Willie Wonka re-elected in New Orleans. Voter fraud or just a stupid majority?

I guess anything can happen when you let people from all over the country vote as if they are still residents of New Orleans even though they don't live there any more. As a former resident who still considers New Orleans to be "home", I was appalled but not suprised when I read that Ray "Willie Wonka" Nagin--the man who said that God wants New Orleans to be a chocolate city (and lots of other dumb stuff)--has been re-elected by a 52-58 majority to continue as mayor.

I hear that he's already working on his excuses for why he failed to get everyone out during the next big hurricane.

Granted, his opponent Mitch Landrieu was a Democrat too, therefore ensuring that New Orleans would remain a third-world city no matter who won, but damn--when someone screws up as badly as Ray did, it's generally a good idea to get them out of the picture and give the next guy a chance to screw things up.

With a quarter of the votes coming from people no longer living in New Orleans, it appears as if Nagin had a majority of those as well as a significant number of white voters in the city. One thing that the news media isn't commenting on however is the fact that this race was really a battle between the local Democratic political machine that backed Nagin and the national Democratic party base that supported Landrieu and gave him a ton of money and helped wring endorsements out of some key groups and people. I suspect that in the end, it was the "my incompetent crook is better than your incompetent crook" line of thinking that caused New Orleans voters to return Nagin to office despite his making racist remarks such as his comment during a meeting with black evacuees in Houston that "very few" of his opponents "look like us." He also stated flatly that many of the challengers wouldn't have run if the city's black electorate remained at its pre-Katrina levels. This, coupled with his "chocolate city" remark, made many wonder if Ray wanted to represent everyone or just black people. And his remark about why he couldn't get the city busses and use them to save the stranded people during the hurricane made a lot of people wonder about his management ability. Remember how he said: "How could I even get drivers for those busses? It's hard enough to get city workers to come in even on a nice day."

From where I sit, this is like the surviving voters of the city of Pompeii just elected re-electing the same mayor that they had before Mt. Vesuvius wiped out the city. That mayor--whoever he was--ignored the danger signs and proved that he wasn't up to the job either. But the New Orleans voter base seems determined to keep electing Democrats to govern their affairs, and this, I suspect, is why New Orleans will remain an impoverished and dangerous place except for the parts run by the business commmunity or the Vieux Carre Commission. The parts of the city that don't take their marching orders from City Hall or the DNC have always thrived and carried the rest of the city economically. And it looks like they'll have to continue to do so because the rank-and-file voters just don't seem to know any better or care enough to vote for people who do more than pander to the race-card-players and welfare recipients.

In the end, we all get the government that we deserve. And as much as the voters of New Orleans will now get what they have coming, I cannot help but shed a silent tear for the city that I love when I think of what might have been.


Four more years of this! Way to go, NOLA voters!


A perfect example of the results of Nagin's "leadership".