Back during the height of Katrina, I diaried "Nobody Talks Shit About My Man, Thank You Very Much"
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Where I stood up for Ray Nagin during all of the post-storm blamefest.
...Well, it's been a LONG 8 months in New Orleans since August 29, 2005. Join me on the flip for my journey from loyal soldier for Ray Nagin to marching in a second line at Mitch Landrieu's election night party on Saturday night.
(Also, relish below my account of how the Republican Party ate crow with the New Orleans mayoral election.)
And a journey it was.
I was a loyal soldier for Nagin. I loved him for not parsing his words on Garland Robinette's radio show during the aftermath of Katrina that finally shook things up and light fires under peopel's asses. http://www.wonkette.com/...
I had no major problem with Nagin's "Bring Back New Orleans" Commission. I respect Joe Canizzaro immensely. even though he is a die-hard republican. I respect Scott Cowan. even though he has waved his magic wand and finally rid himself of my beloved alma mater Newcomb College using Katrina as an excuse. I can live with it, at least he backed down from his quest to nix Tulane football.
I defended Nagin's suggestion of opening up casinos on Canal Street. I remember what Biloxi was like before the casinos...and trust me, anything is preferable to blighted buildings dotted with cheap daquiri and t-shirt shops on the formerly known "Fifth Avenue of the South" as Canal Street was known when my mother was young.
...but the Chocolate City speech was the point of No Return. It was the Tom Benson Moment as I affectionately call it in reference to the Saints Owner who lost all control in the fall and declared he would no longer attend local games for "fearing for his life" and then scuffled with a popular news reporter on camera. It was hysterical, and he subsequently now has approval numbers below that of Jerry Jones for the Cowboys and GWB, our illustrious dear leader.
I don't fault Nagin for this "Dean Scream" because I understood what he was trying to give his audience that day. Nagin loves New Orleans just as deeply and fiercly as any other New Orleanean. I don't doubt that one minute. However, now, more than ever, we need to be taken seriously on the national stage and we need to bring ALL parts of New Orleans together. We can't make it alone on the "chicky poo's" who fawn all over themselves for the Zoo-To-Do crowd in Uptown, We can't make it alone on the black "brother-in-law" politican machine, and we can't forget about the rest of the gumbo that makes New Orleans the special place that it is.
So here I am, after much soul searching these past 8 months about where to live, what to do with respect to income/employment, and who to choose for Mayor to guide us out of this mess. And once I fell in love, I was deeply invested in that choice.
So after a crazy election day with much drama, I went and collected machine counts from a precinct made up of lower income black and blue collar/conservative whites which is "down the coast" from my gentrified, historic, volvo driving, latte-drinking neighborhood. Very diverse mix in that next-door neighborhood for sure. And the numbers reflected it. Nagin and Forman kicked our ass in that precinct.
I was devastated because not more than 3 days earlier - I had fallen in love, as all of us democrats are proverbially supposed to do with our candidates.
When I announced my support for Mitch, it was a lukewarm, somewhat cautious, but firmly realistic assesment of the choices before me. http://www.dailykos.com/...
"Non-politician" outside the box chief executives have no business taking the reigns of government. Period. GWB is Exhibit A. There is too much at stake when disaster strikes and you need a strong steward who knows how to massage the government into doing what only it can do: unleash the calvary.
Mitch knows Baton Rouge as well as he knows his own Broadmore neighborhood and he's got the goods in Washington, DC. Good, black political leaders remembered the favor his father did for them when Moon was mayor and in return, they lined up their organizations to GOTV without hesitating. Meanwhile, legislators in Baton Rouge complain that they never hear or see Nagin at all. And the constant bickering between Nagin and Blanco is enough to drive me nuts. And the fact that two cent car thieves are making money stealing and selling impounded flooded cars that City Hall can't even manage to work out deals to PAY scrap metal companies $1000 per car to take away, just has me at wits end.
So I went through the humdrum motions of doing what was asked of me when I volunteered at my local Mitch Landrieu office and even dragged my very reluctant husband to meet Mitch at a "meet and greet." My spouse was totally hesitant because he always hears me rant about Mitch's useless sister who should just switch parties and be done with it, and then with the racial issue in New Orleans always simmering underneath...the fact that Moon Landrieu desegregated City Hall is a constant dinner party argument around the city. The "brother-in-law" corruption with some infamous members of the black political machine in town screwed with some business projects that my husband was involved in and felt strongly that they were not only intelligent projects, but GOOD for the progress of the city, yet they got ultimately FUBAR once members of the black political machine got involved.
So, we were impressed with Mitch, but there were never any sparks.
.....But then there was a kick-off rally/luncheon for Mitch supporters on Wednesday, April 19th. Mitch gave the best speech I have ever heard. My top favorites include Al Sharpton's DNC speech in 2004 and Barack Obama's speech at the same convention. And John McCain in Virginia Beach telling the christian conservatives where to put it...of course he seems to have lost sight of those remarks in the past 6 years. But Mitch's speech was right from the heart. If there were prepared notes, you would have never known. Each of us felt like he was talking straight into our New Orleans soul.
I was inspired to tears. He welled up in all of us an impassioned cry to fight for our beloved city and motivated all of us that this campaign and the future of New Orleans was in our hands. I WISH I had a transcript of that speech. It was like John Kennedy and Howard Dean during the height of his primary run, all rolled into one. It was one for the history books, I swear.
