Columnist
En route to becoming re-elected mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin proved that he is the consummate political cross-dresser. In his first run in 2002, Nagin won with more than 80 percent of the white vote and only 40 percent of the black vote. This time, he won with about 80 percent of the black vote and only 20 percent of the white vote.
That’s quite an accomplishment. And if he were going to win, Nagin had no choice except to switch political bases after his white supporters abandoned him in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
In his first four years in City Hall, the former cable TV executive earned low marks from African Americans. He was such a disappointment that the pastor of Greater St. Stephen’s Full Gospel Baptist Church, Bishop Paul Morton – who once described Nagin as “a white man in black skin” – and the Louisiana Weekly, a black newspaper, endorsed a white challenger, Mitch Landrieu.
Yet, Nagin defeated Landrieu 52 percent to 48 percent.
How did he do it?
Katrina turned the tide in more ways than one. The white business establishment – the group that had persuaded the political novice to seek office – was dismayed by what they viewed as Nagin’s inept handling of the hurricane. As whites grew more disillusioned, blacks admired his profane outburst, yelling for federal officials to get off their behinds.
Almost two dozen candidates ran for mayor, including three serious whites: Landrieu; Audubon Nature Institute CEO Ron Forman and Rob Couhig, a Republican lawyer. Both Landrieu and Forman raised more political donations than the incumbent. In the primary, only 6 percent of whites voted for Nagin. And with 62 percent of the primary ballots cast for someone other than Nagin, he knew that returning to City Hall would be an uphill struggle.
Nagin skillfully cemented his relationship with African Americans. Billboards around the city asked residents of the majority-black city to vote for “our” mayor. On Martin Luther King Day, he claimed that God wanted New Orleans to be a “chocolate city.”
In a debate I co-moderated in New Orleans, I asked candidates if they favored a rebuilt New Orleans retaining its previous demographics. Landrieu and Forman, moon-walked. But Nagin was direct: yes, he favored the city retaining its previous composition.
Appearing before all-black audiences, such as the national convention of the National Conference of Black Mayors in Memphis, Nagin made frequent references to “people who don’t look like us.”
To many of the people who look like Nagin, it wasn’t about him. Rather, they didn’t want the majority black city to be governed by a white mayor for the first time in more than three decades.
Nagin had another, largely underreported factor that worked his advantage.
The nonpartisan National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, an umbrella group that include the National Urban League, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights and the Louisiana ’06 Coalition, played a vital role. From hosting mayoral debates in distant cities for displaced voters, to providing poll monitors and neighborhood canvassers and offering free legal assistance, Melanie Campbell’s group can take credit for helping increase black turnout.
Black voter turnout, even in the post-Katrina era, increased from 53 percent in the primary to 55 percent for the runoff. Nagin carried 224 of the 229 precincts where at least 80 percent of the voters were not white. Similarly, Landrieu won 71 of the 80 precincts where at least 80 percent of the voters were White.
Before the balloting, Vincent Sylvain, local convener of the Louisiana ’06 voting drive, said: “Whoever wins this election will know that African-American New Orleanians made their voices heard on Election Day.”
Let’s hope that this time around, Ray Nagin is listening.