And while neither Batt nor Guidry deviated from their well-worn positions on the campaign trail, one topic was much discussed by both candidates: ACORN, the advocacy organization for low-income families that’s been so much in the news lately. Given the voting habits in Lakeview and the makeup of the crowd (solidly Caucasian), it was safe to assume both Batt and Guidry wanted an ACORN endorsement about as much as they wanted one from Ray Nagin. And yet both candidates claimed the other had ACORN’s seal of approval.
I've been saying for a while now that the 2010 election has been a mostly conservative return-to-pre-K normalcy event. And, yes, I include the Mayoral result in that thinking for reasons I'll explain as we go along. But the fact that a District A debate can end up being about something as silly as ACORN endorsements is perhaps the strongest indicator yet that the new Golden Age is, in fact, what I think it is.
I don't want to give away too much of that Gambit post before you go read it. Allman has some fun pointing out Jay Batt's comic hypocrisy on the matter. I would have liked to see the post include the important background fact that the infamous James O'Keefe "pimp" videos (the reason this whole issue is a controversy in the first place) have been exposed as a major hoax. It's important context for anyone reading an article about what District A candidates think is worth talking about.
Also of note here is Susan Guidry's apparent discomfort with the fact of her SEIU endorsement.
During one of her trips to the podium, Guidry waved a flyer not produced by her camp, which claimed she had the endorsement of both ACORN and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which would like to unionize New Orleans restaurant workers. Guidry said that, as the Democrat in the race, she was the de facto choice for unions (and, indeed, SEIU Local 21 has endorsed her), but she denied ever getting or seeking support from ACORN.Guidry doesn't want us to hold her union endorsement against her, especially one that could appear antagonistic toward the restaurant and tourism businesses which, of course, demands our eternal deference no matter how little real wealth it generates for most of its employees. Helpfully, she points out that being the "de facto choice of the unions" is really just an unavoidable consequence of happening to be a Democrat. (Poor Susan. Guess she was just born that way.) What she doesn't say is that she wasn't the "de facto choice" of labor as recently as the February primary. AFL-CIO endorsed Republican Virgina Blanque in the primary because, as one labor source put it, "Guidry is an asshole". And if Susan Guidry is enough of an "asshole" to make a Republican look okay to labor by comparison, we struggle to think of what this says about Jay Batt who in turn manages to makes Guidry look like "the de facto choice".
Either way, we rest assured knowing that when we're choosing between an asshole on the one hand and something worse on the other and neither of those can think of anything better to talk about than ACORN, things are definitely getting back to normal in District A.
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