Batiste. Noonie Man typically benefits when progressive voters don't see a real option on a ballot. They don't have one here. But Batiste's high profile role in the campaign to recall LaToya Cantrell might lose him some of the credibility voters could once detect when they squinted real hard.   

(Since it's up now before I publish, here is video from WDSU's "Hotseat" debate featuring District D candidates this past Sunday.) 

Those progressive voters may also have it out for District C councilman Freddie King whose record of removing bike lanes, sabotaging the latest attempt at Airbnb regulation, and doing various favors for real estate developers in the French Quarter hasn't won him much affection.  Multiple challengers are lined up to make the case against him.  

Long time observers might remember Kelsey Foster from the Committee for A Better New Orleans' People's Budget Project. While advocating for a more participatory budget process, PBP would give us the blow by blow tweets from Mitch Landrieu's community budget meetings. Those free-wheeling townhalls were the good old days of New Orleans political theater. People from all over the city packed into churches, school gyms, and community centers (one in every council district) to yell at the mayor about whatever was on their mind. Cantrell gradually backed off of these events, sometimes limiting the number of meetings and clamping down on the audience by having all questions go through a moderator (who sometimes edited them for content.) This year, there will be only one public meeting. The rest of the "community input" will be collected via an online survey.  Long time observers may also remember Green Party candidate Eliot Barron from the times he ran for congress in 2014 and 2016... but they probably don't. Long time observers will have no reason to remember newcomer Jackson Kimbrell. This is his first attempt at any office.  All three of King's challengers likely agree on what his faults are.  Still, it's an uphill battle for any of them to break through here.  

District A is an open seat. That doesn't necessarily mean we're in for radical change there, though.  Two of the leading candidates, Aimee McCarron and Holly Friedman have worked as staffers for outgoing councilman Joe Giarrusso.  Still, this is an ideologically diverse field. In addition to the two Giarrussites, it features a rare Republican candidate in Bridget Neal as well as a Democratic Socialist in Bob Murrell. Oh and Alex Mossing is here as well, I suppose.  

The District A candidates participated in the first WDSU "Hot Seat" debate of the season. You can watch that here. The "Hot Seat" doesn't allow a whole lot of time so it's a shame Travers Mackel used so much of it asking the candidates to talk about redeveloping West End.  Travers also wants every candidate he interviews to give a thumbs up or down to Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick. Most candidates will say thumbs up.  Murrell gave a better answer calling instead for more public participation in oversight of the department. The only other observation I will offer is Neal seems particularly out of her depth here at first glance. 

And now for some burning questions about the Council At-Large field. 

1) Why did Matt Hill change his mind about which seat to run for?

Hill is a manager at the downtown Dave and Busters. He has run for several offices over the past three or four cycles. I think this is only the second time he has run as a Republican.  His main thing is he wants to run whatever office he happens to attain according to the dictates of the "six sigma" pop management fad about which he will not stop talking. 

Early on Wednesday of qualifying week, we noticed Hill had registered to run in At Large Division 2, the seat currently held by JP Morrell.  However, by the end of the day, Hill had changed his mind and entered into the race for the open seat in Division 1.  Why the flip? His odds of winning either race are slim to none. I wonder if somebody asked him to do that.  I can't imagine why. At least I don't have a serious guess, only the observation that Matt Willard is also in Division 1. Maybe somebody thought they would benefit from the possible confusion caused by having two Matts in the same race? Maybe Hill himself thought that would help him? State Rep Delisha Boyd seems to have enough institutional support working in her favor that her campaign wouldn't need to arrange a gimmick like that.  Although I wouldn't necessarily put it past some of the people around her.  (More on that below.)

2) Why did Gregory Manning decide to run against the incumbent Morrell and not for the open seat in Division 1?

I still don't really know the answer to that. If Morrell retains this seat and Matt Willard wins the other At-Large, it would mean both citywide council seats will be held by family members of "The Cynthias" (Hedge-Morrell and Willard-Lewis) who served on the same council not so long ago. Maybe Manning is just trying to help us avoid the appearance of nepotism. Or maybe it's something else. 

Also we should note that, as of this writing, Gregory Manning has become the fourth city council candidate officially endorsed by the New Orleans chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America in this election. DSA has a fair amount of national attention right now thanks to the success of the Zohran Mamdani campaign, which is within range of capturing the New York City mayor's office. The local chapter has been active for much of the last decade now. While this slate of candidates may seem like its most ambitious foray into municipal races, New Orleans DSA has chalked up some key electoral wins already.  In 2020-2021, DSA spearheaded a coalition to save the public library system from Mayor Cantrell's attempt to defund it. Last spring, they contributed to the statewide "Blue Reboot" effort to re-make the State Democratic Party Central Committee and oust its conservative chairperson. In December, they endorsed and worked to elect Gabriela Brio to the Orleans Parish School Board. This fall's slate includes Manning, as well as Murrell in District A, Kimbrell in District C, and Christmas in District E. A win in any of those races would be a significant upset. But, given, the developing track record, it's a mistake to underestimate any of them. 

