New Orleans Mayorial Run-Off Today!

[Maddy McCall]

High turnout expected for Saturday's election

By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer

With early and absentee voting running higher than in the primary, and voting rights advocates making a final get-out-the-vote push, turnout for New Orleans’ mayoral runoff Saturday could surpass the primary vote, as thousands are expected to drive in for the historic election nearly nine months after Hurricane Katrina wasted most of the city.

Voters will face ballots that also include four City Council seats, assessors in two districts, and clerk of criminal court. But the main draw are mayoral candidates Ray Nagin and Mitch Landrieu, who have run fairly polite, tepid campaigns by Louisiana standards and remain in a dead heat, providing added motivation to go to the polls. Most political analysts have said a few thousand votes or less may determine who will drive the city’s recovery.

snip/

But a victory for Nagin, who is black, or Landrieu, who is white, hinges less on racial solidarity than on their ability to draw voters of the opposite race onto their bandwagon, Rigamer said. “What it will take for Nagin to win is to increase his African American votes and to get crossover in the white community, maybe in the low 20 percent range,” Rigamer said. “What Landrieu has to do is hold his African American vote ... That’s why the crossover vote so important. It’s the distinction in the race.”

Interest in the race has remained high, and thousands more have voted by mail or in person than during the primary. As of 2 p.m. Thursday, the most recent report released by the Louisiana Secretary of State, more than 24,000 voters had cast ballots, about half through the mail and the other half during early voting in New Orleans or one of ten satellite polling places statewide. That’s already above the more than 22,000 early and absentee votes in the primary, which represented about a fifth of all votes cast.


http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tpupdates/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tpupdates/archives/2006_05_19.html#142964

[skipos]

1. In this poll, most DUers chose Landrieu...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=2620617

[Maddy McCall]

2. I'm for Landrieu.

Can't remember if I participated in that poll. But I'm firmly behind Landrieu.

[Maddy McCall]

3. Latest news from NOLA: Light turnout. :-(

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tpupdates/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tpupdates/archives/2006_05_20.html#143009

A light but steady trickle of voters headed to the polls in New Orleans Saturday in the first hours of a historic election to choose a mayor and several other officials to lead the city as it struggles to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Voters came from near and far, determined to participate.

At Holy Rosary Academy in the Faubourg St. John neighborhood about 9 a.m., Ruth Jones, 58, a Gentilly resident displaced to Dallas, wore a t-shirt she had created with the slogan: “Coming Home to Vote.” Jones, a supporter of incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin, said she and her daughter, who was also headed in from Dallas, made the shirts for themselves and several others.

“I want to come back home. People in Texas don’t want you there,” she said.

A short while earlier at Jesuit High School, a mega-poll site, Amanda and Al Stewart, former Carrollton residents who have purchased a home in Algiers, quarreled a bit over who should lead the city, Nagin or Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, as they walked to their car.

More at link above.

[Maddy McCall]

4. New York Times on the election:

snip/

Voters who had evacuated the city after the hurricane were being bused in from such places as Houston and Atlanta, while other evacuees cast absentee ballots or voted at satellite voting stations. In New Orleans, the polls opened at 6 a.m. and were scheduled to be open until 8 p.m. Central time.

Buses from Houston arrived, greeted by jazz bands. The voters were to be addressed this afternoon by the two candidates for mayor, who appeared at rallies on Friday under a blanket of muggy late-spring heat.

Over the last weeks, voters have been treated to a series of tepid debates and halfhearted campaign appearances, which, far from defining the path the battered city should take, have only obscured it.

There have been leisurely gaps between campaign events, with the two candidates apparently deciding to forgo traditional stumping.

Neither of the candidates have publicly confronted the most important issue facing the city: whether damaged neighborhoods, vulnerable to future flooding, can or should be brought back. They acknowledge that their goals are virtually identical, arguing instead over who is more competent to accomplish them.

As a result, voters here appear confused. Some say they still have not made up their minds; others express anger at the pace of change without apparently knowing where such change should lead; and still others doggedly stick with Mr. Nagin, even while acknowledging the battering he has taken from critics who cite his loose rhetoric and erratic management of the recovery.

Much more at this two-page article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/us/20cnd-orleans.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Harper_is_Bush]

5. Kicked it and recommended aussi.