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."
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.