We mentioned above that Gabrielle Thomas and Tyrell Morris were disqualified from the race for Mayor of New Orleans. But don't worry. Twelve other candidates were not disqualified meaning that, for better or for worse, the city will, in fact, elect a mayor this fall. Let's capture a little bit of the magic now.  

The developments in the race as of the time of this writing consist of a Step-Up forum I attended on July 25, a YLC forum on Tuesday which I did not attend, some preliminary reporting on campaign finance and operations, as well as the emergence of this comprehensive election guide published at Verite.  I'll try to say a little bit about most of the relevant (and some of the irrelevant) candidates based on what I've gleaned from that to this point. This won't be a full examination of any of them. Just an impression of what their campaigns look like right now and some things I've noticed them talking about lately. Let's begin with..

Oliver Thomas

According to his ads and his response to the Verite questionnaire, OT is promising to build 10,000 homes over 8 years.  This goal is significantly less than the 40,000 home target put forth by other candidates. And since that 40,000 number is probably pegged to NORA's recent analysis that the city is 44,000 homes shy of the affordable units necessary to meet the need, even that aspiration still has us barely treading water. 

In mid-July, NOLA.com reported that roughly one third (1500) of the available apartments in Councilmember Thomas's East New Orleans district are up for sale following the bankruptcy of a company holding three large complexes. Meanwhile, those complexes, along with many others around town, are notoriously substandard. The city's "healthy homes" ordinance, a modest attempt at holding slumlords accountable, has had mixed results so far.  That report on the imperiled apartments in the East adds context for the challenges of building and maintaining affordable housing via private sector investment alone. The economics are fraught with thin profit margins given the high costs of finance and insurance. Getting past all of that is going to require an ambitious intervention by political leaders. In light of this, it's hard to understand why Thomas would promise so little. The obstacles to building 40,000 units are the same as they are for 10,000. If you are running for mayor under these conditions, there's no downside to aiming higher with your rhetoric.  

Helena Moreno 

Helena understood the assignment at the Step-Up forum, a gathering of grassroots community and labor activists. She was the most emphatic of any of the candidates in stating that NOPD has no obligation to cooperate with ICE.  She stayed on topic about her pro worker bona fides, in particular, her support of city workers in their pursuit of a contract and the passage of a (largely symbolic) "workers bill of rights" ordinance. Her campaign also created a labor specific push card to hand out at the event. 

I can't go to every forum but it will be interesting to see for which crowds she deemphasizes these points or leaves them out altogether. I wonder if she made a customized flier to hand out to business groups like GNO Inc., for example. Does she talk about her strong support of labor rights when she meets with the big wigs at LCMC? Or the parasitic real estate scam doing business as Tulane University all over downtown? She proudly name checks partnerships with all of these entities in her Verite responses. 

The Moreno campaign has also cultivated a following among the current generation of Instagram influencers.  Or, at least, a number of them seem to have gravitated toward her campaign. It's unclear to me what the relationship actually is. But these professional social media personages have little compunction with acting as outright surrogates for the campaign messaging. It is in keeping, after all, with their usual business of shilling for whatever product, bar, or restaurant can buy them off. I don't think there's anything wrong with journalism (if we can call what influencers do journalism) that has a strong point of view. But it's hard to tell what any of these people actually believe in beyond just the personal branding relationship they've made with a candidate.  And it's hard to tell whose "brand" is piggybacking on whose. 

Ultimately, I blame Elon Musk. No one would argue that Twitter was ever a boon to public discourse either. But, during its heyday, its community of users did have a way of self-regulating against some of the more obvious kinds of bullshit. At least, locally, this was the case. It's far less useful now.  It is owned by the world's worst person. It is stuffed with scam ads. And much of the engagement is poisoned by bad faith trolling from know-nothings.  But, even now, news can still break on Twitter in a coherent real time way that a person can follow. On Instagram, everything is so fragmented by algorithm and conversation is so clunky and insular that it's hard to know what's happening.  But, thanks to Elon, it's what we're stuck with. I just don't think it's meant to be used for news and politics.  This election is going to suffer for that. 

Royce Duplessis

The only polling I've read about so far shows Moreno in the lead, but Royce is running a front-runner's campaign. Already well networked at the state and local level, Duplessis is leaning into the role of the cool insider. Moreno has spent the past four years leading the council in an escalating series of confrontations with the outgoing, unpopular mayor. Her campaign is premised on the notion that voters are fed up, pent up and ready to make drastic changes.  Royce, on the other hand, supposes that voters are actually exhausted by the "division and chaos" of the Cantrell years and that the actual change they are looking for is simply to have things calm down. He tells Verite, "the current relationship between the city council and the mayor is closer to a Jerry Springer Show than a difference of policy priorities."  Like Joe Biden in 2020, Royce is promising to lower the temperature and restore decency and so forth.

