Election results and levees

We were surprised to see Ray pulled off his re-election bid. Our thoughts on the subject echo that of the po-boy regarding the influence of race on the election. We believe that race played a large role in whether or not you thought Nagin should stay or go. We knew it would be a close race, unlike most of the national audience, who thought Ray was toast.

"If you don't live in New Orleans and you're not from New Orleans, you really look at Ray Nagin as a failure, as someone who didn't know what he was doing," said Peter Burns, a political science professor at Loyola University New Orleans. "But when you come here and you listen to the discussion, you see that people really believe that the major problem was that the levees broke, and that was a failure by the federal government, which built them. People really do place the blame at other levels of government."

Ummm, yeah, the levees. What about them? New report blames
human error, and conclude it was everyone's fault, from the Corps, to Congress, to persidential administrations, to the Orleans Levee District and Sewerage & Water Board. They recommend steps to streamline the administration and prevent this from happening again.
Who would have been the better Mayor to work through this process while enabling the city to rebuild? I dont know for sure, although I had edged somewhat reluctantly into the Landrieau camp towards the end. It worries me every time I hear Nagin is in the pocket of the big developers. I do know that while Ray's re-election may leave some of the national audience shaking their head, those people gave us up for dead long ago. We need to keep the focus on the levees.