There was a "roll call" portion of the luncheon where all of us who had been seated by neighborhood at the tables, got up and cheered when our neighborhood was called. You should have heard the roar from the New Orleans East tables, which is a middle and upper income black portion of the city (with a Vietnamese stronghold).
I was now convinced that this is the mayor who is going to heal the racial divide in our city once and for all. This is the mayor who is going to bring out the best in New Orleaneans instead of pandering to the worst. This is the mayor who is not going to embarras us while the spotlight is so tightly focused on our city, when we need to convince other American communities who are uninformed about the pivotal role our port city plays in their lives into trusting us completely and to share our belief that our city deserves rebuilding.
...so after calling in my maching counts at that neighboring precinct, I turned in the hard copy to the office. Only one other precinct had turned in their hard copy and those numbers weren't strong either. All day long, I heard low mumblings that this was NOT A NORMAL election day. The reliable precincts weren't turning numbers like the GOTV experts for our area were used to in previous elections. I went to the election party practically in tears. Everybody was glued to the TV returns and the atmosphere was strangely jubilant. I felt like screaming to everyone: it's over! My husband and I chatted that we would stick with Nagin should Forman be the other choice in the run off. Better the known, than the unknown who only had the clique-ey Uptown crowd firmly behind him.
But the numbers coming in from across the city were a different story all together. Mitch shot out in front like a canon. He kept a comfortable margin above Forman and switched from 1st to 2nd behind Nagin only at the end. Since one of the TV returns was the local fox news affiliate, I was convinced that they were hanging onto the Uptown numbers and Lakeview numbers in order to spring it on us at the last minute that Forman pulled through.
I was paranoid because Pre-Katrina it was always comical to see returns on election races statewide or even locally with republicans or republicans masquerading as democrats who were only leveraging their stronghold on the white conservative vote everywhere else and praying for it to bring them to victory. However, those of us who knew better would look at the precincts reporting and say...just wait until those new orleans 9th ward and new orleans east precincts start reporting. That's the treasure trove of democrat votes. And boom, their false hopes would be dashed. You can't win statewide unless New Orleans voters are divided somehow.
So at 78% reporting and Forman still barely hanging on to 10,000 votes, Mitch came on stage and the ballroom went NUTS!
I was relieved and overjoyed. Back during the storm, Lakeview and Mid-City were still filling up with water when Karl Rove was giving interviews about how the diaspora of New Orleans would turn the fortunes of republicans trying to win elections in New Orleans and Louisiana. Because that is the first thing that should come out of your mouth when people are still hacking holes in their roof to stick flags out in order to signal rescue teams. Ron Forman, unlike Rob Couhig, didn't have the cojones to run as the life-long republican he is and switched his party affiliation moments before filing as a candidate.
So IMHO, the republicans tried two things here. They tried this new approach that we saw in Texas with the 28th congressional district (Ciro rodriguez vs. cuellar) and now seeing in North Carolina in the state house district 41 (ty harrell vs. mintz): running one of theirs as a democrat and see if he gets in. Which is Ron Forman in our scenario. Meanwhile, Rob Couhig was the one who was openly endorsed by the New Orleans Republican Executive Committee.
However, it was Ron Forman who got the backing of all the local Bush men, financially and figuratively.
And they wanted this win badly. Forman lined up the endorsements from the Times Picayune, the alliance for good government and several other civic organizations. At every debate that I volunteered, Forman volunteers were a plenty. Forman's armada of visibility canvassers were out in full force on election day. He was the first to go negative, and you know - the one who goes negative first usually wins. His signs were in every inch of every neighborhood across the city. And even though all of their canvassers and volunteers were white, nobody knew how this election was going to land because of the diaspora. Until the counts were called in at 8 oclock, everyone was chomping at their finger nails.
So republicans have eaten crow IMHO. New Orleans is and will continue to be a democratic stronghold.
It's all down to WHAT YOU DO ON THE GROUND. The Nola.com forum on the election was heavily pro-Couhig and pro-Forman leading up to the election. So all you liberal keyboarders - filling up diaries everydy and bemoaning the situation: GET OUT ON THE GROUND. The fabulous Painters Union (IUPAT) guys came down from Washington as well as SEIU (service employees) organizers. These guys mean business when it comes to GOTV, I have never ceased to be impressed. I met them when I volunteered for Dean in the primaries and they are the cavalry.
As an anecdote on the power of on the ground GOTV: Ron Forman had practically moved into my neighborhood - he left no stone unturned in his quest for votes. He shook hands at our quaint neighborhood coffee shop, he attended our neighborhood association meeting, he attended house parties. He had the firm endorsement of Vinnie Pervel, who was our neighborhood association president for several terms and who became infamous internationally during the storm for setting up the vigilante militia that guarded our neighborhood from looters. Vinnie is entrenched in our neighborhood. Forman also had the endorsement of my neighborhood's unofficial ambassador, Blaine Kern, who owns Mardi Gras Productions and Mardi Gras World (THE company that produces the floats for mardi gras) as well as Mr. Bollinger, who owns the big shipyard in our neighborhood and is a big mover/shaker in shipping circles. Forman yard signs completely out numbered the two Landrieu signs that were up: mine and the newly elected neighborhood association president.
So when the painters showed up to get a canvassing assignment for our side of the river on election day, I sent them to my neighborhood. And guess what - when I looked up the numbers for the 3 precincts that make up my neighborhood, guess who edged out Forman despite all of that lopsided pre-election organization?
If that's not a lesson on the power of hitting the pavement and union organizing, I don't know what is.
...so now, tune in next month for the Run-Off post-mortem