His policy stump speech leads with the "40,000 new housing units" we mentioned earlier. Although his road map to getting there is more a mishmash of filler talk about "public and private sector stakeholders" than an actual vision.  He has also made port expansion a priority which is sure to please the business groups that have been clamoring for that. It also hints at plans to work closely with the Governor's office (or likely even that promises have already been made in that direction) in order to get things moving. 

In general, Royce seems the candidate most likely to make himself available to do favors for "the business community." Really, anyone who becomes mayor will be ready and willing to serve the interests of wealth before anything else. Royce is just the least willing to lie about that. To take one especially goofy example of this, responding to Verite about infrastructure, he says, "we must explore ways to incorporate AI and new technologies to better monitor, project manage, and prevent challenges that delay projects from being executed with excellence."  I have little doubt he got the "AI" bit from millionaire Matt Wisdom's pitch to run a scam on 311 services. 

Meanwhile, Duplessis remains non-committal on hot button questions that have been flash points in the mayor-council dispute. During the Step-Up forum, the candidates were asked to comment on a $90 million settlement promised to the Orleans Parish School Board by the city that the mayor later reneged on and has landed everyone in court. Royce was careful to craft an answer that sounded like he might support the school board receiving their settlement. But he prefaced this with the phrase, "If there was an agreement.." which raised eyebrows in the room.  

Arthur Hunter 

It's hard to see Hunter's campaign cracking the runoff.  But by the time that comes around, he will be the most sought after endorsement from either candidate who does. It's a placeholder campaign for engaged but uncommitted parties.   AHA AND JUST BEFORE I AM READY TO PUBLISH, HE HAS DROPPED OUT AND ENDORSED ROYCE SO.... CASE IN POINT, REALLY. ALSO FITS WITH OUR QUALIFYING/DISQUALIFYING THEME HERE. 

The candidate himself is kind of boring.  Hunter is even more wishy washy than Royce on key issues. I noticed at the Step Up forum that he also used the word, "if" to describe the school budget deal. However Hunter added, "I'm a lawyer" to his response so you know that he really meant that "if."

Meanwhile, he's out there "touching people."  

Asked how he would break through in a field of four major candidates, Hunter said he would "be in the streets."

"Some of the people who I still see in this building were in my courtroom," Hunter said, referring to the criminal courthouse. "I'm touching people. That's what it's about." 

Just like Andrew Cuomo

Now running as an independent in November’s general election against Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, Cuomo said he will be taking a very different tack.

“Better use with social media, reaching out to more young people and touching more people,” Cuomo said of his new focus while riding the Q train from 96th St. to 72nd St. in between stops to talk to voters on the Upper East Side, where he largely got a positive reception.

Well... hopefully not.. exactly like Andrew Cuomo, anyway.

Ricky Twiggs

Speaking of boring candidates. In New Orleans we like our hopeless also-rans to have a little bit of style or entertaining charisma about them.  Twiggs does not. At the forum, the most noteworthy thing about his answers was how may of them began with, "Gee that's a tough question.." as though he'd never encountered the issue before.  

I will give him points for his closing statement where he proposed to entirely abolish the office he is running for.  I never pegged him as the character who would state the title of the show in the dialog. But there it was.  (More on that matter below, btw.)

Frank Scurlock

Boring in a different way.  Scurlock has run enough novelty campaigns now that his freak show act just doesn't hold anyone's interest anymore. And given his generally reactionary politics, he's not offering anything of value substantively or aesthetically. At the Step Up forum he complained about his car having been towed. He also said a lot of borderline racist stuff about crime and didn't seem to know or care a lot about most issues. Also during the course of his blabbering, he made references to Uber. On purpose. Twice.

Eileen Carter

I guess we shouldn't be entirely surprised to see Eileen Carter in this race.  As she reminds us frequently during her appearances, she is of significant pedigree. Her father was one of the founders of the BOLD political organization in the 1970s. "I was groomed under BOLD," she said at the Step-Up forum. Maybe not the best choice of phrasing.  Anyway, BOLD and its "alphabet soup" cousin organizations have become less significant in the post-Katrina era. That's not necessarily a healthy sign. As the city has shrunk in size and stature, there just isn't enough money floating around to sustain machine politics anymore. Instead the last generation raised in that milieu, (Carter, Oliver Thomas, and many others still active) operate via a more informal practice of shifting ad-hoc alliances from cycle to cycle. It can make an already baffling political scene even more confusing for neophytes. But more than anything it's a symptom of our long post-Katrina decline.

Eileen and her former boss Mayor Cantrell provide a case study in how disorienting these shifting alliances can be. Throughout most of her first term, Cantrell became increasingly close with the BOLD crowd. She was especially close with Eileen's sister Karen Carter Peterson who had risen to the State Senate and the chairmanship of the State Democratic Party. One consequence of this partnership was Eileen gaining a post as Cantrell's social media manager. She still highlights this part of her resume in her campaigning. "When you got tweets from the mayor, that was me!" she said a few times at Step Up. Kind of funny. 

Things started to change in 2020 when Carter-Peterson abruptly stepped down as party chair. In 2022 she resigned her Senate seat amid charges that she had embezzled $140,000 in party funds to pay for gambling debts. During this time, there were also rumors that KCP's plea deal might have involved giving evidence in various investigations of Cantrell and a noticeable split between the two became apparent. By some remarkable coincidence this was about the same time that Eileen Carter (no longer employed as Cantrell's official tweeter) became the face of an effort to recall the mayor. "I left the mayor because the mayor stopped working," is the line Carter is using now.  Okay.  The recall did not succeed in removing Cantrell from office. But Carter is still claiming victory on some points. For example, she says she believes it was the recall campaign that led to the hiring of a new police chief. I don't know about that. But I do agree with her premise that the recall campaign succeeded at some things. Although Eileen and I might have different views as to what it accomplished. But that's really a topic for a whole different post and this one is a bit overlong already. 

Interestingly all of this places Carter in a position to serve as a voice of some indirect reason among the candidates on the topic of Cantrell. At the forum, she criticized some of the more sensational personal attacks against the mayor from the council and in the media saying that there are more serious miscarriages of governance that people should focus on. Absolutely true! Maybe we would have even learned what those were by now had the Trump DOJ not abandoned the notion of prosecuting public corruption. Oh well. 

Renada Collins

Okay, now we're talking. Unlike Twiggs, Scurlock, and some of the other dead weight in this election we won't even mention today. Collins is a person who knows how to be an also ran in a mayor's race. The self-help author and "business coach" is not afraid to go full on bonkers. Other candidates carry printed leaflets and shake hands. Collins hands out towels with her face printed on them and wears boxing gloves. Her platform is mostly benign populism. Fix the potholes. Tell the cops to be nice. Give people a living wage. That sort of thing. 

At the Step Up forum, she said electing her would be "like giving birth" (but hopefully not in a painful way?)  She articulated a plan for housing that she unfortunately branded after the notoriously slow and inadequate "Road Home" rebuilding grants program launched after Katrina. Another example of a candidate perhaps choosing the wrong year to churn up people's sore memories.  Collins made up for that and made it worth everyone's time who stayed all the way to the end by delivering her closing statement in the form of a rousing song performed while wearing her boxing gloves.

That's it for the candidate rundown. Now for a few additional items before we close this out. It's only been a month of campaigning to this point but a few controversies have arisen already.  Let's look at a couple of those. 

A few days after the Step Up mayoral forum, JP Morrell put out a video reaction to some things Royce Duplessis said at the event. Morrell doesn't accept Royce's premise about "the division and chaos" at City Hall. Instead, he interprets the "both sides" rhetoric as an attempt to cover for Cantrell. 

“Whenever the mayor says jump, he says, ‘How high?’” Morrell said. “If you look at his comments from the Step Up forum, you could see him doing this Trumpian, ‘good people on both sides’ nonsense,” he said. “That’s not the case, this council has fought for you over and over again, and I don’t think he understands on some real basic level how this city council works.”

“The city council does not work for the mayor. Our role is not to rubber stamp or do what she says,” he added. 

Morrell also suggested that if elected, Duplessis would govern like Cantrell.

It's weird to me that anyone would use the word "Trumpian" to describe the kind of non-partisan above the fray pose that Royce is actually attempting.  I know the Trump quote JP is referencing. But Royce's both-sidesism is not really a "Trumpian" trait. I can understand disagreeing with his middle ground thesis. But it's a much more New York Times type thesis than a Trumpist one. I would describe LaToya Cantrell as a "Trumpian" figure (and I often have!) Royce is not that. He is much more BORRING. And that's on purpose. Royce's strategy is based on the assumption that voters have a bit of drama fatigue this cycle. Given the historical pattern it's not a bad bet. 

Morrell's video does make some worthwhile points. It's true the council has had to intervene numerous times against an increasingly chaotic mayor. This isn't something the council typically likes to do. But they've mostly been justified in their actions. More importantly, the council's adversarial stance against the mayor has only come about because the political dynamics of Cantrell's second term called for... or at least allowed for it. It's the old saw about power vacuums. That's not likely to continue in the next term no matter who is mayor. The next mayor and council will inevitably go back to lockstep policy making (for good or bad... probably mostly bad) because that is how it always happens. Royce knows this. Thus the campaign strategy to restore normalcy.

Oh one more thing about Morrell's video. At the end he sneaks in an extremely disingenuous cheap shot at his own opponent. JP presents a chopped up, out of context quote from Gregory Manning and suggests that it means Manning is himself aligned with Cantrell. Just a flat out lie. I get that people want to run against LaToya Cantrell right now but she's not on the ballot. 

The other matter that keeps flaring up is this French Quarter trash collection contract. I don't know how far into the weeds we need to get explaining the dispute. Most people reading this probably already know the background. For our purposes, we're looking at a fight between Sidney Torres and Troy Henry. The mayor has been on Troy's side while the city council has been on Sidney's. Not the entire city council. Just the majority. Councilman Thomas is a close ally of Troy Henry.  If he becomes mayor, it's expected that he would continue to favor Henry from there. Which is why Torres has been especially active this cycle. (Okay, Torres is active every cycle but this is what he's interested in this time.) He needs to stop OT. 

Anyway the first poll in the mayor's race after Royce got in, and the only one anybody talks about to this point, was paid for by Sidney Torres. It showed Moreno with a big lead.. but not quite big enough to avoid a runoff.. at 47%.  Torres had this to say about it.

Torres in a brief interview Monday said he was not prepared to "endorse" a candidate, but called Moreno a "friend," said he believes she is "the right person to lead the city" and that he thinks she is the best-equipped to deliver change New Orleans needs.

Not an endorsement, though. Okay. 

Unsurprisingly, Royce hasn't taken a side in any of this. If he stays out of it that kind of makes Morrells characterization of him as a Cantrell puppet seem all the more iffy. 

I hadn't intended to get very far into fundraising and the who's working for whom behind the scenes matters in this edition of the series. But it took a month to write all of this and there are some developments people should be aware of.  One thing I'll be especially interested in going forward is seeing how solid Moreno's early support will remain once Royce's campaign finds its footing. We'll look further into that later. Meanwhile, T-P political reporter James Finn has produced a trio of articles that provide early insights.  

From July 15: Moreno has dominated the early fundraising and has the most cash on hand by far. But I was surprised to see how well Thomas had been doing there as well. Once the money starts moving with the field reset, I wonder how much Royce will make up and from where. According to this, he raised nearly $20,000 in four days after announcing his candidacy.  Also, I didn't cover the Sheriff candidates in this piece but note that incumbent Susan Hutson had only $715 on hand as of the 15th. 

From July 27:  Know your PACs!

Because Jeff Landry and the Republican legislature have further weakened state ethics and campaign finance laws, dark money PACs will be more involved now than ever before.  It's hard to know exactly how to feel about this.  In one sense, it may actually be more transparent. I mean allowing the campaigns to more or less openly flaunt the spirit of the laws, such as they are, makes plain to voters the absurdity of what they are watching. 

State law limits certain forms of coordination between PACs and campaigns — rules designed to prevent candidates from gaining unfair access to excessive sums. Yet the records show two of the groups currently active in New Orleans are led by relatives or staffers of politicians they support, which critics say runs afoul of the spirit, if not the letter, of those rules.

One PAC backing state Sen. Royce Duplessis in his run for mayor has ties to his mother. The other, supporting state Rep. Delisha Boyd's City Council campaign, is chaired by her daughter.

That's not illegal. There's some deliberately muddled stuff about what does and doesn't constitute "coordination" between the PACs and the campaigns. But it's all nonsense. The good government scolds think we'd be better off with clearer rules that kept everything at least looking tidy. But since everyone is cheating anyway, I think this is better. Look how funny this is!  

Boyd in a statement said the PAC created by her daughter, Elite PAC, is “a reflection of the belief others have in my leadership.”

It's unclear what kind of PAC that one is; the group did not respond to requests for comment. Boyd described it as part of "the vision we’re building together for New Orleans."

My daughter believes in my leadership. Okay. Actually, that's not entirely fair. Elite PAC isn't just Delisha's daughter. It is also heavily boosted by heir to a shipping fortune and vroom vroom racecar enthusiast Laney Chouest. His contribution is listed below along with this handy key to the other major PACs active this season.  

The Times-Picayune identified five political action committees active in local races so far:

Leadership Matters PAC is supporting Helena Moreno’s mayoral bid. The PAC has in the bank almost $150,000.

Voice of the People PAC is run by Moreno donor Sidney Torres IV. The PAC paid for a recent poll that showed favorable numbers for Moreno.

Elite PAC is backing Boyd. It got $100,000 from business owner Laney Chouest, who has also donated to Boyd's campaign account.

True Leadership PAC is backing Moreno, Councilmember Freddie King and Clerk of Criminal Court Darren Lombard. It has just over $19,000 banked.

Ready PAC, LLC is backing Duplessis’ mayoral run. It has not filed a financial report.

$100,000 to a city council campaign from one guy! That's really something. It's probably not a great statement about the state of your democracy but, who are we kidding there, really? 

If you're interested in finding out where all that money goes, the Times-Pic has also published this rundown of key figures getting paid to run these campaigns. Those who follow this stuff will see a fair amount of cross pollination among supposed factions. Politics is like any other business in New Orleans. Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody. And everyone has worked with everyone else at some point. But still we can roughly trace some things. Thomas has some staffers who have worked with Cantrell and with BOLD candidates in the past.  Duplessis's top people have experience with the Landrieu administration. His campaign manager also worked with the Urban League which has a frequently revolving door with government and political campaign work. Also, it's funny to me the way Karen Carvin Shachat gets treated as kind of a good luck charm to have around because of her family's winning streak. This record gets brought up every time someone hires her. 

Carvin Shachat has worked on a succession of winning mayoral campaigns, including those of Marc Morial, Ray Nagin and LaToya Cantrell. She is the daughter of late New Orleans political consultant Jim Carvin, who became known for his streak of managing 10 winning mayoral campaigns in a row.

Carvin Shachat had been with the Arthur Hunter campaign. As of today, one assumes she will have been absorbed by Royceland. If he wins, does that count as another win on the Carvin streak?  

Finally, because this is the Ban Mayors 2025 show, we should address the fact that this week's Gambit cover story cheekily asks if we should #BanMayors. As the official spokesperson of the #BanMayors movement, I need to clarify certain differences between what is proposed in that article vs what my argument against the mayors has been. 

Let's start with something District A candidate Bob Murrell said during his recent Reddit AMA. Murrell was being asked which mayoral candidate he might support or what kind of mayor he'd like to see.  His answer cites my slogan as kind of a joke. But the substance of what he says is pretty close to what I mean by it. 

Ultimately I want a mayor who executes the law rather than influence it, as we've seen from the facial recognition ban rollback and further expansion. I want a mayor who is actually enforcing the ordinances passed by Council and ensuring corrupt bureaucrats and public board seat warmers are replaced. And if we continue down this route of "strong" mayors acting weak, then perhaps we need to amend the home role charter to have either a "weak" mayor model or (as @skooks says) #banmayors

Bob is close but I don't think we solve the problem by weakening the office or abolishing it altogether. So I want to make this point more clearly. When I say #BanMayors, I'm really talking about the rot and corruption in politics generally that makes these offices hollow in their execution. I don't think you can repair that fundamental discordance with a technocratic fix. Better governance has to come from healthier, more responsive politics practiced by better organized and empowered people. Anyone selling a shortcut around that is probably grifting. 

That's why I'm suspicious of the reforms outlined in that Gambit article. This "City Services Coalition" looks like a plutocratic coup to me. At the risk of being too pithy, just look who is heading it up.

One option that has gained traction would be a bit of a hybrid approach that has been proposed by the City Services Coalition.

Rather than creating a city manager position, the coalition has called for strengthening the hand of the city’s chief administrative officer, giving them the sort of powers that a corporate CAO might have. That would include greater control over city service operations and spending, the ability to fire officials and setting performance metrics for city departments.

It would also formalize a “Capital Cabinet” made up of agency heads which would regularly meet and work with the CAO on implementing policy, meeting goals and other issues, among a host of other proposed changes.

Pres Kabacoff, one of the founders of the coalition and a long-time developer in New Orleans, argued creating a new city manager isn’t “a silver bullet.” 

Kabacoff's group has been shopping this and a host of other reforms around to municipal candidates this year. I've come to think of it as "Project 2026." Whoever the next mayor is, these people will have their ear. But despite what they say, public services are NOT businesses. 

Kabacoff also notes that given the political realities in New Orleans and historic backing of a strong mayor, “you’re not going to get a lot of support” should the change be put before voters.

Still, he argues that taking some of the politics out of how the city is run is necessary. “The city is not a business, but it has businesses, which are the city services,” he says. 

No matter how many Ray Nagins or Elon Musks come along and no matter how much a mess they make of things, it seems we're never going to be rid of one or another rich asshole telling us it's time, once again, to "run government like a business."  Some things never change.  

Anyway, I'm sure there will be more to say about Kabacoff's group as the campaign goes on. My point, for now, is a "strong mayor" system is actually fine and probably more democratic on balance. Our problem isn't anything to do with technical efficiency, it's that our democracy is weak and under threat by corrupt oligarchs.  So for now I'm gonna keep demanding that we ban the mayors. Not the office, itself. Ban the criminals who inevitably rise into it until or unless our politics changes in favor of real power to real people. The mayors we have under this regime, though, and that would include all of the potential mayors we are now contemplating, don't seem fully... um... qualified to bring that change about. 

Ban Mayors 2025: Chapter 1 Midsummer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some other infrastructure points:  

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

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

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

Odds and ends:  

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

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

Oof.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Circle of Trust

The Louisiana Democratic Party is constitutionally incapable of simply taking the win against Jeff Landry's constitutional amendments. They're much more focused on belittling the various community groups who did the actual work of delivering that win for them.

BATON ROUGE -- Louisiana Democratic Party Chair Randal Gaines Thursday called voters’ defeat of all four constitutional amendments backed by Gov. Jeff Landry “a defining moment in Louisiana politics” and attempted to take credit for the display of bipartisan opposition.

“What was determinative was, in my opinion, the messaging of the party,” Gaines told Gambit following a press conference at the party’s headquarters. “Because the activist groups don't have those relationships.”

Gaines went on to claim that’s because “they're not necessarily within a circle of trust of our Louisiana voters. The party is."

It's unclear what Gaines’ belief is based on. Democrats have had increasing difficulty in even fielding a candidate in local and state level races for the last decade, leaving many Republican state legislators to run unopposed for years. The party also lost the statewide election in 2023 badly, handing control of all levels of government to Republicans and leading many Democrats to call for totally rebuilding the party.

Remember Randal Gaines is only the party chair now because of the many failures alluded to in that last paragraph which were presided over by his predecessor. But, because the change in leadership was forced on the party by some of the activist groups Gaines is chiding here, the party is never going to forgive them for speaking out of turn. There's no "trust" left with the voters at all. The only circles in evidence come in the form of zeroes that show up on statewide Democratic ballot lines instead of viable candidates. 

A post-mortem analysis by the Times-Picayune shows several factors behind the demise of Landry's amendments including organized opposition from religious conservatives concerned about taxation of church activities as well as from a coalition of progressive groups detailed here. 

The progressive groups say each of them started out opposing individual amendments, but they ended up joining forces to oppose all four.

“We realized early on that if we got everybody under the same umbrella and had the same messaging, we could be more effective,” said Drew Prestridge, who handled communications for notothemall.org

Added Peter Robins-Brown, executive director of Louisiana Progress: “It all came together to create a pretty overwhelming chorus.”

His group opposed Amendment 1, fearing it would allow the selection of unelected judges by conservative lawmakers to supersede the power of elected progressive judges in big cities. It also opposed Amendment 3, which would have allowed more children to be jailed in adult prisons.

Invest in Louisiana, a Baton Rouge-based group, focused on the anti-Amendment 2 message.

Taking the lead in opposing Amendment 3 was a recently created coalition called the Liberty and Dignity Campaign, led by Kristen Rome of the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, Sarah Omojola of the Vera Institute of Justice and Ashley Shelton of the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice.

Gaines's "messaging of the party" isn't even discussed. 

It's understandable that party brass would feel a little bit left out given the size of the victory they slept through.  What it came down to, especially with regard to the absurdly byzantine Amendment 2, is voters correctly perceived that they were being bullshitted by the Landry camp. Shockingly, people don't like to be condescended and lied to. Even the voters who are normally your political allies will turn on you for it.

Jeff Landry, not being particularly known for his humility or his smarts, is having a hard time learning that lesson.  In response to the election results, he chose more condescension saying in a statement that voters are "conditioned for failure." He also has resorted to more outlandish lies with "Soros" insinuations drawn straight from the stupidest corners of the conspiracy forums. 

However, as we noted here, the Governor and his allies are preparing to try again, likely with more brute force; holding more of the state budget hostage, and possibly finding new ways to purge the voter rolls. It remains to be seen how much comfort Randall Gaines' "circle of trust" will be for anyone in the way of that.

Get this off my desk

There are a lot of reasons why elected office holders behave the way they do. But one fundamental razor for understanding them I find useful is assume their primary motivating question  with regard to any issue is, "How do we get this off of my desk?"  We're about to find out if Senate Democrats will extend this principle to... well... the entirety of their constitutional mandate. 

But most important, the bill grants an open invitation to Trump and Elon Musk to continue to ignore Congress and toss out disfavored spending. Vice President JD Vance, while selling the deal to House Republicans, stated outright that “Trump would continue cutting federal funding with his Department of Government Efficiency initiative and pursue impoundment—that is, holding back money appropriated by Congress.” This has been reiterated by others in the Trump administration.

In fact, the House Republican bill gives the president more leeway to move money around. It appropriates money for things that Musk has eliminated, meaning that money can operate as a floating slush fund for Trump’s priorities, as long as the courts don’t roll back the illegal impoundments.

Think about what this means. The Trump administration is saying that they will sign a bill appropriating specific funding, and then go about cutting funding anyway. If you’re a member of Congress, you’re being told that your work product doesn’t matter, that the constitutional power of the purse doesn’t matter, and that there’s no guarantee that anything you pass will actually reach the people you serve.

To most modern politicians, that is a tempting offer. With no expectation that your office has any relevance to the work of governing, you are now free to focus on the real work of  raising money and being on TV a lot. This is an especially attractive proposition if you happen to be a member of the "opposition party."  Why bother with performing the frustrations of exerting your limited power when you can scale that back to simply performing. 

So far, only Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has committed to voting yes. But as Josh Marshall has documented at Talking Points Memo, a number of Senate Democrats have stated no position on the bill, leaving their options open. In general, senators have been hedging their bets until forced to make a decision. That time has come.

Credible sources indicate that the most likely Democrats to offer up the remaining seven votes to avoid a shutdown are Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Michael Bennet (D-CO), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Gary Peters (D-MI), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Mark Warner (D-VA).

Some Democrats seem to be consumed with Senate brain, worried that they would be blamed for a government shutdown. What they’re not understanding is that the Musk-Trump assault on government has created a kind of permanent government shutdown, where so-called nonessential personnel are fired and operations are deeply circumscribed. Why would any Democrat sign on to a bill making that state of affairs even more likely, out of fear of the same government shutdown that the Trump administration is locking into place anyway?

I'm a little harsher than David Dayen in that article.  I think Democrats understand what's happening perfectly well.  They're being offered a chance to avoid responsibility and are keen on taking it. That's just good political instincts. Your Social Security check didn't come? The bad people must have taken it from you. Meanwhile, now my job doesn't involve looking after Social Security anymore. One less thing I have to do.

There's no law anymore

He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2025

There are four constitutional amendments that will appear on your March 29 ballot in Louisiana. They're all very bad.  

One of them would allow the legislator to create something called a "business court." In practice, that will likely mean the state can take civil matters out of the hands of locally elected judges and move them into more corporate friendly venues whose scope is defined by the legislature. 

One of them would allow the legislature to greatly broaden the list of crimes for which children under 17 could be sent to adult prison. 

And another one would step up the timeline for special elections to fill judicial vacancies. 

There's no good reason to support any of these. But one, in particular, turns out to be such a mess that a lawsuit has been filed to take it off of the ballot.  Tyler Bridges explains.

During a two-week special session in November, Landry and the Legislature reduced income taxes, abolished the corporate franchise tax, raised the sales tax and kept tax credits used by film productions and developers of historic buildings, albeit at lower spending levels.

The net savings would disproportionately benefit the wealthy and big companies, who, Landry said, would use the money to invest in Louisiana and grow the state’s economy.

At Landry’s behest, the Legislature also passed House Bill 7, which in 115 pages authorized a series of other changes to the constitution if approved by voters on March 29.

The lawsuit says the 91-word question is hopelessly complicated.

“There is no person in the State of Louisiana – including the legislators who passed HB7 – who understands all of the proposed changes to the constitution,” the lawsuit says. “The voters, however, are to be asked to vote on the proposed changes.”

The lawsuit also says the 91 words include only the sweeteners in the proposed amendment – language aimed at drawing favorable votes.

“None of the unappealing changes are included,” it says. “The ballot language is all dessert, no vegetables.”

That article goes on to explain that even the "dessert" part of the menu is misleading.  For example, the ballot language implies that voters would be enacting a teacher pay raise. But what the amendment actually does is pay down a certain amount of debt on the teachers' retirement system to free up enough money to extend a one time stipend for another year. 

The rest of the amendment is incredibly complicated. It lowers income taxes on high earners. It adds a cap to mandatory spending on education and health care. It eliminates the so-called "rainy day fund." It also makes several convoluted changes to multiple taxation rules at once. It really is a lot to put to voters in one ballot item. 

But is it legal? Well that's going to be up to the judges, isn't it. So anyway, about those judges... 

The Louisiana Supreme Court is about to receive a second new member, following a series of moves orchestrated by Gov. Jeff Landry, who has reshaped the court more than any governor in decades.

Cade Cole, an attorney, former prosecutor and tax judge in Lake Charles, will join the court next month after winning election to an open seat because no one opposed him.

The seat for Cole opened up after Landry paved the way for then-Justice Jimmy Genovese to resign from the Supreme Court last year to become president of Northwestern State University.

John Michael Guidry, who had been the chief judge on the Baton Rouge court of appeal, became the other new justice in January after winning his election unopposed.

The seat for Guidry opened up after Landry got the state Legislature to redraw the Supreme Court district boundaries last year in a way that favored a Black Democrat for an open seat that Guidry would ultimately occupy.

Because the map Landry pushed now has two Democrats – Piper Griffin from New Orleans is the other Democrat besides Guidry – the other five districts favor the election of White conservatives in the coming years.

Landry has sought to undermine the influence of Chief Justice John Weimer, a maverick who is a no-party registered voter without a clear ideological line.

Anyway, there's more background on how Landry is working to re-shape the courts in that article.  Suffice to say, though, it's going to become more difficult to appeal his legislative shenanigans there in the future.